In the development screenshot above, one of the scenes of the main plot missions

What is this “famous last 10%”? In indie development, it’s usually how you refer to the last finishing touches, the polishing, the last bits of coding/art/music/etc you need to add to the game before you call it “finished”.

You could argue that nowadays a game is rarely finished, especially a complex one as a RPG, since new bugs always come out  even months after the “official release”. Or simply the developer makes patches and updates.

But anyway, in my case I am referring to the beta version, so not even the release. And I’m obviously talking about the game Queen Of Thieves.

Yes, I know that I said I would take it easy after all the games I released already this year (PSCD, C14 Dating, Heirs and Graces and the PSCD DLC just last week!) but… if you have the inspiration and especially if the weather is incredibly mild this year so far, why wait? 😉

I must admit that while normally I hate this “last 10%”, what they say it’s true: it’s one of the most important part of indie development. In case of a RPG, it can turn an average/mediocre RPG into a good/fun one.

For example, I’ve been tweaking the battles a lot recently. I even made a video!

In the video (the battles are speed up by 50% otherwise was too long) I show how the same battle can have very different outcomes. Obviously already having different skills will lead to different outcomes. But in this case, I wanted to see if I could beat this main plot boss fight without using any potion and without using the guard skill of Kira. I am playing in Normal difficulty, I leave the Hard/Nightmare one to crazy-ahem, “veteran” RPG players 😉

In the first attempt I do what was a good strategy in many cases: concentrate fire on the boss enemy to take him down first. But in this case, it’s not a good move. Instead, spreading the attack to weaken multiple targets it’s the winning strategy, together with paralyze on the boss.

Paralyze is very powerful spell, that’s why some bosses have high resistance to it (but they can be paralyzed for one turn anyway). I like how Kira’s strikes to lower the defense/armor value, combined with Thalia’s poison, can basically slowly weaken/kill multiple targets at once.

I am not sure how the beta testing will go yet, but being able to beat the bosses with different strategies surely it’s a good thing for any RPG!

Testing/tweaking battles apart, I’m adding a lot of minor details, including:

• small background animations (for example in the forest during the day there’s a flying buterfly)
• tweaking the amount of gold required to advance in the story, and the money you can earn. Yes, because as the story progresses, you’ll also earn more money running the shop or doing the robberies. This way even if the money required is every time higher, it shouldn’t take too long to reach the next goal.
• possibility to sell gems to the shops, to earn more money quickly. Also increased the values of many gems
• adding visual indicators on the map, so portraits of the love interests present in each location will be immediately visible
• adding a step by step tutorial for first time players (something I didn’t have in my other games)
• adding more backgrounds and unique sound effects

and the list goes on. It’s a bit frustrating to be honest, because it seems you’re working, but not making many progress really! This because they are all small details, hard to notice if taken singularly. But hopefully when you put all of them together, the effort I’m putting into this game will be apparent!

If all goes well, a beta at end of June seems a realistic goal 🙂