Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror Update #8

This month’s Kickstarter update for Spiderweb Software’s upcoming old-school RPG Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror brings us a detailed progress report, mentions the backer rewards, and tells us what Jeff Vogel has on his docket for the next month. Have a look:

Here is the second monthly update for Queen’s Wish development! It’s been a productive month, and the game is taking shape more and more.

As the game takes shape, one thing is becoming clear: This game will be unique. It is not your standard RPG fare. Far from it. Will you love it? I hope so. But I really think it will be something that feels different.

Right now, work on the game is split into thirds: Engine, Data, and Content.

Data

We have finished scripting all most of the data for the creatures, items, and abilities. This is a huge chunk of work, since it also involves graphics effects and lots of engine changes. Sound effects won’t go in for a while. Some abilities will also be added for the benefit of backers who purchased the Design an Item reward.

Content

We are working on the first two towns in the game. These are the spine of the game. The dialogue here is the framework for the entire storyline. The quests here form a large portion of your activities. This is also where the tutorial is. We want Queen’s Wish to be more tightly written and less wordy than our earlier games, but still, many thousands of words need to be produced.

We’ve gotten a great start on this, but it will be another week or two to produce all the quality dialogue requires.

By doing things like adding shopkeepers and artisans to towns, we are able to continue work on the …

Engine

To get Queen’s Wish ready for the Kickstarter, we came up with rough, basic versions of all of the game features (abilities, buying buildings, etc). Now we have to go back and actually finish them. The building system is now complete and ready to go. So is combat, spell casting, training, the quick use buttons, all of that stuff.

In the Next Month

We will put another week into the starting dialogue, town, and shopkeepers. Once we have shopkeepers, we can code shopping and crafting. We are also putting in new fonts and graphics and updating all of the interface we passed by before. By the end of this month, the bulk of the engine should be ready and waiting for the longest phase: Main content development.

Reward Update

We’ve sent out two emails to people who are able to contribute design to the game. Be sure to look for them. Now is the time to start thinking about what you might want to add.

We are working on the Certificates of Absolution. and we hope to send them out in the next couple of months.

And that’s where we’re at. See you next month!

– Jeff Vogel