Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar Updates, Release Date Missed

Were any of us really expecting Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar to not experience another delay after waiting two decades already? Of course not. But when you have a Steam profile page that’s clearly marked with a release date of July 7th, it makes you think that this time just might be different. In any event, Cleve has provided two updates (here and here) that reveal the game’s final price point of $39.95 and provide some reasoning on why it’s still not available for purchase:

Been working around the clock here to finish up every possible detail before Friday. The game is looking really good. It has been very enjoyable to review areas I have not looked at in a long time and discover they are even more fun than I remember.

There are still going to be parts of the game that are not quite polished but the game as it currently stands is truly a one-of-a-kind classic. I have successfully played through all four endings of the game using save points and cheat codes and I found my own product to be more satisfying than any of the Wizardry games and even better than the original Eye of the Beholder series. I can only hope others agree this time next week.

This week I have been scrambling to make sure that all spells have some sort of visual effect, these are complete now but it is likely new visuals will be added in the future for various displays and magic effects. I added one last new monster animation I have had shelved for a while and added boss encounters to several areas I had skipped in the past.

Ellsworth Hall is working on a full orchestral soundtrack of all the themes currently scored in MIDI in Grimoire. It is likely that will be offered on the store page as a standalone purchase after it goes live.

…

Bloodshot eyeballs inflamed to 8x normal size, mucus from nose pooling on floor around chair, been doing 20 hour days with nothing but expired beef jerky to keep me from starving to death. My wife has brought a bedpan into my study and placed it under my chair like that episode of South Park so I no longer have to break to go to the bathroom.

Almost … there … just need to test that last issue number #10209373739829 to make sure it is still fixed after changing item #0928434923098 to match up with issue #9042353290215.

Game looks so utterly beautiful that tears are mixing with the mascara as they run down my cheeks. I … never … dreamed … my game would finally look this good.

Will be working all day to complete, as soon as I have verified remaining areas that underwent some editing I will begin building deployment packages.

One last minute change I am introducing is versioning for the savegames and side-by-side execution of updates so any future patches of Grimoire will NOT break any savegames out there. Obviously nobody wants to start their 600 hours of play over just because I added romancing and bread baking interfaces. So once saved your savegame will be legal until you complete that game. You may not see new additions to the map but your current game will always be completable after you have started it.

Sorry but I am just one guy and normally during this crunch time on any software project you have more than one person to help you when the going gets tough. It’s all on me and it only gets fixed because I fix it, I can’t delegate that bug to a team member.

Almost there. Game is looking ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE. As soon as it is ready will post deployable package to Steam for approval.