Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror Update #9

This month’s Kickstarter update for Spiderweb Software’s upcoming RPG Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror informs us that the game’s engine is pretty much done and is more or less functional, and its story can boast roughly 40,000 words of dialogue already. With that in mind, the developers will be focusing on testing the game and creating new dungeons from now on. Here’s more on that:

This is a pretty exciting update. The Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror engine is pretty much done. The base interface is in. The system is done. All the stuff in the game is scripted.

Of course, it’s not completely done. The final interface needs to be drawn, put in, and made pretty. There are a lot of minor things (like weather) that I tend to do late in the process. There are a million bugs. However, we have a full, playable game, and we’ve made several towns, dungeons, and outdoors sections. To take a break from interface stuff, I’ve also written over 40000 words of dialogue for the spine of the storyline.

Over the next few days, we’re going to do our first intense playing. Now that the base engine is done, we’re going to play it, find what is broken and imbalanced, fix it, and make sure the game is fun. Then we will go on to primary world design, the longest phase in the project.

In the Next Month

We’ll finish a couple more dungeons and then do some really intense testing. We’re trying to get everything solid enough that we can make dungeons and outdoors sections on a schedule. This is when everything we’ve been putting off and everything that didn’t work become visible and have to be dealt with. It’s a long, grueling process, but it does end eventually.

Reward Update

We’ve gotten a ton of ideas from people who bought the ability to put things into the game, if you heard back from us, assume your input has been placed. If you haven’t written us yet or you never got feedback, this is really the time to get that done. The more of the world we write, the fewer the options for good places to put your characters, items, etc.

As for the Scrolls of Absolution, the design of the scroll is done and we’ll start making and sending them out soon. If you haven’t responded to the survey yet, please do so.

Things are going well. The prospect of playing the game for real, after years of thought and preparation, is both scary and exciting. Before we go, I put a couple of screen clips below. We have a game!

– Jeff Vogel