Planned release: 10/31/2025

This week I mainly worked on the end-of-turn scripts, including enemy movement and strategy. They’re still far from finished, but the foundation is there. Alongside coding, I did a lot of background work whenever I felt I just couldn’t stare at code anymore — planning questlines in Excel, writing story text, and mapping out future game mechanics.

While there isn’t much visible new content, I can proudly announce that the battlemap — from the player’s perspective — is now functional. In earlier Dev News posts, I showed myself stepping back and forth between three hexes to test the system. That code has now been optimized and expanded to all hexes, making free movement across the map possible.

As you can see in the screenshot below, I used my first turn to recruit two available heroes and three donkey riders. I could have taken one more soldier, but instead I left the path open and marched my boss out of the castle, trying to shoot the alpha wolf in the center. Both of my shots missed, so the only reason the wolf won’t tear me apart when I end the turn is because the AI scripts are still under construction. Still, this little test already shows how many calculations and “what-ifs” the computer will need to evaluate before making each move.

For example: if the wolf also recruits, then moves out to attack me in melee, I might survive — and in my next turn I could simply retreat my boss back into the castle, send all my units against the wolf, and recruit six more soldiers to surround my boss, making him unreachable for the wolf.

To make enemy turns more engaging, I also developed a script that automatically moves the viewport to the active enemy unit. This opens up possibilities for larger battlemaps in the future, since the camera will always follow the action. It also creates opportunities for new mechanics: enemy reinforcements appearing mid-battle, hidden units jumping out of buildings, or even a survival-style mode where the bottom row of hexes disappears and a new row appears at the top each turn, forcing you to keep advancing into the unknown.

Finally, I’ve started assembling the game’s main questline: The Seven Sisters.

This multi-chapter adventure follows the story of the seven daughters of Nikolay Taranov Paz, a wealthy industrialist who died shortly before your character awoke in the city park with no memory of recent events. Expect difficult choices, betrayals, and complex characters. Your decisions will shape the outcome: the questline has multiple possible endings and can unlock other questlines depending on your path. This means high replayability and unique playthroughs — the love of your life in one run could be your nemesis in another… or lying seven feet under in yet another.