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Dawn’s Light 2 is out now, and it’s only a few days after the time that we guessed ages ago. Not bad at all. Here’s some links:

Buy Dawn’s Light 2 for $19.95 – FREE Guide included

Download the Dawn’s Light 2 Demo

Free Guide

We were surprised by how many people wanted a guide for Lilly and Sasha. After so many people purchased that guide, it seemed like it was just another part of the game. So we decided to include a guide in a special edition of Dawn’s Light 2 – free of charge.

When you purchase the game, you’ll be given a link in your e-mail that you can use to download the guide as many times as you like. No more download expired messages.

So did we make our goal of having the game beta ready by July 23rd? Not quite, close though. It’ll be a bit longer but I don’t think it will change my rough release estimate of mid August.

I made a quick video of an early part of the game. See video here.

3 more screenshots from Dawn’s Light 2. Next week we’ll be having a video to show off a few things

We’ve been working hard on Dawn’s Light 2. Main scenes and everything are finished now. We have a few things in dungeons to finish, then onto finishing side quests and then the long, arduous task of putting in all the finishing touches/unnecessary things.

Here’s a couple of pictures to keep you interested.

I though you might be interested in knowing what we’re up to:

Dungeons

All dungeon maps are done, most have stories and dialogue done. No treasures or barrels are done yet and we haven’t placed any enemies. I do however have a cool new way to place enemies so I can’t wait to try it.

Towns

Towns are in place. Shops, inns and the important people are in place. We still want to add a whole bunch of people to make them more exciting. Plus a few little quests.

We’re doing mini games in the towns like in DL1 but they are much better and we know not to have time limits now.

Side Quests

The journal stuff is done for side quests and some of them are in place. We’ve recently thought of a couple more so those are only partly done.

Story Scenes

All story scenes are written and ready to go into the game. This week Andrew is going to be putting all of them (I hope) into the game. Some are easy to do but others with lots of animation and movement take a long time.

Weapon Crafting

I planned out all the materials and building process a while ago. Last week I made a rough version of the crafting process. I still need to make it so your weapons have the features you choose. I couldn’t do that before now since it’s very closely linked to …

Battle System

I’m right now working on a new turn order system. You’ll be able to see who gets a turn next and you’ll have some skills that can change the order. We had speed before but you didn’t get to see how it affected the battle so I think this will make battles more interesting.

After that I’ll work on putting in all the enemy data which is pretty easy.

4 Weeks

Our goal is to have the game finished by July 23 so we can start testing. Will we make it? Only time will tell.

Also I am batman … this batman.

One of the reasons it’s tricky to guess a release date is the fact that we don’t have a set order for making the different parts of the game.

What should I do next?

As usual, we just work on whatever seems the most inviting at the time. You might think that would leave a whole lot of boring jobs for the end but that never seems to happen.

I’ve got quite a few tricks that I’ve learned from our other games that let us skip a lot of the less exciting things. Looking at some of the ways we did things in DL1 was a shock.

Also whenever I’m not feeling creative or technical I put on a movie and work on mindless tasks. It’s works out a lot better than trying to force myself to be creative.

So more often than not, all boring jobs are done before the more interesting ones. And since my motivation to work is at it’s peak when a game is almost done, the system works!

I won’t pretend that I’m a supreme work machine though. Sometimes I just don’t get that much done.

Let it happen

We’ve learned not to plan too much in the beginning. So our initial plan for the game before we get started consists of:

• A list of dungeons and towns
• A storyboard showing how the dungeons are linked
• A few possible side quests

That’s pretty much it. Then we start. Andrew usually starts by doing some concept maps for towns and dungeons but they don’t get finished for a long time.

I usually start building the backbone of the game. Our game files are pretty well organized, everything fits in it’s place. Everything is so much easier with a well organized game. Towards the end things get a little out of control but not enough to cause any trouble.

From this point forward we just choose something and do it until it’s no longer interesting. We just assume that at some point we’ll have a good idea for a side quest or dialogue for the characters in a certain town.

Most of the best scenes in the game are just spur of the moment things that seem like a good idea. So we just try to make it as easy as possible for those things to find their way into the game.

Why make Dawn’s Light 2 now instead of Nexus?

When we were deciding which game to make next, we just had a lot more material for a Dawn’s Light game. Stuff we’d come up with during development of Lilly and Sasha.

Having just finished L&S we felt like we had already used all of our ideas for that. We are coming up with more stuff now of course and when DL2 is done we’ll be ready to go on Nexus.

When is Dawn’s Light 2 coming out?

I don’t like giving release dates because it’s really to guess when a game will be done. I try to stay positive in order to stay motivated for the whole project so I tend to think the game will be done more quickly than is humanly possible.

If I let myself think that the game is too far away, doing work right now doesn’t seem so important. If I knew in December that Lilly and Sasha wouldn’t be done until March, I probably would have given up.

On the other hand, deadlines, even if they are optimistic, are a great motivator. I always set target dates but they aren’t really important since only I know what they are. So if I were to give a date …

Go on, say it!

Fine! So my optimistic answer is the game will be complete, ready for testing in one month. Add another week or so because I’m forgetting some stuff. Then add time for testing and you have a release date of mid august.

When is Nexus coming out?

Lilly and Sasha: Nexus of Souls will follow. We have already started work on the game. The story is pretty much done but we’ll probably add more. I would love to have it out by September 23rd to make it 6 months since CoTI.

It depends how well things go with DL2, there should be some overlap, I can handle the Dawn’s Light bugs while Andrew starts on this.

So that’s it then?

Never! We would like to get something else out this year, as well as redoing our site. Then there’s the sequel to Christmas Tale. So like I said, pretty optimistic.

Nope, not Victor

Not Victor and not Joss. It was a bit mean of Andrew to show that one since we can’t reveal who it is. It’s a cool surprise in the game that we don’t want to ruin. So to make up for it, we can show you this guy:

I’d like to introduce you to another person from Dawn’s Light 2: the second member of Harvey’s party. Their identity is currently top secret, but I will reveal that they also appeared in Dawn’s Light 1. See if you can guess who it is.

Hint: Not Swordhand

I guess you could call this the spiritual successor to Dawn’s Light. This game will be far superior to any before it, with features such as…

Bearded Harvey

Reprising his role.