A small update for the sake of updating.

Free time has been ridiculously sparse lately, and I didn't even have my daily commutes to fall back on last week. I am getting closer and closer to finishing the *first* boss fight, but somehow the closer I get - more and more tiny new details become vital to address. As of right now - the whole battle is playeble from start to finish, although I'm not sure just how well, since I didn't have anyone other than myself play it yet. Things I still need to add are a more spectacular boss death effect, better boss announcement, ability to punch the boss into non-vital parts with "ineffective" message popping up, tweak the bosses punch range - it's a bit too short, a powerup drop after the boss is defeated, a finished power-up-get animation and effect, and more and better sound effects - but that's pretty true of the game on the whole. I need to start working on the event flag and save systems, so the boss battle and puzzles don't reset every time I leave a room, as it's becoming annoying.
Also started working on a new "cave" tileset - hopefully this will turn out pretty.
My last post got a whopping 1 reply, and the one before that I think got none. Now that there is almost zero interest in the project - I might want to keep it that way for a while: )

No, I'm not asleep at the wheel...

This is a "dead man's switch" update, mainly to show that I'm still actively working on the project. My main area of focus at this particular point is the first boss battle. Since I'm going with heavily scripted and animated boss fights - it is taking me a while, but the fight in itself is done. All I'm left to do there is complete art and scripting for the intro and the outtro sequences. The first arena art is pretty much done as well, but I am struggling to prevent myself from trying to make it even prettier.
Also - the nearness of this milestone makes me so happy, I want to record a new video to show off my progress, though I realize it is a bad idea to show the game so far away from completion... nahh - not gonna do it. Posting new videos has a tendency to give people impressions that the game is close to be done, while it is far from that.
In other minor updates:

• Added new elements to the first area of the game - now the background buildings have more architectural variety.
• Continued working on new animations for Iya. Almost finished with 30+ frame cycle for Iya collecting a new powerup.
• Started the overhaul of the magic system, though it is now more broken than "better".
• More map areas added, but not skinned. The game still can't be circumnavigated: (