April 2025 Update - New Challenges

Hello everyone. Here is the next monthly update on Chronicles Meteorfalll's development. I hope you like it.

I haven't really gotten much done since mid-march since Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition launched and I've been playing it non stop every day for as long as I possibly can. I'm over 70 hours in and I'm absolutely hooked. Literally just started Chapter 9 and then I'll get my flight module and be able to fully explore the world!

But that's a bit off topic. What you came for is more news on Chronicles Meteorfall, yes? Well, since the last update, which I believe was in early march, I have made some changes to the game. Nothing major, no new combat system or anything, but some changes none the less. Here are some of the new features and changes I've added.

The first one is the biggest, new party members! The original version of this game, Meteo Chronicles, had 5 party members which were all on the field at once. Originally, Chronicles Meteorfall was going to have 3 party members on the field at once with 6 party members total, 5 required and 1 optional. However, this party setup didn't mesh as well as I hoped in regards to the job class system and build senergy between characters. However last saturday I talked with one of my adult friends and she gave me a genious story idea! I won't tell you all what that story idea was here as it's a major spoiler, but this new idea for what to do with one of the characters really spoke to me and caused me to decide to re-arrange some things in my game to acomidate this new-ish character. However, if we include the previous 6th party member, the optional one, that would be 7 party members, which wouldn't be an even number. However, I already had another party member, Amadeus, who joins temporarily in Chapter 2 and then leaves the party forever. But what if you could get Amadeus perminately?

Including the 5 main characters, Koros, Tayo, Zenith, Stacy, and Jeht, and the three optional bonus characters Amadeus, Asta, and the new spoiler character, that would be 8 characters total. This would allow me to expand the available party from 3 to 4 to make it even with half of the full party active and the other half in reserves at all time.

Amadeus being a permanent party member also meant I had to retool a major sidequest involving him and make it have more story attached to it instead of it just being a random fetch quest. But otherwise it went pretty smoothly. The spoiler character is where I ran into some issues and had to rewrite certain parts of the story to acomidate, and I'm still working though the exact sort of senarios I want in their recruitment and how that will all work out.

Another thing that is changed is that previously Asta, as the only optional party member, had a unique gimmick of being able to use any character's S-Class (ultimate class), but this became irrelevant in NG+ when you could switch any characters class to anything, removing Asta's main nitche. Now Asta has a new exclusive class, the overseer, and Amadeus has a semi-new class as well, the Archsage. I can't say the spoiler character's class because that's also a spoiler, or will at least heavily hint at who the spoiler character is, so no speaking on that yet.

Asta's new class is focused on putting up elemental shields to protect against certain elements, a skillset previously only reserved for enemies and Zenith after unlocking her S-Class. She also has some slash/almighty attacks similar to Koros' Infinity Blade, but they do not pierce DEF, unlike Infinity Blade.

Amadeus' Archsage class is less of a new class and more so of a retooled Enchantress, Stacy's old ultimate class. While the Archsage's passives are different, the actual offensive arts the Archsage has access to is the same as what the Enchantress' used to be. So, what about Stacy's S-Class. Well, I have given Stacy a brand-new S-Class, the Summoner, inspired by Eupha's class line in Metaphor ReFantazio. After defeating scions you obtain their "vessel" alongside their animus, which can be used to learn Stacy's summoning magick. Summoning Magicks are very powerful elemental attacks that call on the power of a specific scion and are alternate versions of a scion's typical art used in Stacy's S-Talent "summon", but cost a lot of AP to use.

As in other news, development is slow, but steady. I know I was supposed to release the demo for this game last December and I'm sorry for all the delays, but trust me, it will be worth the wait. Hopefully I'll be able to release a playable demo before June, which afterwards is when the real development grind begins. I did make one new acomplishment working on the game in the last few months, and it's a new title screen! I was originally going to comission it, but after nearly getting scammed by AI "artists" mutliple times I didn't take any chances and drew it myself. Please, take a look.

Pretty cool, right?

Anyways, here is the current ongoing plan for what I'm going to be tackling next in CM's development:

1: Correct traits to trigger the correct passive states

2: Change every fire skill to inflict the correct "hit by fire" state.

3: Finish creating arts for Archsage, Warlord, and Overseer.

4: Create all the enemy arts and weapon arts.

5: Add traits and passive states to enemies.

6: Create portraits for Amadeus and Ozma.

7: Fix plugin settings to allow for 4 party members instead of the current 3.

8: Create all in-game quests up through chapter 3.

9: Replace all existing AI art and Aekashics enemy sprites in the files with new sprites.

10: Replace copyrighted content in files. (sound effects mainly.)

11: Add in tutorials and additional NPCs to explain combat and gameplay mechanics. (possibly add in the Greenhorne Club from FF6?)

12: Add in the mechanics for each JS passive skill one by one to see if they work or not.

13: playtest the game.

14: release demo!

I'll hopefully have more to show come next month (May) and we near closer to the demo's release. Until then, see you later gamers!