Before I take a bit of a break for Christmas, I wanted to post an update about where NALE chapter 2 is, as of right now.

The story for the chapter is taking shape; I've got a rough map, start-to-finish, but there's a fair bit of fine detail I need to work out. I want to try and maintain the characterisation from the first game, so I need to do a bit of ground-work for the new characters, to ensure they remain consistent for this and future chapters.

However, I've been able to map out several locations that I already know are needed,so things are off to a good start.

As a secondary track of development, a big part of chapter 2 sees Nina investigating a murder at a TCG tournament; kinda a NALE-universe equivalent of Yugioh. I really wanted the player to actually get to play this game, so I've been working on how I can adapt RPGMMV to do that. I originally had a map-screen-based game, which was simple, but not very exciting, and didn't offer the narrative flexibility that NALE requires. Inspired by animes like Gundam Build Fighters, I wanted the battles to be grander affairs, so I started again using RPGMMV's battle system.

It's taken a week, but I've got this example:

It probably looks quite simple, but there's quite a lot going on under the hood. In the game, the player's going to earn "cards" which allow them to unlock a range of battle abilities. NALE is a graphic adventure, though, not a "true" RPG, so the system is semi-automated. It's more about re-creating the "feel" of a lane-based, TCG battle system.

Obviously the scene above is full of assets that are taken from the stuff provided with RPG Maker; the final thing won't look like this - but it will have this kind of logic/gameplay.

Anyway, thanks guys for all your support so far! Merry Christmas, and I hope you have a great new year!