If you haven't done so already, go check out MSGhero's blog post about Enki Adventures progress! We're finally on the move again and you'll see a lot more about that project as we go forward. A demo too, perhaps?

It always feels like I made my last blog post only a couple of weeks ago, turns out it's been almost five. Woah. Time for an update then, folks!

I've been working away steadily at Tale of Enki: Pilgrimage alongside the programmer for the project, Howard Ross. We have the goal of releasing the demo for the game at some point in June. If we aren't finished refining the battle system and some of the quests, that may end up being July. Our progress has been very good from the start up until now. Here's a list of things we've implemented so far outside of the more obvious walking and map transitions:

• Treasure chests: You can interact with treasure chests which will open them and award you the contents. Most of them have placeholder items at the moment, but they're all functional and go into your inventory.

• Dialogue/Character portraits: It's probably obvious from above that we have dialogue working, but we've also got the character protraits for the characters that have them implemented too. This covers all of the party members in the game with the possibliity of mroe later. Depends if they're worthy or not...

• Following party members: If you have a party member in your team, they'll follow you. It's not entirely aesthetic too, it also causes a slight difficulty increase with each party member that joins you. They'll serve as targets for enemies on the overworld so it isn't just Gargan (the lead) that causes a battle to occur upon colliding with an enemy.

• Status menu: The status menu is largely implemented now too. We have a few additions to make to it as you can see to the right side of the image below. There are also a few alignment issues to sort out, but it's functional and you can scroll between characters to see their key stats.

• Party menu: You can reorganise your battle team how you see fit. Want a power heavy force? Use Gargan, Rook and Twostone. Want a more agile party? Drusilla, Ka-gu and Peachy? Magic-focused party? Then you'll go with Drusilla, Twostone and Ka-gu.

• Equipment menu: Separate, but similar, to the status menu is the equipment menu. Here you can give your party members up to three weapons (including spells) at a time each, an outfit/armour and two accessories. Having three weapons at a time allows a lot more flexibility in that you can bring multiple elemental weapons in at a time to cover the weaknesses of different enemies with just a single character.

We have a few other things in like the 5 zones that'll be featured in the demo, all of the NPCs placed, etc. This just gives a lot more detail in a few of the more specific features. Hopefully that shows off how much we've got done in just over two months. The quickest development of any of my RPGs so far. With any luck, we'll have the full game ready for release in early Autumn.

Once we get the demo out, the most complex task we have is implementing the future quests. Our goal is to release the game on Steam, Itch.io and a few other distribution platforms. The demo will be released for free on some of those platforms and I'd also like to have it here on Newgrounds if we can export it in a compatible format.

If you want a lot of updates as they come, the best place is to follow the @EnkianGames Twitter. I'll do more detailed blog posts like this as we go, hopefully at least one per month, but I've said that before, haha.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Hi guys, I haven't done a blog post in a few months so I thought it was about time I gave some progress updates on what I've been working on My main focus at the minute has been a new RPG that I've been working on called Enki: Pilgrimage. I touched on it in my last post, but I'll give some more details here.

Enki: Pilgrimage

Enki: Pilgrimage is a story and character driven RPG where the goal of the game isn't to save the world from a powerful villain or a genocidal abomination, but to have your characters grow and bond. It still has plenty of good combat to focus on and a unique battle system, it's just that the quests and character development are where I feel the game truly shines.

The world has plenty to see and do as well as plenty of powerful gear to collect and tough opponents to defeat in both the main story and side quest. If you're curious about the world, take a look at this recording I made of our Ogre "hero", Gargan, exploring his home village of Nerzuth.

https://youtu.be/t8BboguIKso

We've got a large amount of the core programming done. The overworld and area transitions are working, dialogue works, treasures chests are in and the inventory screen is mostly finished. We're focusing on getting the rest of the pause menus (status, party, journal, etc.) finished and then moving onto quests and afterwards combat. Our goal is to have a playable demo of the game's first few zones released in early June and we seem like we're well on track to getting that done considering programming only started a month or so ago.

If you're curious about progress, keep an eye on my Enkian Games Twitter page for more details and regular updates.

Enki Adventures

We're made good progress and once there's more free time around the summer holidays, there should be a few big steps made once again and we can think about getting out a playable overworld demo. Dungeons will be coming after that. 

Ender Story: Chapter 2

For those curious, Ender Story: Chapter 2 is still almost finished, but it's out of my hands at the minute so it's in limbo, but on the verge of being finished. I'm honestly very sorry folks. Nobody wants to see it released soon more than I do.

I've been a little lax with posts lately, but I'm going to do a big update now just to fill people in on what's going on. For those following me for Ender Story and Enki Adventures, I'll hopefully be able to answer a few questions about where those projects are at.

Ender Story: Chapter 2

Probably my most eagerly anticipated project, I still get messages about it asking when the next chapter in the series is coming out. Truthfully, I'm not sure. I expected it to be released before Christmas, but there hasn't been a lot done with it in the past two months or so. There's genuinely so little left to do that a couple of weeks of solid work at it could have it finished and released. It's mainly just sorting out the arena side quest and then the balancing left at this stage because all of the enemies are implemented. After that, testing. It's out of my hands at the minute because all I have left to do on my end is a few status icons and deciding how to best handle the arena.

I really hope the game will be finished and released before the end of the first quarter of this year. I've wanted to show it off so badly for ages now because there's so much to see and do in it already. Me and Kyatohon have worked very hard on it and it's leagues better than Chapter 1 and very packed with god RPG content. A long main quest, loads of side quests (both marked in your journal and unmarked), plenty of extra dungeons, a bunch of new characters and even treasure hunts placed throughout the game.

Ender Story: Chapter 1 - Steam Version

Our Greenlight campiagn has been relatively slow lately, as expected. We reckon the bulk of our votes will come from the time when Chapter 2 is released. If you haven't heard about this one yet, go vote here and see what features we're including: Ender Story: Chapter 1 Greenlight

It's going to be completely FREE to download, this isn't a premium version of the game. It'll feature a new quest, new enemy formations and fully integrated mouse controls, just to name a few things.

Enki Adventures

Enki Adventures progress slowed for a while, but it's back making good progress again. Houses can now be entered and we're goign to be adding more function to them very soon: starting house, shops, tavern, etc.

Enemies are also looking good in the game too, very excited to see how the more complex boss monsters turn out once implemented.

We're fairly close to the stage where we'll start releasing public demos. There are a few things we want to make sure that we implement first: UI-based inventory, house functionality, very basic menus, add the music (easily done) and add treasure chests with random loot. The demo will largely be feature based and won't have dungeons or any story to go by, but it'll give a feel for how the game will handle.

Enki: Pilgrimage

This is a new RPG project I've done a lot of artwork for. I tend to do two big projects at once and currently that's Ender Story and Enki Adventures, so Enki: Pilgrimage will fill the Ender Story slot once Chapter 2 is finished before we begin work on Chapter 3. This game is inspired by the likes of Dragon Quest, Baldur's Gate and EarthBound. It'll be a top down RPG with battles in the first person perspective so that I get to experiment a bit with more detailed enemy sprites and backgrounds (see below for some examples).

The game won't feature any levelling system and progression will be money and item-based. Earn money to buy better equipment as you go forwards, find treasure and complete quests to be rewarded with more money and items. Maximum health and stamina upgrades will be bought via potions and drinking them gives permanent stat boosts. I've done a large amount of the artwork already: about 75% of the overworld sprites (almost every NPC is unique), 60% of the battle sprites, 60% of the menu work, 90% of the items and 40% of the overworld. This is all before programming too, so I'll have plenty of time to refine and add extras on top of my intended projections.

Here are some pieces of art for the project that I've put into the art portal already.

• Enemy battle sprites - Beasts
• Enemy battle sprites - Elementals
• Enemy battle sprites - Fruitbugs
• Enemy battle sprites - Ground
• Enemy battle sprites - Slimes
• Enemy battle sprites - Undead
• Enemy battle sprites - Winged
• Party change menu
• Party weapon collection

The project has a lot of work done for it, but it'll be done in my free time when I don't have much to do for the other two main projects. Luckily, almost all of the artwork I need done for them is finished so I've had a fair amount of time to work on this and plan this. Stay tuned for more on this one in the future, including some overworl screenshots and overworld sprites to go along with it.

I've been generally quite quiet in terms of news lately, so here's the latest updates for Ender Story: Chapter 2.

First things first, we have all of the enemies and their attacks in the game. It's a pretty significant update and it was what we spent the most time on. I was largely holding us back because I didn't have time due to work and other personal commitments to finish a lot of them. That's all done now and good to go, so here's a screenshot of some of the tougher enemies later in the game.

Of course, this includes the bosses too. The bosses in the game are a lot more numerous than the ones in Chapter 1...well, the one in Chapter 1. There are nine boss fights in the game, five of which are mandatory and the others are from optional content and side quests. That doesn't mean there's only nine bosses, however, as a couple of the boss fights feature multiple tough enemies that work in sync with each other to make them even more challenging than a single foe. One of the toughest fights will be against Arc, Rufus (Rufia's brother) and Magicog. They aspire to conquer the Desert Arena under Arc's leadership so once you've worked your way up the arena then you'll have to face off against them.

As for the quests themselves? All of the main quests are implmented and just over half of the side quests. There should be another update coming within the next few days with the last of the side quests outside of the Desert Arena. It's a little trickier so it'll be one of our next steps to work out properly. Similar to Chapter 1, you can say and do different things in order to have different quest outcomes. This may result in different rewards, dialogue or even responses from your allies if you bring them on these quests.

As you can probably see from the screenshot above, you're no longer limited to playing as just Erion on the overworld. Whoever is in your first party slot is the character that you'll get to walk around as. It's a minor feature, but we liked the idea. It gives some very minor dialogue differences too, such as determining who will mention certain doors are locked and other things like that.

In my next update, which should hopefully be in a week or two, I'll have even bigger news about the series which I think will only make the potential for future chapters even bigger. Keep an eye out here.

So there have been a few boss designs that I toyed around with over the past year or so. I’ve actually scrapped a few and some never got past basic concepts. Now that I’ve got a roster I’m fairly happy with, I want to actually talk about a couple that I’m near certain will make it into the final game.

Mertons - Sindor’s Mistake

Mertons is actually the second boss I designed for the game and I’m still pleased with how it turned out. He’s a mixture of a couple of concepts, the ogre race of the game served as the basis for him in terms of the pig theme and also the classic phrase “when pigs fly”. Silly? Yes, but I think it’s effective. In-game, he’s a the lingering remains of an early attempt at the god, Sindor, trying to create the race that would eventually become Ogres. His entire battle mechanics are based off of staying away from the player and spitting out waves of bombs in their direction. 

Ghuul - Spectral Library Deserter

Ghuul is the first boss designed for the game, you can probably guess because of how simple he is. I still like the colouring of him and the whole floating eye/beholder trope is something I’ve always liked so I decided to do my own take on it. He’s a demon who deserted the mysterious realm of the Spectral Library and has taken up working for the Accuser. He’s very skilled with magic so expect him to have a few spells to toss at you, make sure you can dodge and defend well.

Clemps - Demonic Titan Head

Clemps is a demonic titan whose head was severed and later reanimated. Is he still aware or is he an animated husk? Who knows? I know I don’t. His whole battle deal is that he chases you around and tries to clamp down on you using his separated jaw. His weak spot? I’ve heard that his eyes hang very loosely in his skull and sometimes become dislodged.

Oganoros - Fire Demon Lord 

Oganoros is one of the five elemental demon lords (to be addressed later so I don’t go on for too long) that you can encounter in the dungeons across Horru Island. He’s made a deal to protect one of the Accuser’s keys to his castle in exchange for sharing his own secrets of fire magic with him. A fire demon lord? Yeah, that means expect a lot of fire spells to be thrown about. A lot of dodging required for this guy.

That’s it for now, but I’d like to do another post showing off the rest of the demon lords so maybe that’ll be my next post. I’m not sure what people want to hear about most, whether that’s design inspirations, battle mechanics or their in-game stories so I touched minorly on most of those parts. I may also do a dedicated post in the future going through the full mechanics of a boss and how to fight them once we get one implemented fully.

Just stopping in quickly here to say that we've finally started making some progress in Ender Story again! Chapter 2 has almost all of the main story monsters in now and the side areas are next, there's not an awful lot of those left so expect proper updates to resume shortly!

Thanks for the patience!

Wow, been far too long since my last update. This is a sentence I've been saying too often the past few months, but the main reason is because of work and education commitments. Currently in a full time job and I have assignments to do in my spare time, they're about three weeks a part each time. That being said, my progress hasn't been zero! First things first, the Enki Adventures now has a proper logo!

The logo has went through a few iterations, but they've generally all been work in progresses. This one is now likely to persist until the game comes out with possibly a few minor tweaks for highlighting and colouring.

Anyway, for the bulk of this post I want to properly introduce some of the characters that'll be playable in the game and you can see what sort of item sets and abilities they'll specialise in. Take note, however, that any character can use any weapon that they come across, it's just their starting gear that varies.

Top row: Kon, Junior, Lucia, Tehrok and ?

Bottom row: Moon, Greybane, Orzor, Geonar and ?

• Kon: If you've played my Land of Enki games, you'll recognise him. Although in-story, it's a different universe, I decided to carry him over. He specialises in using swords and bombs.
• Junior: A young Rocklops who despite lacking most of the rocky growthes of his race, wants to prove he's a formiddable warrior. Specialises in using bombs and boomerangs.
• Lucia: A travelling warrior who takes pride in her great combat agility. Specialises in swords and boomerangs.
• Tehrok: Another character you may have seen before in Land of Enki 2, whereas before he was a plant creature, in Enki Adventures he's a living puppet/construct. Specialises in using nature magic.
• Moon: A young girl cursed to have random murderous outbreaks, be careful. Specialises in ice magic.
• Greybane: An centuries warrior who's cursed to reincarnate with every death and that time has driven mad. Specialises in swords and gore magic.
• Orzor: Once a regular Enkian, Orzor got himself cursed to look like a chicken. To this day, he's unhappy about it. Specialises in bombs and fire magic.
• Geonar: A wizard in training who seeks to learn more about the five schools of magic. Specialises in nature, fire and ice magic.

As for the two secret characters? I may reveal one as we get further along the development cycle, but one will stay hidden until the game gets released.

To round off this post, I'd like to share a few screenshots from the current build of the game. The procedural generation has come a long way and these are some of the results of how far exactly it's came.

These images all come from the same overworld map, but to mix it up I wandered to three of the four current biomes to get some tileset variety. You can also see Peachy the Peachbug following Kon. This is part of the pet systems that 'll go into a bit more in the future, but Nick has done an excellent job with implementing all of this so far. Go follow him if you haven't already.

I'd also recommend following the Enkian Games Twitter for most of the important updates and more regular posting of screenshots. I know this was a big read so if you've stuck through to the end, thank you! Let me know your thoughts and questions in the comments.

- Jordan

P.S. - Yes, I'm still working on Ender Story: Chapter 2 for those who keep asking me, haha. It's not dead!

Just putting a short post out so people don't wonder where Ender Story: Chapter 2 is. We're still chugging away, it's just that time has become a little shorter since term time rolled around again. I can't see the game being out until early next year and I know that that's a lot later than intially expected, but it's a hard to balance so much at once so I can only apologise for the delays.

Hopefully these screenshots will keep the anticipation up! Enjoy!

What goods do the Black Market hold? Will you be tempted to take part in the trade of illegal goods? Of course you will, they're some of the most powerful items in Arandor.

The abandoned temple settlement of Lakiadon. They're known worshipper of the water deity, but why did they disappear? The mystery will be unveiled by piecing the clues in the dungeon together and reaching the final chamber.

Want to earn some great prizes? Get slaughtering the beasts in the arena. If you want some of the best items in the game, there are powerful enemies that can't be found anywhere else waiting to face you.

Hopefully this gives you some more information to get excited about for when we do eventually get to release the game. There's plenty of side content to do and the three screens above are just a hint of that. Completing all of the side content will take you longer than the main quest, but that should also still be a decent length.

All of the maps are in the game, the main quests and cut scenes are all in the game. The monsters and side quests (just quests, not maps) are the last remaining things outside of bug testing. Once we get the monsters implemented, we'll be at the home stretch. Only the first third of the game has their enemies, but it should soon be more soon.

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble. Point is...game is almost finished, few more things to wrap up and it should be out early next year.

Me and Nick finally set ourselves up with a website for Enkian Games and to keep people posted on our upcoming game, Enki Adventures. We went with tumblr for it because it's pretty straightforward to use and easily customised. We'll likely get our own domain name a little while down the line, but this is the link to use at the moment:

http://enkiangames.tumblr.com/

I'll still personally be making posts to my Newgrounds blog for other projects and some Enki news, but the bulk of the information for the game and any important news updates will be in more detail on the website. We'll also have a lot of smaller updates, screenshots and gifs from the game on the Enkian Games twitter. You can find that here:

https://twitter.com/EnkianGames

Progress is going fairly smoothly so expect fairly frequent posts from the both of us as we add the new features, Nick programs away and I make more art for the game. I'm not sure when we'll launch the Greenlight campaign for the game, but I can see it being early 2016 because we want to be able to show off a lot of the cooler things we have planned for the game.

Anyway, this was just a small update to start spreading the website about. Also, enjoy some more wonderful promo art for the game!

- Jordan

Hey everyone, I've dedicated most of my social media time to Enki Adventures lately so I wanted to do a big post soley focusing on Ender Story: Chapter 2.

It's made a lot of progress since I last posted it. We've knocked out about half of the NPCs in the game, almost finished the storyline cut scenes, all of the maps are built and in place as having the game be fully controllable by the mouse if you wish to use it. I know a lot of people didn't like the occasional switching to one over the other last time so this time both will be fully usable options.

Anyway, onto the screenshot parade. I'll show off some of the newer maps that haven't had much focus in previous updates.

Well, doesn't that tell you enough? No? I'll explain. King Harrin has chosen to send Erion and Graden across the border of Arandor to find the man named Sceptre. He chose them specifically (not just because Graden volunteered them) because he has faith that they can track him down quietly rather than risking war by sending a large group of soldiers after him.

Notice the new portaits too? The last ones looked like ass so I made brand new ones for every character of importance in the game in a pixel art style. 

There are loads of new areas in the game, in fact, you'll be spending the entirety of the game in the country neighbouring Ederra to the east, the deset region of Arandor. None of the old locations can be returned to, so make sure that you've played Chapter 1 and grabbed any loot you want to bring with you and completed the quests how you see fit, they might have impact in this chapter or a future one.

Like the area in the screen above, their are side areas off the beaten path and full map zones for only side quests. The game will be packed with much more content than Chapter 1. The main story alone should take you five or six hours based on my current estimate. Throw in all of the side content and that should easily double.

Your treks back and forth across the desert tiring you out? No matter, the capital city Akarata will keep you busy. You'll arrive here about halfway through the main story and once you do, a wealth of side content opens up. You'll find plenty of shops (including a black market...if you can find it) and plenty of people with tasks for you. Want letters from home? No problem, somebody here and help with that. Want to begin a treasure hunt that spans the whole country? Get your maps here.

Top Row L-R: Erion, Graden, Kara, Kellar.

Bottom Row L-R: Rufia, Magna, Krat and Davidson

Behold! The party members! The first six featured here are all mandatory in the story with Krat and Davidson being optional if you can find and recruit them. I'll go over a little about each of the new ones.

• Kara: A farmer's daughter who ends up getting roped into Erion and Graden's mission after promising to lead them to Akarata.
• Kellar: A scholar who primarily studies the creatures of the world. He provides basic magic and in-battle knowledge of enemies to the party.
• Rufia: An adventurer who became a pirate who became an adventurer again. Her main goal is to build a new ship and become a pirate again and return to ruling the seas.
• Magna: An enigma with a one-track mind that will kill anything that gets in his way. Keep him out of the light, he hates it.
• Davidson: What the hell is that thing?

Hopefully this makes up for my lack of updates regading Ender Story. We're definitely not going to make the summer release that we hoped for, but I think mid-late Autumn is a realistic estimate. It definitely will be out this year, it just depends on the speed of implementing certain things. Most of the work is done, it's just a matter of filling upt he spaces in between now.