So Im guessing this is abandoned, as the rest of the workshop is...

Good to know! Thanks for the update

Update - I have been away from my PC again for most of the past month but should hopefully now have some time to work on Shimmersea over the next 6 weeks. In the meantime, here is an update on the current status of Chapter 2.

- 7 Battles completed, 2 to go.
- 14 Cut Scenes completed, many of them far longer than those found in chapter 1 (these 14 cut scenes only cover the first 4 battles so there is plenty of dialogue still to be written).
- A number of custom skills and items created, including new icons.
- Some custom objects created for the battlefield.
- 3 new companions join the party and have significant dialogue in cut scenes.

Thanks for letting us know. You've still accomplished a lot since your last update. Take care

Hi. Real life has been more hectic than usual. I don't have nearly the same amount of time that I did for Ch1, and I especially don't have the same amount of time in front of a PC screen. On the plus side, I have used spare offline moments to scope out the entire story so I know exactly where everything is heading post-Ch 2. Since my last update I have completed and tested battle 5 and have designed the map for battle 6 and started designing battle 7. I know what battle 8 and 9 will be, but haven't started work on them yet. I also improved battle 3 and wrote a lot of in-battle dialogue for it. I also completed another lengthy cut scene. Re battles, I don't intend for most of them to be harder than in Ch 1. That said, higher level characters means some higher level enemies. So people who charge ahead or leave a party member exposed by his/herself might be punished more than before.

Hi Banjax, hope you're doing well. How have you been doing since your last update? Should we expect Chapter 2's battles to be much more difficult than in the first?

Hi all. Here is a quick status update. I am working away on Chapter 2 at the moment. It is on track to be longer than Chapter 1. At the moment it is looking like it is going to contain 9 battles, of which 4 are largely completed and have been tested many times. Some cut scenes are done but there are a LOT left to do. This chapter is definitely taking longer than Chapter 1 to complete, but I will keep chipping away at it when I have time.

I don't know if you are still on that mission, jadey, but I'll give you some advice (I was in your position once): Your Engineer is the best counter to the boss of that stage. xD

Will do, unfortunately it seems to be taking me quite a bit to get through the main campaign. Trying to develop some ideas but also trying to play without casualty. Even then I still lost a unit versus the Ebon Rider and at that point it was far too late to care to restart. I'm very excited to check the custom campaigns out this one in particular.

Thanks, jadey. Once you play, if you have any questions or feedback feel free to let me know in the Shimmersea Discussion section.

Hey I haven't gotten to play this yet but I'm excited to just find out about this game and get interested in the custom campaign community. Once I complete the vanilla game I'll be giving your (and others) campaign a try.

At this stage of the campaign, permanent character death can only happen for narrative reasons. Later in the campaign I might change that if there is a big enough cast of characters and I feel enough of each character's story has been told. That probably won't change in Chapter 2 though.

Spoiler for Chapter 2 Luckily Stone Golems don't need to breathe...

>_> Is that why my Lord Granite was chucked into the ocean by the end of Chapter 1? Because the only way to account for character death is for it to happen in the narrative?

Ha! All the while they left someone to bleed out in the corner!

I know what you mean. I played all of those games as well and always repeated a level if someone died. My thinking is that Shimmersea will continue to have a balance of missions, some where everyone must live or else your have to repeat the battle, and others that are more forgiving if the odd person (temporarily) goes down. That makes it easier to craft a story and to balance the difficulty. Storytelling and balancing become much harder if you have to account for a random character no longer being alive in future cut scenes and battles.

I played Tactics Ogre: March of the Black Queen, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Fire Emblem. They each developed my deepening love of tactical games. As you might imagine, I work from the mindset that "Nobody Dies!" because I demand better of myself. Still, knowing that deaths come without penalty might lessen the demands I put on myself as I continue to play this game.

Fun fact: I kept two of the militia in the bar. They just had drinks while their city was inches away from being torn apart.

Ultimortal Nanomaster - I really appreciate the feedback! Was it clear to you that only Kailyn needed to not fall in the final battle? As you found, it is feasible to keep all of the characters + the militia alive in the final battle. I consider that a "hard mode" victory while the "normal mode" victory is winning with Kailyn not falling. If the final battle is played with the focus on only keeping Kailyn up, I don't find that battle too hard. If you are like me and want to always make sure that no one falls, even when that isn't necessary, then that definitely makes both the ship battle and the final battle harder.

Now, the third battle (New Allies) is definitely a challenge. Even when I know how the enemy will behave, I can find it challenging. That is the mission that I have tweaked the most based on player feedback. If anyone else is reading this and needs help on this mission, I put some tips in the Difficulty Level thread in the Discussion section of this campaign.

The last couple of missions required *all* of my Tactician-level gameplay in order to beat. They were *really* hard. Maybe I just got a bad draw on too many Level Ups along the way, but I managed to beat them after several attempts. Even the unnamed soldiers in Chimera's Fall were alive by the end of it (Regardless of your intent, I will defy you every step of the way ;) ). I also have to note the battle involving the high-level Pyrokineticists and Skaia... the Shadow Psychic was really hard too.

Unfortunately, I do not remember the specific levels that my team ended up at, but I kept everyone pretty equal and my average party level across the board was 10 with a few of them getting higher than that (Namely Cat and Tilly).

I'm excited to see more, regardless, but maybe tone down the difficulty just a little bit? I'm a hardcore tactics gamer and this was really demanding in some places.

I know that feeling. For a while I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with my campaign either, since I was getting very little feedback. Getting those comments and discussion lets us know you're interested, which helps us keep going!

To answer your question though, I am interested in seeing where your story goes. Chapter 1 leaves off on an interesting cliffhanger, and I am curious to see what happens next beyond the next ~7 or however many battles.

Hi. If anyone sees this, would you please let me know if you are interested in me continuing working on additional chapters of Shimmersea? Only 4 people have given me a rating so far for Chapter 1. I am extremely grateful that all 4 reviews were positive, and I am especially grateful to the 3 people who provided me feedback after they finished the campaign. It would be great to know if the other people who have downloaded Shimmersea are also interested in me continuing the story. I am currently working on Chapter 2 but my initial plan was for the story to extend beyond only 2 chapters. Any feedback would be extremely appreciated.

Hi. The 18th May, 2022 update of Shimmersea should be the final significant update for Chapter 1 (unless I get a lot of feedback with concerns about the difficulty level). Check out the Change Notes for full details of what has changed since the initial release.

If you were holding off playing, now is probably the best time to give the campaign a go. I will now start working on Chapter 2.