This game's been in the making since May 2022. I have been working on this fur 3.5 years. Given that I only have the 1st chapter finished & there are 9 left to work on, you might not think that's a lot of progress. But do keep in mind that all of the code & assets I make are going to be used fur the rest of the game. So really, once I get my code fully polished up, game development will become purely drawing/music comp at that point. I already know what the entire story is going to be so it'll just become a matter of scripting cutscenes, making maps, tables, NPCs, items, animations, music, sound effects, tilesets, & all that kind of stuff.
I estimate that Chapter 2 will probably only take me like 4-6 months to make if I'm working really hard. Same with every other chapter.
Also when I started development, the 1st year was spent deciding what the game will be like, really. It was originally going to be an RPG with 3D platfurming 1st it was gonna have a Paper Mario aesthetic & be "2.5D" but then I switched to fully 3D with 3D character models too. I scrapped that because of how absurdly long it took to make maps & I was just not equipped to design that. & it would be too much fur an already ambitious game project. I switched the game to 2D & even then, it's still pretty ambitious. In retrospect, switching to 2D is probably the best decision I made regarding this game, aside from fully giving it to God in 2023.
Now instead of being an RPG-platfurmer, it's moreso an RPG-puzzle game. But even then, the puzzle sections at least in Chapter 1 aren't very intense. I don't want to throw too much at the player at once.