June 6, 2026

Alright, I got a dev blog up within a reasonable amount of time! Today, I'm gonna be talking about my entry for this year's single Fire Emblem chapter contest hosted on FireEmblemUniverse (called Let's Entertain Awesome Fantasy (LEAF for short) this year). This year, I entered Fire Emblem: Time Marches On! Needless to say, this dev log will contain spoilers for the game. So, I'd highly recommend playing it before reading. It should only take a couple hours for a single run!

Jagen Simulator

Almost a whole year before the contest was announced, I bought Volcano Princess during the Steam Summer Sale since I've always wanted to try a raising sim like Princess Maker. That and the VTuber Doppio Dropscythe was playing it and it looked fun, so I wanted to try it for myself. Then my Fire Emblem rotted brain thought "okay but what if we made it fire emblem-" and here we are! I noted down ideas I had for it since I knew for a fact I wouldn't have time to actually play around with the idea in earnest until either Cycle of Remorse was finished or I could use it for the single chapter contest. During its development, the project went under the name Jagen Simulator and--I'm gonna be real--it was SO close to being called that for the final product, but thankfully(?) I came up with something better as I was wrapping up development.

Gameplay

As with last year's contest, gameplay was weighted more in terms of scoring, so I leaned more heavily into that overall. Even more than I did for last year's entry The Three Princes (which was a more story-oriented project). It was fun trying to figure out what skills I wanted the players to have access to. I specifically wanted players to find some satisfactory skill combinations to totally wreck shit lol That did lead to a lot of steamrolling through the final combat sequence so it wasn't as challenging as I would've liked it to be lol Still, it sounded like people had fun building their units, but the preparation phase did feel like it dragged for some players, which is understandable (I now understand why farming sims tend to not use a 12 month calendar system lmao) If I ever come back and overhaul the game, I'll definitely shorten the calendar time lol

In terms of the different activities available to the player, I wanted to present the idea of contrasting risk and reward for each one. Fishing and mining were mainly money-making activities with fishing being the most consistent with payout, but with less earned. Whereas mining would yield higher payouts albeit less consistently. Training at the barracks and arena were counterparts when it came to leveling up your units. The barracks provided consistent EXP, but the EXP yield was lower than at the arena. The arena was more risky depending on the matchup. (Although you could back out of the arena if presented with an unfavorable opponent.)

I did want to promote replayability with this project (despite the fact the judges probably only would have time for a single run). The randomness of the skills available to the player, the classes available at any given time, the results of activities, and even the enemy loadout of the final battle all played into this. I wanted no two runs to be the same gameplay-wise to give players an opportunity to discover new skill and class combinations.

I've seen multiple people say that they want this project to be expanded into a full campaign with is both flattering and unexpected lol I only wanted this to be a single chapter but hey maybe if I can come up with a fitting plot for it, I may come back to this and expand upon it.

Closing Thoughts

Time Marches On tied for 5th place alongside Empty Halls by Rasta with both entries being only one point away from the tie for 3rd. Pretty crazy how the standings were that close! I'll admit that I'm not as proud of this entry as I was for The Three Princes, but I'm glad that it was an enjoyable experience for the judges and players alike. Like I said, I don't know if I'll actually do more with this project in the future beyond a couple bug fixes (which there were way less of compared to The Three Princes, by the way!!) but hey let's see what the future holds!