Oh, baby baby. I did it! The campaign is now at what I would call a legitimate alpha – everything playable from start to finish and in a highly acceptable state! After two and a half years of hard work, it feels amazing to finally reach this milestone.

…however. There’s still a long road to travel before the game is released. “What?!” I can hear you exlaim. “Just put the damn thing out already! How much more could there possibly be left to do?! YOU HACK!!” First off, settle down please. Second, I’m glad you asked! In no particular order, and with no guarantees I’ve remembered everything, here is the big list of what needs to be done before the game comes out!

• Audio: The assets still need to be created, and then inserted into the game.
• Marketing: Once audio is in, I can make a trailer and announce Bleed 2, because right now nobody actually knows it exists and I need to build awareness/hype. I also have to set up a Steam store page and prepare screenshots, box art, a press kit, and other promotional materials for when I’m shoving the game in the public eye.
• Bugfixing: I have a large list of known bugs that need fixing, ranging from minor animation errors to major problems, like crashes.
• Playtesting/Balancing: I need to run a bunch of people through the game, ensuring it all makes sense and is free of cheap exploits, unreasonable difficulty fluctuations, etc.
• Steam Integration: This covers a whole host of features, like in-game leaderboards, cloud saving, emoticons, backgrounds, trading cards and achievements. Most of these I haven’t properly done before, so it might take even longer than you’d expect, plus there is a lot of art associated with some of those items.
• Menus: Right now there are literally no menus, so not only do I need to create those but I must also go through implementing and testing every option within them. Some are simple, like an SFX slider, but others are more complicated, like button remapping or the accessibility options.
• Cutscenes: There’s a short intermission that plays between levels and an end-game credits sequence, to name a few. Maybe an intro sequence, but 99% of people don’t watch those, so we’ll see. Either way, it’ll be a bunch of art work.
• Dialogue: The game is light on writing, but even Wryn’s death quips are absent at the moment.
• Polish: Just general all-around polish. Particle effects and background details and easter eggs and  tightening up various things… the game is good now, but can benefit from a measure of shine.
• Unlockables: There are unlockable characters, weapons, air-dashes and more. All need to be tested and balanced — a few haven’t even been created yet.
• Scoring + Save Games: Neither are implemented at the moment.
• Co-Op: The levels’ code will need modifications to accommodate the two-player camera, and some co-op specific bugs need to be addressed.
• Extra Modes: Arcade Mode, Challenge Mode, and maybe more?
• Tutorial: I’m considering making an (optional) tutorial to explicitly spell out the controls for new players.
• Ports: I’ll have to get the Mac/Linux ports made.
• Misc: And then there’s always the list of things I’d like to include but probably won’t have time for, like the randomly-generated Endless Mode, or replays in Arcade Mode.

So… uh, yeah. I’m not sure how many people will even read to the end of this list, but you can see there’s a long way to go! It’s a little depressing in its enormity, but it’ll be a nice change of pace to tackle some of these interesting programming problems after months and months of focusing purely on gameplay things.

For now, though, I feel I’ve earned a bit of a rest. No more writing from me this week, I’m gonna go play some games!