Finally Got to Play Bastion

Tonight marked a milestone for me where I can officially call the game “beta” … It’s playable start to finish, and there are no crucial pieces left to add.  Features are locked.

I’d been saving Bastion as a reward for getting to this stage since it came out… and so far it has not disappointed.  I didn’t read any reviews or anything before playing, so all I knew was from the glimpses I got at E3.

What I’ve seen so far is great.  The narrator doesn’t get interrupted and always has something interesting to say.  This means no tutorial and things keep moving briskly along.  The core concept of the Bastion is something very dear to me, the rebuilding of a lost city like SoulBlazer.  This is a theme that’s been neglected for too long.

Amazing hand-painted artwork and a nice variety of music ranging from folk tunes to Chrono Trigger style dreamscapes.  Would have stayed up all night playing it, but I think I should be a more responsible game developer and finish my game.

Used the Email Game Today

This is the perfect tool for an indie developer completely consumed in the final stage of a project, whose inbox has reached epic proportions.  I used the Email Game today and cleared half the inbox in about 20 minutes, not bad…  amazing what happens when you’re on the clock.

At the time of this writing, they have a default signature that includes a link to their site, which I had to remove.  Other than that it was a cool experience and I’ll try it again tomorrow.

What’s Left To Do?

  1. Most of the music
  2. Some of the SFX
  3. Make the editor a bit more user-friendly
  4. Fix squish detection glitch
  5. Adjust difficulty of final stage
  6. Handful of single-frame sprites
  7. A few touch-ups to the UI and pause menu
  8. Evil Checklist torture testing
Eight things, it seems doable… Maybe I can knock that list in half tomorrow?