About to wrap up initial development

This is my last full week of development. Next week I’ll wrap up a few final tasks and start testing. The week after that I’ll get the release build together and submitted to Steam for review.

I’m really nervous but also excited. The game isn’t completely done but it’s playable and I hope people think it’s fun. I’m sure players will find bugs that I missed because that’s what happens with software but I plan to do a full QA cycle to minimize anything too terrible.

I’m doing early release because it forces me to focus on the MVP – minimum viable product. Or, what does the game really need? Otherwise I’d get all of the code done before I started dealing with menus, or graphics, or any of the other bits I don’t like dealing with that improve the player experience. And I’d probably keep adding features and fun to build stuff for years and years.

I plan to stay in Early Access for a couple of months to flesh out the remaining features. After that I intend to do periodic updates for things like additional levels, bug fixes, and maybe new features, but once Anivenge has been fully released my main focus will be the next game.

For now my focus is on Anivenge, and I have to get work done to meet my tentative release date of 11/22. And so, back to work I go!