This week was more level six work! The end is within sight, and I hope to finish it next week. Now without further ado, let’s talk a bit about storytelling!

One bit of polish I’m bringing to Bleed 2 is that the whole game is designed as a seamless experience; every encounter leads directly and logically to the next with almost no cut-aways, time skips or fades to black. I’m hoping for it to come across as one giant, epic mission — especially in Arcade Mode! — and in general think it lends gravity and context to what you’re accomplishing.

So for example, when you beat the Mirror Core at the end of level one, there’s a little cutscene that plays to transition you to the next level.

Same goes for all levels, and all the markedly different sections within levels! Transitions are as quick as possible without being jarring, and don’t take control away from you — the only ones to sometimes violate these rules are the end-of-level cutscenes, which I’m showing here (go figure.)

Mostly this is me going that little bit extra, trying to elevate Bleed 2 as much as I can, but in general it’s an attempt to improve how I tell stories in my games. Ever since my first game, Frequency (which had a loooot of action-murdering talking), it’s something I’ve tried to work on.

I’ve come to look at menus as a great place to insert story information and get people more involved with the game’s world. GrappleBoy, for example, justifies it’s arcadey structure as a day-long journey up a mountain (to return a tape to a video store before it closes.) The height measurement and time of day changes as you ascend, and these details are reflected in the levels as well.

Similarly, I tried to use the menus in the original Bleed to elaborate on Wryn’s character.

Bleed 2 will continue this trend of menus-as-storytelling where possible, but more than anything I’m trying to make the story happen to you, because of you, all around you, so that every play-through becomes its own little self-contained burst of player-driven, action-driven awesome.

…it’ll probably just end up being a fun action game. But these are my secret, behind-the-scenes goals and aspirations!! High-falutin’ navel-gazing artiste, out!