This week continued the editing/tightening process for the game by moving on to level 3! A friend of mine asked me to define “editing/tightening” in more concrete terms, and I think this week’s work provides some pretty concrete examples.

Maybe it sounds tacky, but I find most games have taken on a life of their own as I’ve developed them. The more I build and play around with Bleed 2, the more I develop my understanding of what makes the game challenging and fun, and the better I can tailor it to play to its own strengths — at least as I perceive them. So “editing/tightening” is me going back over my work with this new understanding, making the whole thing stronger and more unified.

This post contains a few large gifs, so most of those are after the break. But, here’s a snippet of how Level 3 used to play:

I have a strong love of shmups like Gradius and Ikaruga. Most of Level 3 takes place in the air on the hull of a ship, so it seemed natural to pay homage to some of those games. Enemies come in familiar Gradius-esque formations, and would contain patterns of purple and yellow that mirror Ikaruga. But playing it now… it’s pointlessly cute and not too relevant to what Bleed 2 should be. The enemies are so slow and are barely threatening, there’s not a lot to reflect or dodge, it’s not very stylish and attacks come pretty much from one angle at a time. So…

…I re-did some enemy behaviours and patterns. You can now see them launch from the warship, which looks much more interesting and better warns you of when and where they’re coming. Since you’re better warned of the enemies, they’re able to attack you much quicker without it feeling cheap, which is more exciting. The Gradius and Ikaruga elements have been ditched for patterns that give you more to reflect and dodge. Finally, this segment leads in to the fight with Red and her swarm of birds, so that swarm also starts entering the playing field over time and makes things pretty hectic. It’s a hell of a lot more fun and “tight” and true to the spirit of the game.

Same goes with later parts of Level 3. Before it was a real snooze.

But now it’s an intense barrage demanding focus and skill, and feels a lot more satisfying to get through!

For the record, that’s probably what it’ll look like on the hardest difficulty. Next week I have to balance and fine-tune all the bosses and set-pieces, which I’ll probably get a little more in-depth with then. For now it’s just set to values that I think are fun. I feel like if I can’t have fun with the game and be excited about it, I can’t expect anyone else to, either!

‘Till next week! Enjoy all the E3 shenanigans!