The image of success! I have completed my first FULL playthrough of God's Disdain. Along with the 27 hours of in-game time came over 200 hours of bug fixing, balance changes, and even overhauls of certain systems. It's still not perfect, but this is a major step for the game and one I am very happy to share with you all. This isn't a 100% playthrough, as I didn't finish/find around 15 quests and didn't enter a couple of dungeons. I also did the playthrough as a good character rather than an evil one, didn't have BGM on, or voice acting, so some bugs with those things might arise that need fixing as well. That's why the game isn't technically in beta just yet.

The next step for me is to get the remaining voice acting done, which entails re-recording all of Kenshin's dialogue and implementing another character's voice lines into the game. There have been some scheduling conflicts with Kenshin's VA as well as unfortunate events like sickness that have prevented us from getting it done for the past couple of months, but I am hopeful that it will get done soon.

In the meantime, I'll be working on getting a trailer made as well as a Steam page for the game. This has monetary costs to it as well, so it might take a little bit of time to ensure that I have the funds. As soon as I have the game's Steam page available, the game will be made available for everyone who worked on the game to test. This is not only to help further bug test the game, but also to figure out exactly how Steam works in terms of updating things for players so that I can hopefully get a better experience for when the beta comes. I've never used Steam as a developer before, so it will take some time to learn how to use it in a way that won't be obtuse for people who are trying to help out.

Once this testing is done, I should have a solid estimate for the release date. Then, I will announce a beta test that people may apply for, which will require a HacknPlan account. This beta will be focused on finding more bugs as well as making sure things are relatively balanced, but I won't be doing anything major to the game's systems or identity at this point. Once I feel that I've polished up as much as I can, and we're starting to see diminishing returns in terms of how many bugs are found versus how long the beta has been active, I'll close it and announce the true release date.

I am so, so excited to be at this stage of development! It's been a long time, nearly nine years since this project started, and being able to play through the game for the first time with all of the content intact was a magical experience for me. My goal was to hit 25-30 hours for a regular playthrough and it seems like I pretty much accomplished that! Of course, I'm the developer and I know this game very well so it'll likely take others a little bit longer to do the same amount of content, but even I was surprised by things in this game sometimes and I think that's the mark of something special.

It won't be much longer now. To all of those who I have talked about this project to for years, including the people who have worked on it, I hope that I can make you proud. To anybody who is learning about this project for the first time, I hope you find something here that will make you excited!