Here's what the game's currently looking like. We've got a new system of ORBS in place that replenish cooldowns. The HUD isn't rendered yet.

So, we’re officially in “Get This Game Finished” mode.  To get the most exciting bit of information out there right away, we are shooting to get this game into your hands in the current year of 2012.  That means, at the latest, we want to have it out on at least one platform by Dec. 31st, 2012.  That’s what we’re all shooting for.

Now, we’re still going to get the game on every platform we possibly can, but we’ve realized that it would be a bad idea to launch all of them at the exact same time.  Some releases will be staggered by a month or so, because it’s imperative that the game is running in great shape on all platforms.  Some platforms – Android and PC specifically – are bound to have a little more work to do with regards to making sure the game’s working on everyone’s unique devices, but it won’t be too bad.  A big part of what we’ll be doing in our Beta phase is getting responses from people with different hardware.

That brings me to the Beta.  When’s it going to happen?  Well, we just got out, about a week ago, of a huge “great redesign in the sky” phase, where we made our codebase roughly 1000 times more awesome and robust.  This was Andrew’s idea, as the code was starting to get really hairy, being that it’s now about a year old and the game having had changed so much.  It set us back a lot;  where we had 8 or 9 monsters before and all three skill trees implemented, now we’ve got about 5 monsters implemented and two skill trees implemented.  However, working with this new codebase is incredibly easy.  Andrew is doing a phenomenal job on it, and I think how solid this game feels in terms of the software is going to be a real selling point.

But anyway, what does that mean for the Beta?  Well, we’re shooting to get into the beta early November.  That means 3-4 weeks from now!  So, you Kickstarter supporters, expect a message from us about this within the next month!

Once we enter into Beta, gameplay will be approaching a “finished” point.  From there, it will only be a matter of testing and tuning and making sure it’s working as intended, balanced, and exciting.  From there, we have to add other functionality, such as Story Mode, Tutorial, and online leaderboards (which we’re doing some really cool stuff with;  stay tuned for more on that).

Also, we’ve got our first shippable Player Class (besides Auro, of course) designed and most of his art finished.  That will be very exciting.

So, all in all, things are going.  You can expect closed Beta to start within a month, and the game to be released within three.  We’re really looking forward to getting it out there.