Today is the final day of development on RUSH for Steam. Years ago, this would mean that the game would come out somewhere in January, but in this day of digital distribution it means it’ll be out in two days. Are we cutting it close? Yes! Are we going to make it? Probably! :)

Either way, we’re working hard to make sure the game is as polished as can be when it launches. I’ll take you on a quick tour of the office.

Hessel, who is one of the designers on the game, is currently tying up some loose ends in the levels. In total we’ve got over 85 levels lined up, 71 of which will be ready for launch day. The rest will be coming in updates in the weeks after launch.

One of the most far-reaching alterations is the complete removal of ‘speed signs’ from the game. These signs seemed like a good idea, but they did not work as expected and were more frustrating than fun to use. Several levels had to be removed or altered severely to still make sense without them.

The final tweaks to the background are being made by Meinte. Feedback from our testers (thanks!) indicated they thought the game was too bright, so we toned down the brightness and complexity of the backgrounds a bit.

RUSH was built using models originally designed for the Wii, for the PC version we were able to add high quality effects such as proper specular lighting and shader effects such as blur and lighting effects.

Perhaps the least enthusiastic at this point is Paul, who’s tasked with fixing the most recent bugs and implementing the last minute changes.

There’s always a bit of a struggle between programmers and designers. Programmers want to keep it all stable and designers always feel that that one last feature request is vital to the playability of the game.

We’ll leave it up to you to determine if we’ve succeeded in making a cool game on Friday.