

They can afford to hire more employees, but they choose to keep their team as small as possible so that vision never gets muddled. The pair still do most of the coding, rigging and art work themselves, even though they don't have to. It's constant crunch, but it's the only way Mood and TheMeatly know how to work. The rest of TheMeatly Games staff is still only seven deep, with 10 to 15 contractors working at all times. They hope they get the balance right this time, but only the fans can make that distinction. When developers do their own quality assurance testing, the boundaries between between rewarding and agonizing behavior become unclear. "Am I having fun right now?" Gole asked Mood, who couldn't help but laugh at the question. The pair replayed the same boss fight for an entire evening, until they were delirious. This is the first Chapter in the Bendy lineage to have traditional boss fights with combat, which meant more work for Mood. A save feature still had to be created, bugs continued to appear in playtests and the chapter's two bosses still had to be fined tuned. every night and living off a mountain of Rockstar and Monster energy drinks, the duo scramble to finish. With just days to go before Chapter 4's intended April 27 launch, Mood, sleeping on fellow programmer Matt Goles' couch, has been working overtime to make sure they hit the deadline.

Weeks after PAX, Bendy's newest adventure still isn't ready for release on Steam. Over the past year, the team has released (and then reworked) three chapters, a console adaptation is in the works with Rooster Teeth and merchandise has flooded stores like Walmart, GameStop and Hot Topic. Overnight, the game became a success, thanks to the help of YouTube Let's Players thrusting Bendy into the jaws of a young, hungry fan base. Bendy and The Ink Machine is a horror game with a simple premise: what if an artist loved his creations so much, he used demonic ink magic to bring them to life? Mood and his partner TheMeatly, who represents himself with an ambiguous puppet avatar, released the first chapter free online without expectations.
