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2025 Wrap-Up & Introducing a New Feature

Alabaster Dawn · published 9 months ago

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Greetings everyball, -fish and… -baster? Dawn? Take a pick!

With 2025 another year is coming to a close! And what a year it has been, right? Certainly one of all time.

For us, we were able to push development through some crucial tasks and reached important milestones, most notably, the release of our first public demo in September!

But we also want to tell you about the future, namely our plans for 2026, the upcoming Alabaster Dawn Early Access release and some of the exciting new content and features that it will include!

Demo Reception

The demo release has been just about 3 months ago and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive so far! And currently we're getting close to 250,000 Wishlists. Lots of good signs!

Of course with a large amount of players experiencing the game, more bugs and technical issues came to light that slipped through our internal tests, so we had our hands full with fixing those and tweaking some other minor aspects.

In response to feedback we are also still looking into ways to optimize the game to make it run better with low-end hardware and integrated graphics, such as rendering the game in a lower resolution:

https://youtu.be/pYLZq_WdBuM
We also plan to release an updated demo version in early 2026, in time for the Steam Next Fest in February.

Next Step: Early Access in 2026

As previously announced, we plan to release Alabaster Dawn on Steam Early Access in the first half of 2026 featuring all the content finished at that point! This would include the complete first area and dungeon, which can already be partially played in the demo, plus a new area and more story we're currently working on. Here are some impressions:

Lost Lands with lots of tall growing grass.

Hot Hazards await!

We want to handle the Early Access updates in a similar way as we did with our previous game, CrossCode (the elder fans may remember!). This means that, after the initial release featuring a part of the overall content and story, we will update it with a new batch of finished content whenever it's ready.

Some of those future updates may include new areas and dungeons without the story being fully finished as far. In that case you will be able to already explore the area, fight new enemies and potentially even solve the dungeon, but without experiencing the actual story. There will of course be a warning once the story-less section starts and, as we did with CrossCode, players will be able to “reset” the story progress of their saves in later versions to replay story-relevant parts while still retaining their gameplay progress, like level, items and solved puzzles.

Of course, we are aware that Early Access is not a typical match for a story-driven Action-RPG. However, it does help us to secure necessary funding during development while still staying independent, allowing us to develop the game to its full potential!

Also, to add more replayability to the game, even in an unfinished state, we've been working on some quite substantial side content. Behold:

Introducing the Dreamer

Early in your adventures on Tiran Sol you will come across a strange entity calling themselves Somu, The Dreamer.

Original concept by hynori, artwork by Nomnomroko

Somu can’t really remember anything about themselves but has the unique ability to let others enter their dream and thus request Juno to help them uncover their past by doing just that!

Entering the Dream

The dream is very much inspired by Rogue-Lites and as such comes with many of the expected trappings of that genre. Here’s a quick overview over the gameplay features:

Unique seed based runs

Each run is segmented into “layers”. Each layer is inspired by areas you already visited
The deeper you go, the better the rewards but beware, enemies will also grow stronger
Each layer ends with a boss fight
Your story progression determines how far you can dive before you wake up

Blessings: Upgrades found within the Dream

Power-Up Juno with blessings found on each layer of the Dream
Blessings range from simple stat-ups to wilds effects which augment attacks
Blessings have rarities attached to them and some may only appear in special rooms

Dream Shards: The currency of the dream

Shards drop from enemies, by destroying environment objects and by completing objectives within the Dream
Can be used to buy blessings at shops inside the Dream
At the end of the dive, shards are converted into Sleep Tokens

Perks: Unlock new Possibitites

Perks can be unlocked using Sleep Tokens outside the Dream
Perks can make each run easier by adding new room types or making existing ones stronger
Perks become available based on your story progression and progression within the dream
Perks can be toggled on/off to fit your needs

Keep the progression of the main game

This includes your levels, gems and weapon upgrades
Healing Bulbs and Boost are reset upon entering the dream and returned to you after you wake again (You will be able to activated boost through special rooms within the dream however)

Now, this is by no means a “complete” overview. Depending on how much people enjoy this feature we have some plans to expand upon this. Additionally we are also very open to making changes based on player feedback.

Here a quick impression on how it looks ingame:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehTK4R9SPlg

Note that all the stuff seen is still work-in-progress!

Why we wanted to do this

CrossCode was in Early Access for a long time. One might even say it was a Long Early Access! :leasmug:

Our community has been nothing short of amazing during this time and has patiently waited for each update, giving us time to polish things as much as possible. Suffice to say, we are very thankful for this and considered various options to make the wait for our next game less tenuous.

This eventually lead to the idea to add a Rogue-Lite experience that is tightly connected to the game both in progression and story. Something you can play again and again and get a different experience from each time!

However, we want to stress:
Alabaster Dawn will still be a story-driven Action-RPG first!

Somu's Dream is entirely optional side content and since it reuses a lot of assets developed for the main game, it does not take any major time away from anything else we have planned for core content!

Alright, that's it for now!

As always, thank you for reading our updates and for your continued support!

We hope you all have happy holidays, a great new year. Until next time!