End of Line
Why, hello. I'm Danny Judas. The time has come to close the open alpha playtest. The experience has been extremely valuable, and I hope the game has made a positive (if finicky) impression on those of you who have played it.
If you haven't played it yet, you still have some time! The alpha will officially close on April 30th, and it will no longer be available to download or play. That gives you a cool Ten Days to give it a shot.
Phase 3
The main reason the alpha is ending is to make room for the upcoming demo. I am hoping for a June release. Though (as many of you probably know) I absolutely cannot be meaningfully held to release windows.
I think the alpha has more or less run its course, as well.
The past couple of months have been rather complicated for me and I have not been able to put out any major content updates, I was hoping to implement some of the more major systems I had come up with during this time, but those did not materialize. Rather than setting expectations for the demo by implementing more unfinished concepts, I am going to keep them close to my chest. That way I can keep or scrap them for the demo as needed.
The demo will likely feature the same characters and factions. I am hoping to expand the card pool, but the main thing is to add additional systems and do major art and story passes. The main goal is to give the player more to do other than fight, more agency in how they build their runs, and more intrigue in what is going on in the world. I am extremely excited about all of this and am steadily chipping away at a lot of new stuff.
The biggest time sink is art and by a large margin. I am tackling all of the world and character art myself, on top of UI/UX. I'm avoiding animated characters, so thankfully every time I draw someone I only draw them once. But, there's still a lot of enemies that need art, and I want more big splash arts for both Lovely Jane and Handy Joe! In addition, every single card in the game will need a nice little image. Those are all monochrome and I've been offered help with filling those out. I'm not so worried about them.
Programming and game design wise I am able to work very quickly when I have the time to focus. But every new menu and mechanic I add needs a whole layer of visuals pasted over it. Scary!
Reception
Positivity! I've gotten a lot of good feedback, and I've talked to many people who seem to be enjoying the game. There's still more than enough ground to cover between now and June. I'm very much hoping to make an even better impression once the demo drops.
I'll once again shill our Discord server for the game. I've been running weekly polls there, posting change logs, and chatting with players. Its been a nice experience.
At any rate, thank you to the several hundred people who have expressed interest in the playtest! And especially to those who have stopped by the discord or filled in a response poll! I am very grateful for your participation. More to come, and hopefully very soon.