Throughout the last month or so, we’ve begun our Beta tests for the upcoming demo – here’s how it’s going.
First of all – our community is awesome as ever!
Many of you applied even before we opened sign-ups on Steam, and we’ve had a steady flow of constructive feedback that’s helped us heaps.
First Impressions
As expected, the start was a bit of a rocky road. This is a beta for a demo, but the actual game is pretty much still in alpha… and yet it has to become “gold” in mere weeks 😉
What I mean is – creating a fully functional, interesting, and fun demo while loads of features are still WIP (or not even started!) is… stressful.
That said, the first few weeks brought a lot of constructive criticism. Areas like combat, camping, and the tutorial were understandably key troublemakers. In short: we need to work on presenting our mechanics better.
We also reviewed a lot of other systems and, with the feedback received and analysed, we’ve already made tons of changes – and taken even more notes for future improvements.
Some of the Things That Were Improved or Changed:
Skill Challenge system (still a somewhat controversial topic…) got a big rework.
Previously, there were two major issues:
- You paid Movement Points (MP) to use extra cards to boost your chance of success (it’s a d100 roll – roll equal to or under the displayed %). This meant players constantly ran out of MP and had to camp all the time.
- It felt a bit impersonal – the whole deck was used, characters and cards alike, with little flavour.
Now:
- Only characters take part in the challenge, making it feel more like an actual RPG skill check.
- You now pay Energy (not MP), which ties better into immersion – helping more makes you more tired, simple as that.
Combat also got a ton of tweaks, mods, and fixes.
- Tempo was too sluggish, so we sped up animations and made the speed-up buttons work properly.
- Clarity improved across the board: better tooltips, clearer visual effects, help buttons, etc.
- Sound effects were added or improved for better feedback.
- Key abilities were fixed to make decks feel more distinct.
- Example: The Magic deck now has the “Elusive” trait (units immune to card attacks), and strong AOE blasts for serious damage.
- AI got smarter – now it behaves tactically, which makes combat feel more strategic and encourages players to plan better.
General Improvements:
(I mean, yes, not exactly a huge show-off, but you know—showing you the little steps forward 😉)
- More crafting slots
- Better gadgets
- Improved health/wound UI
- More starting supplies (to encourage early exploration)
- City management systems working more consistently
- …and a lot more polish overall
Some Key Takeaways for the Future:
We’ve still got a while before the full game hits Early Access, so we’ll continue to expand and improve all aspects of the experience.
For now, I’ll leave you with this snapshot of our current roadmap:
Thanks for testing, playing, and being part of this wild journey with us!