Thank you for your interest in Dark and Darker!
We will be doing a bug squashing QA playtest from Sept 23 (6PM EDT) to Sept 25 to test out some early new features.
Anyone interested in helping us test and find bugs can simply join the playtest directly through the 'Request Access' button that will appear on our Steam page when the playtest starts. Players that participated in our first Alpha test will automatically have access to this QA test.
For this playtest we will be testing the following early features:
1. A simple character level system
2. Basic class perks and skills customization.
3. Random modifiers on (epic+) weapon and armors.
4. Various lighting and darkness setups.
5. A new Inferno (bottom floor) map.
6. Slight improvements to the block/parry system.*
We will be doing a full R&D investigation to improve blocking for the next playtest.
This is a true QA playtest to test basic functionality and to start tuning the balance.
Please note that these systems are very early in development and will lack a lot of polish and need to be balanced.
We look forward to your feedback in our community forums and on our official discord.
Your feedback will lead to a much more polished and complete Alpha playtest that we have planned for the end of October.
We thank you for your patience and understanding and joining us on our journey to give you a proper fun playtest next month.
Thank you once again for your support in Dark and Darker!
* Shield change details
Although we were unable to implement major improvements to the blocking system for this playtest,
we would like to reassure players that we are continually doing R&D to improve it for the future.
We were able to add a small update where attacks will no longer ignore shield collision
if an attack managed to hit an uncovered part of the body before it the shield, i.e. the top of the head.
You will still take damage from the initial hit, but the weapon will now properly bounce off the shield instead of passing through the mesh in this instance.