Hello, Merchants!
We are very happy to finally be able to reveal when closed beta will be available, and the details behind it!
Straight to the point, closed beta will be made available to play on Friday, February 6th at 5:00pm PST!
With that out of the way, we want to give a very clear picture on what this is, and who it is for. We strongly recommend that if you are interested in the beta in any way, you read this full post. Details on how to participate in the beta will be at the bottom in the ‘How to Participate’ section.
The beta itself will have two phases. First, the closed beta, which we recommend that if you are not a veteran of Merchant’s Guide, you go into it cautiously because the first phase of the beta, the closed beta phase, will not include a tutorial of any kind in-game. We will be releasing an instructional video to go over the majority of the changes at the time of its release which will help guide you on how to navigate the game, but it may require referencing it several times to grasp many of the new systems and layouts. We will also be actively monitoring Discord for any questions that the video may not answer.
The reason for this is because we are reworking the entirety of the Logbook (tutorial) to have much less reading, potentially zero reading at all, but we cannot really start that process until the game itself is ready for it, so the closed beta will be in a strange “in-between” state where the game will be so new that it needs a new tutorial, but the game isn’t done/ready enough to actually make that tutorial.
That said, the closed beta is expected to last roughly 1-2 weeks, by which time the Logbook will be complete and implemented. At that point, we will move into the next beta phase, which will be an open beta. This will include the new Logbook, the new UI and systems, and should be a comprehensible and playable game for anyone from beginners to veterans alike.
One important thing to keep in mind is that we have done extensive under the hood work on Merchant’s Guide during this long development phase, and while we have extensively tested the game, our internal testing is very limited with just the three of us, and we are positive we will have missed things. There will absolutely be bugs in both phases of the beta. If that is something you are not okay with, please wait until we push the patch to live where we expect there to be little to no bugs remaining! However, if you are wanting to help this crucial part of development by giving us your valuable feedback and reporting any bugs you may find, we encourage you strongly to join in on whichever phase of the beta you are able!
We will be very active in Discord throughout this entire process, so we encourage you to join us there if you want to take part in the beta. Details on our Discord in this next section.
How to Participate
While we are calling the first phase a “closed” beta, it is actually open to everyone to join. We are calling it a closed beta because we want to reiterate that this version of the game will be under active development throughout the entire beta phase and that even for veteran players, there will be a lot of new stuff that won’t have a tutorial associated with it (yet) that may take extra time to explore and understand.
The beta will be a different version of the game which you will be able to access on Steam by simply using the password we will provide to everyone. We will leave it as a comment on this post when it becomes available, as well as post it in the Discord for anyone to use, so if you are interested, check the comments under this post at 5:00pm PST on February 6th or join the Discord for the password.
For the open beta phase, we will make a whole new community post addressing all the feedback we received, and that version will not require a password, it will just be accessible through Steam as well. We will provide those instructions on how to access it in more detail for both phases when the time comes.
The best way to communicate with us will definitely be through our Discord, so we encourage you to join us here for the most up-to-date information, and an easy place to ask questions for us and other members of the community:
Though, we will be monitoring this post here on Steam as well should you prefer not to join the Discord, so comments will be welcome and addressed as we are able to do so.
We cannot stress just how excited we are to be moving into this next phase, and we cannot wait to reveal the future of the game that we have in store for all of you. We are wrapping up the largest, most involved part of development, and this is a brand new beginning of our development cycle leading into v1.0 and far beyond. We cannot express how appreciative we are of your patience and help in this process.
See you all soon!
-Devs