The following is our latest blog, originally posted on September 23rd, 2016. To see our weekly updates first, register your account at the official Worlds Adrift website.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello traveller!
It’s been a busy month for us here at Bossa Studios. We ran our Alpha 4.0 playtest just over a month ago, and then Alpha 4.1 a couple of weeks ago. In our last blog post, we shared the experiences of some of our testers, in particular one crew’s journey through a storm wall. Those are the kinds of stories we want you to tell through Worlds Adrift – they’re at the heart of why we’re making this game.
We also got a ton of feedback from players – some we expected, and some we didn’t! What definitely took us by surprise was the incredible turnout, and we couldn’t have done it without our longtime alpha testers that have been with us since the very beginning, as well as the new players we brought in this cycle, and everybody in between. So again, big thanks to all of you, from us – especially those of you who faithfully tested the queue under load (and helped us find a nasty bug in the loading screen!).
Alpha 4.1 only ran for a brief 48 hours, but soon we’ll want to run one that lasts for a lot longer; that’ll give us valuable information about how the world behaves after multiple server maintenance events, as well as find out how players play when they’re not incredibly time constrained. A lot of longterm gameplay features are coming soon, and won’t really receive any decent testing if we don’t give you time to experience them properly.
Speaking of which, we’re now working hard to finish adding some key features to the game, in preparation for the fifth round of alpha testing. You’ll be happy to hear sails are coming in, which should considerably change the early game experience. Another feature that just missed the cutoff for Alpha 4 is the revamped multitool – now renamed the gauntlet. We’re generally much happier with how it feels to harvest, salvage, and repair with the gauntlet now, and hopefully you’ll agree.
Next, perhaps the most anticipated feature for months now will make its debut in Alpha 5: the new and revamped shipyard, which allows players to shape their own ship hulls. We’re all really looking forward to all the awesome designs players will come up with to crash the server fill the skies.
And finally, a ton of changes in response to your Alpha 4 feedback have been planned, some of which will be a quick enough turnaround to make it into Alpha 5.
That’s all from us this week! Next week Jack will be blogging a bit about male characters – oh yeah, that’s another thing coming in Alpha 5…
Grapple on, and safe travels.
Herb
Producer
@herb_liu