Wow - the amount of feedback that I've received after the first playtest went live was huge. When planning my work on the second playtest version, I clearly underestimated the amount of time necessary to dig through all the information. Great stuff, and I thank you all for that!
Also, the great friend of indie game developers, Splattercat himself, posted a vid of his playthrough of the first alpha - how awesome is that?!
The upcoming second alpha will give access to a small set of features related to character leveling, so that you can see and give feedback on the first iteration of the character skills system.
As for combat, there will be some changes to it yet, based on your feedback. I have implemented QoL improvements, like a working side scroll in all directions, or the ability to see enemy movement range.
There will also be changes to movement/attack ranges: the issue with too little character mobility was raised many times, so I decided to increase the movement range to the one from Shardpunk 1 (which was 4 tiles per action point), and the weapon ranges followed naturally.
I do know that the playtest does not do a good job on highlighting some of the keyboard shortcuts and UI stuff. I am confident that in the end, a good tutorial/introductory mission will solve this. Right now I've put some of the info under F1. That being said, too many of you did not know about the % to hit preview which worked in the same way as in Shardpunk 1. However, I did switch its default key from Alt to Shift, so it's me to blame. From now on, both Alt and Shift will do the work.
The combat in second alpha will use the same set of maps, but there will be a new enemy type present. This, combined with the possibility to level up the characters on your own will give more replayability - and more combinations to test.
I am almost ready to release the new version. It will probably go live in the last week of February due to winter holidays I am having in the upcoming week. Man, I do need a break from programming.
Take care!
Sławomir "bryqu" Bryk