With our first Alpha Build Update we have now officially entered into the Alpha Phase. This means that the core frameworks are all in place and the main game-loop is ready for validation.
As is often the case when one designs a game, in the early stages of Pre-production one makes a lot of assumptions regarding will be the impact of different sub-systems, what will be fun regarding the core game-loop, what kind of emotional impact will some events have for the player - while a lot of finer details such as what kind of weapons, spells, monsters and so on may still be in planning and part of what is decided once production is actually underway. As the frameworks fall in place and the game-loop is realised, there is always the posibility that changes is needed. Rarely has a game entered Alpha state and been a solid title that merely needs all the content finalized.
Going forward we will continue to publish the change logs as they occur of each and every build. We will also start to build out and publish information in our own wiki as an online manual and will talk more about it when the information in it is expected to be less fluctuating and more complete.
Terror and Morale
One of the last building-blocks added as we enter Alpha was the Terror-property of all Units (Monsters and Operators). This is the amount of Fear and Terror this unit generates on their surrounding. The impact range of the Terror attribute is maximum value up to 4m, and then a linear decline up to Charisma (CHR) meters. A units (especially Operators) ability to withstand being affected by this is determined by the units Willpower (WP) attribute, with bonus from each near teammate's Charisma (CHR), with gradual decline in a linear scaling over distance.
A unit that fails this Terror vs Morale check, can be Shaken (which impact skills by -15% and -2 points in WP) or if even more impacted; Frightened (skills -30%, WP -4 points) or if heavily impacted; Paniced (skills -60%, WP -8 points).
This change increase the importance of Charisma and Willpower, partly avoiding the typical stat-dumping of characters when created in the beginning on the game (you can still put all points into Strength and Agility if you want, but better be ready to run if being alone and facing very scary Monsters).
Operators also generates limited Terror (men in gear with weapons storming at you can be scary!), but in general only the less intelligent and weaker enemies would be affected by this. But there are ways to temporarily increase this amount...
Some Monsters of the truly evil kind are immune against the impact of Terror - while most often generate a lot themselves.
So, what now?
As hinted at above there will be less major changes during the Alpha Phase as we hope that no major systems need to be added, removed or redesigned. We have some minor systems that are still being worked on, but the core game-loop is expected to remain. As such there may be less revolutionary or evoluationary changes with each update, but there will be more build out of actual content, such as levels, monsters, weapons, spells and many more things. For that reason alone, we expect the Alpha Phase to be a decent amount of months.
Changes on Steam the platform impacts us
You may have read about this from other Indie-developers or on gaming websites, but there have recently been another set of changes to Steam in how they handle upcoming games and games not yet released. At the same time the huge number of games being released these last 3 years have created a situation for Indie-developers where they find themselves being lost in the noise of new games. The latest changes has made it so that in general upcoming games will receieve much less visibility in the store - until it is released - while also making it much more important that a game generate a lot of attention (i.e. sales) for the Steam platform in the first week of the release.
This is doubly backwards for an Early Access title (where growing organically would often be better, to avoid front-loading players into a game that is not finished yet) as an Early Access game that have no attention will suffer from not recieving valuable feedback from user play testing of the growing title, but also then 'making sure' that any release once Early Access phase is finished will be much smaller as players have slowly been buying the title over several months time, as oppose during one single day on release. Virtually guaranteeing that no news or front page placement will be given, if not a run-away success or from a triple-A studio.
One way, perhaps the only way from what we know today, is to make sure we have enough Wishlists ready for the day Early Access is opening. This will be a challenge going forward and will be something we need to monitor and work on too, in addition to the game itself.
Updated screenshots
We have now replaced all screenshots from the store-page, they should all be showing our latest progress and be captured in full 4K.
