Venerable Knights of the Valley, The testing cycle for the recently released version Alpha 3 has been running for about three weeks and concluded today. It was a great success! Testers from all over the world gave this version a hard look and discovered dozens of bugs, which are all fixed now. They also provided valuable feeback on gameplay and balancing, I will always be listening to players, and if their feedback doesn't conflict with the vision of the game, even core features can be changed. As one example, permadeath has been made optional for now and I am planning more nuanced options around this feature in the next version. Thanks to everyone who sent feedback! There are also some members of the Beta test team that I would like to specifically mention: [list] [*] Many thanks go to [b]Shin Noah[/b], a Patron from Korea who already provided valuable feedback for Alpha 2. She did it again during this cycle, and some of her gameplay ideas have become part of the plan. I cannot thank her enough for her kind and professional feedback. [*] My special gratitude also goes to [b]Lennon Cantwell[/b] from the US. Although Lennon just recently joined the testing team, he already made a huge difference by providing excellent test reports and gameplay ideas. He is also a Patron and I am blessed to have supporters like him! [*] And finally, thanks to [b]Evan Menzel[/b] in Germany who has a natural talent for finding edge-case issues. "Player character turns invisible when starting to rest while in the process of lying down" is a classic. I don't know how he does it, but he always finds stuff that I missed for months within minutes. [/list] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40033947/2fc903daca34e0d019dc07c28722601cea047062.jpg[/img] [i]In Alpha 3, players learned a bit about the background story[/i] Testing will continue, but unless any game-breaking issues are still found, further code changes will go into the next version. Let's take a closer look at that one now. While Alpha 3 is somewhat representative of the intended gameplay, it is still early Alpha and many things are missing. A big issue is that playing currently isn't perticuarly rewarding. You will neither run into the more interesting opponents, nor will you find the really interesting loot yet. Fighting wild animals only goes so far until it gets old. More importantly, character progression isn't included at all yet. This means your skills won't improve, you cannot choose any perks yet, and you won't level up. Those features are key for an RPG and they were originally supposed to go into Alpha 3, but the schedule is constantly evolving and other things took priority. And lastly, gameplay is just sandbox at the moment... there are a few quests, but they aren't overly complex, and the story mode (breakdown into chapters) isn't there yet. Those things, and many more, are planned for the next version which I dubbed "Alpha 3.fun" since I expect the fun to skyrocket! The release of Alpha 3.fun will not be driven by schedule but by features, and it will only be released when it deserves its name. Therefore, I cannot give a timeline, but I can say it will be worth the wait. Once we get closer, I will be sharing some of the upcoming features in more detail. There will also be other exciting news to share soon, so stay tuned. For now, it's back to work for me. Cheers, Martin