At last, we’re at beta!
In some ways this is just an arbitrary milestone. “Beta” is a pretty loosely defined term, indicating a point in the software development cycle when we think the game is close to the final product, but still has bugs. We don’t expect a lot of design changes, but things are’t locked down. In fact, I made a change to the main menu screen the day after declaring beta. But the main focus now is getting the game shipped.
That has two main components: finding bugs, and marketing.
Our QA team is still testing (especially since one of the last features added was a new scene), and we’re expanding outside testing to more playtesters (we still have a backlog, but let us know if you’d like to be added to it). I’ve also been running some automated tests, but they can take almost half an hour, so that’s not routine.
We’ll be ramping up marketing more once we have a release date. Given that the game involves exploring a story with some plot twists, we don’t want to give away too much too soon. But we’re starting to plan. We do know that we need to do our first video trailer, and need to find someone to help us make one. (Please contact us if you are available to do video production!)
The other aspect is making sure the game is fun, and the right level of challenge. There’s a lot of emergent story that can be tricky. This is another reason we don’t yet have a target date to release the game.
But overall things are going well. We’re definitely on the road to a release candidate.
KoDP is still one of my favorite games, very excited to try Six Ages!
Hopefully, this time around there won’t be annoying issues for an equivalent of a cow-only-economy from KoDP, where all your food production would come from a massive herd and that would just “break” the tribe a bit, complaints about not enough cleared land and advisors thinking we’re starving, when we got the most filled food stores in the Pass.
I’ve played KoDP on my Android tablet since late 2016, it’s truly a hidden gem, so addictive.
I wish there will also be (a lot of) unique characters like Kallyr and Theya in Six Ages, and I love the diplomacy and resource management aspects best–hopefully it’d be expanded upon here.
At any rate, I wish you all the best for the launch (I’d be jumping up and down with glee if it’s released for Windows AND Android, too)
Kudos! 😀
Any plans to snag an unreleased steam listing for this thing? I’d like to follow your development/release, but the main areas you guys update are here and on twitter which i dont check all that often. I’m on steam much more regularly and it would be nice to have the visibility there too 🙂 It might drum up extra interest/visibility from other folks exploring too!
Cheers and congrats on the milestone, it’s always exciting reaching that point
Does it come out on PC/Steam?
We have not announced any platforms or stores. The last time I did that before a build was submitted, I got burned.
I’d be glad to help with the playtesting. Count me in!
It doesn’t count unless you follow the instructions…
Shut up and take my money already!!
I know this is not helpful or something you can answer yet, but I have to put in my plea that this comes out for mac pc! It’s a dream game for me I soo hope I get the chance to play it!
I really enjoy KoDP but one thing that sucked was the Autodeath if I pissed off the craigspider , beast men or uroxi etc …. no matter how strong you are. the best take on this was the tribe civil war aspect where you could fight back and actually win… I just never understood how you couldn’t “eliminate” other tribes fully or actually kill your sworn enemy. Nonetheless still one of the best games I have ever played
Hey i was wondering since this is beta cant u guys just publish it as beta form and update it later on ? This will be good for marketing and advertising too ?
Short answer: no.