Copper Dreams Update #23 – Alpha Testing Starts Now

The latest Kickstarter update for Whalenought Studios’ dystopian cyberpunk RPG Copper Dreams informs us that the game is now officially in alpha and that the eligible backers can now give it a go and see for themselves how everything is shaping up. There’s also a brand new alpha trailer available. Have a look:

And here are some additional details:

We wanted to let you know that your builds in Steam have been updated with the first alpha version for testing!

Do expect bugginess. This is a work in progress. Consider this access to feature additions and our bi-nightly builds of squashing all the bugs you’ll see.

After designing the tick/tile system with the microtiles, we threw everything we could into it that was part of the original design of the game. Now that it’s all in, or at least the fundamentals, it’s time to start cleaning it all up on our end and get feedback from yours. The gameplay bugs need a lot more passes while we prep it for the beta (the actual start of the game) release, but if you’d like to follow along with the remainder of fixing things up and provide any feedback now’s the time!

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Working on Movement

Right now we’re still smoothening out how things move on the tiles, and you’ll notice some characters sort of popping around. Originally everything acted like pawns and just snapped tile-to-tile while they moved, which was easy to make sure everything was working properly, but now they have animations to blend between those tile locations. Sometimes that visually works great, others times they can look like they are possessed. This is something that could use some work to make things clear, as weird movement and animations can really dampen the mood. We’re working on that, as well as other numerous bugs for 1.1.

There is one game mode and map available, and the rest will unlock the following two weeks, starting Monday. Other alpha maps will focus on other gameplay or ruleset elements that we will be finishing the last things on and putting in for them.

We’ll be posting our short-term timeline there so you can know when to expect new modes and features to be included for testing. You’ll also get to choose what feature we’ll work on for a big milestone: companions or character generation. We’re almost done with both of them, so once we get what we need for 2.0 we’ll finish one of those up!

Things should be moving a lot quicker now, and we’re looking forward to your feedback. Thank you again for your patience and support to make something new and awesome, we always appreciate it.

Cheers