Serpent in the Staglands Update #12: Beta and Pre-Beta Testing

Whalenought Studios has pushed out another Kickstarter update for Serpent in the Staglands. It includes some interesting info on the gameplay systems and the announcement that the beta for the title has been pushed out of its original “end of Summer” release window. That said, the developers will select some backers at random to test a polished up version of the vertical slice for the game:

As we prep the rest of the beta areas, we were hoping to get some help in the form of us sending out our original vertical slice, augmented with all the polish up to this point, to get a few folks thoughts on controls and layout. We’ll pick a few backers at random for this, so if you’re interested in playing around with mechanics, leave a comment letting us know and include the operating system you’re using. Much obliged in advance!

We know we said that the beta would be ready around end of summer, but we decided to re-arrange our timeline a bit and move some polishing and testing to before the beta, so that the game and it’s many features would be fully functional and included. With this change, our testers would get the best representation of the game possible for testing the things we’d like them to and what they’d like to give feedback on. Primarily that would be skills, balance, and how many ways they can find to OP their party. This means we’ll ultimately have less polish to do down the road than originally planned, and hopefully the beta delay won’t affect the release plans by much.

We’ll also be doing a website update and prepping those previously mentioned forums so beta folks can have an easy point of discussion with us closer to the beta release date.

We have a lot more to show off as we get closer to that beta, including the new areas for the crystalized Emerald Metalis and icy bogs of Tratis Saltis, and more spells and skills. We just finished up a high-level portal spell where you can deposit creatures/people to a marked location if they run over it. Phasing a pack of wolves into the middle of a village is delightful. Needs testing.