Shadowrun Online Dev Diaries & Summer Update

The folks at Cliffhanger Productions have sent out a Kickstarter update to inform us of a June 8th update to the Early Access build of the title, the progress the team has made on character creation and co-op functionality (still no ETA on either, though), and also to highlight the first two dev diaries for the game (one on character customization, and one on the enemies’ AI), both of which have been released recently. Here’s a snippet:

Right now we’re finalizing the first, basic version of the Character Creation system. That means that you won’t have to play with the predefined party any more which we created for you, but instead you can build your own avatar, select looks, weapons and companions for the run. This becomes even more important as we’re also working on getting an early version of Coop ready, so you can play the missions with other runners, making Shadowrun Online a true multiplayer experience.

As we know a lot of you have been looking forward to both Character Creation and Coop we’re working hard on getting those features to you as soon as possible. We can’t provide you with a fixed ETA yet, however we can tell you that while both features won’t make it into the next update, they will be in the one after that.

Speaking of next update: On July 8th we will release a new update that contains a new gameplay feature everyone has been asking for ever since we released Shadowrun Online into Early Access: the Free Initiative Selection. Gone are the times when you had to move Payday before Takshak could cast his shield. Now you can move your characters in any order during your team’s turn which increases your tactical options a lot. This is just the tip of the iceberg though, as we add several other features (hint: Border Scrolling!), introduce Daily Missions and fix a lot of issues.