BitCraft is inching ever closer to its first closed alpha testing round, and that means that the studio is back on its dev blog to talk things up, with some initial details about what the next build has and doesn’t have along with some overall testing plans going forward.
The post first describes the challenges that Clockwork Labs has had getting the MMO to run on its bespoke SpacetimeDB engine, explaining that while getting it functional was easy, getting it to work at speed and scale took “all the engineering brain power available to [it].”
Clockwork Labs also explains to would-be alpha testers that the planned Empire System won’t make it into the closed alpha, at least not at the start.
“One important aspect in our vision for the game — the Empire System — will not be available with the start of Closed Alpha. It will be a part of BitCraft’s endgame content and will depend on a well-balanced town scale. During Pre Alpha, we tested character scale gameplay. Next, in the initial Closed Alpha phase, we are focusing on getting all aspects of gameplay on the settlement scale right as the foundation for the Empire System to be built on top of it.”
However, sound and music are in the current build, as are multiple biomes, a proper UI, and “a lot of new and improved gameplay content, especially around the player-driven progress of settlements — starting from modest land claims toward flourishing villages and towns.”
Clockwork says the upcoming closed alpha won’t be under NDA and urges players to sign up. (It’s the lil tiny email button on the official site.)
