This week, the Winterland has kept getting attention and kept growing. We have tried our best to make sure that there are lots of interesting landmarks and quests to be found through out the area, even more so then in the Halloween Forest. Without spoiling too much, here’s a screen of a somewhat recognizable sled!
Fred is still focusing on the first temple, this week mainly containing of cleaning up enemy animations.
In other news, Teddy and Fred have finally found an apartment to set up base in. We’ll dig more into detail about it when the big moving date arrives, but in short it will make problem solving and fine tuning much easier as well as increasing our work pace!
Sounds great guys! Looking forward to hearing how things are going for you! Best of luck!
Looks like great content!
Will there be other areas in the final release we haven’t seen yet?
Are you still sending invites for the beta?
Keep up the great work!
This winter area looks awesome!
I have a question: Is every week one lucky guy chosen to play the beta? Or every month?
Seems that Santa didn’t get to the Hudson to land fast enough. xD
Very good work. And good to see that development will continue in the next dimensional kingdo-er…apartment. xD
This game looks awesome! :D
How much is it going to cost? :3
@Jwas Around $10 if i heard correctly.
Okay! Sounds great! :D
Do you guys ever check the IndieDB / Desura forum?
@Saturnalia
I do but there’s not much activity yet, at least not in the open forum (maybe in the beta testers forum there’s more discussion going on).
The Ferrets probably don’t want to spend too much time talking to the community at this point, which makes sense to me.
Anyway, I couldn’t find any answer to my questions above.
Still looking forward to play the game!
Moin
Yea, since there isn’t that much information about the deeper game mechanics and what’s already implemented in the beta the open communty forum isn’t very active yet.
I do think that there will be some other areas in the final release, at least I hope so. At least a desert, a swamp and a volcanic landscape :).
I don’t know if they still send out beta invites. I’m on page 36 in the beta thread and don’t count on an invite anytime soon. Doesn’t matter that much for me, I’ve offered my help and if they don’t need it I just wait for the final game to play.
Grüße,
regards,
the Toast
I am going crazy waiting to play this game. It looks so amazing visually and through game play I have seen. You guys are doing an amazing job with this I look forward to paying you for the experience.
-W
Good work, it looks like it’s coming along really well. The animations look great!
Secrets of Grindea (administrator) wrote at 25/02/2013 22:57:Thanks for your kind words guys!
Yangna: Yes there will be more areas than the one we have shown currently. Of what kind you’ll have to wait and see ;)
And yes, we’re still sending out beta invites. We invite some new people whenever we update the game. Right now it’s been quite a while since our last update though, as we’re trying to wrap up the dungeon.
Sogomn: We invite people whenever we update the game. How often that is varies from time to time, sometimes we’ve updated within a couple of weeks, other times like now it takes longer, but we also invite more people the bigger the update.
Jwas: We hope to sell it for around $10
Saturnalia: We check the open Desura forum from time to time, however the best way to reach us is to send a mail or contact us via the communities :)
The beta forum we check more often, of course!
Considering the fact that your beta group only has 150 members and you have 1,750 applications, don’t you feel you’re misleading people by leaving the demo registration topic open? You have to know that you’re not going to give the demo to almost 2,000 people and they’re eagerly awaiting to see if they get in for nothing.
Moin
@Saturnalia: In how many betas did you participate? Usually there’s a small testing group in the beginning, and there will be larger groups invited in later stages. Also we don’t know how they select new testers. If they just take the next applications in line – first come, first serve – or if they take the next page in line and then a few players randomly.
I don’t belief that they mislead people, but that many people do not know how a beta usually works. They just think “zomg, wanna play!!1111” and while the fun to play and take a look at the game is a big factor it’s also about helping the Devs by giving feedback and suggestions. The >only< thing that bothers me a bit is that they said they basically only wanted to get impressions from the beta. That may have led to the thought that it's just an open DEMO. It is not.
Grüße,
regards,
the Toast
@Secrets of Grindea
Thank you for your answers guys!
Love your work.
@McToast
I totally agree with you about the way the beta is being handled, and also understand the potential confusion of the community.
IMO a beta is feature complete and almost content complete, while a demo is feature complete but content limited. The main difference being in the developers’ goal : getting first impressions, feedback and bug report (beta) VS teasing the player and raising awareness around the title (demo).
So yeah, it’s easy to see why some feel frustrated not to get their hands on this beta-that-looks-a-bit-like-a-demo, especially since it looks so awesome.
Anyway, I’ll remain patient (it’s hard!) and available to help in any way possible!
Regards,
Yangna
The way a closed beta usually works is that the developer only allows people to submit an entry for the beta while it’s actually open, then close submissions when they’re no longer accepting them. Sometimes they add a waiting list that will email you when the beta is open. This ensures that people immediately interested in the game gain access and people don’t have to check a forum several times a month to see if they’ve been granted access or not.
The way the beta is set up seems unnecessarily frustrating for users, at least a good slice of the 1,600 and counting currently on the list.
Secrets of Grindea (administrator) wrote at 26/02/2013 17:10:Saturnalia: The reason we keep it open is that we’re gonna add much much more content than we currently have, and we want fresh opinions on every major update. Therefore we will keep inviting batches of people every time we change or add parts of the game to ensure that we’re still moving in the right direction.
The people we select are chosen randomly, so it doesn’t matter if you’re on page one or page 70. Also, Desura sends a mail whenever you get an invite, so there’s no reason to constantly check the forums :)
For us, that’s much smoother than to reopen the thread every other week when we patch the game.
McToast: I’m afraid that’s a miscommunication! We never meant to say that we don’t want people to help us improve the game or chase bugs – we just want to make sure people actually enjoy the game before doing so. If the entire game is boring, no bug fixes or tweaks in the world can save it! :)
Nice, always good to hear of pace quickening, hehe. At least in ways that won’t sacrifice the quality, hehe.