Hi! First: With this post, a playtest is being launched! It is temporary, it will be available until November 4th. You can join it on the Steam store page, please post any feedback you have or any bugs you find in the Discord server! In terms of new stuff since the last post, I’ve updated the lighting across the game again. Also, a third map type and some .45 weapons! Also, the release date may be earlier than you think - but with a minor caveat (maybe, depending on your point of view lol).
Playtest Contents
I’ll go over what’s featured in the playtest. In pure number terms there are currently:
- 20+ weapons
- 3 map types
- 3 regions
- 10 objective types (all the main objective types from Tokyo, plus 3 new ones)
- 5 enemy factions of various strengths
- 25+ quests over 5 traders
At my personal pace, solo, it takes me about 4 hours to reach the current end of the game and complete all quests. For comparison, I could reach max rep in Tokyo in about 2 hours on average with little to no deaths. It is much easier to die in this game though, so I haven’t done a deathless run yet. The game currently contains about half of the game’s main progression reputation levels - there will be extra reputation levels that will just increase the difficulty of the region, but won’t be required otherwise.
Lighting Updates (again)
After getting tired of various lighting problems, I’ve tried to improve the lighting in every scene again. Fair warning, this is a bit of a vent: as much as I love Godot, the current solutions for lighting procedural scenes are not the most ideal - IMO its the weakest part of the engine, though still better than the version of URP I was working with in Unity (being on 2021 and not wanting to update lol).
As such, these will likely be adjusted again, but right now I’m satisfied with how the game looks.
Here are a couple screenshots of the new lighting:
Release Date
As you may have noticed if you’ve looked at the store page recently, I’ve enabled Early Access. I think this is better in the long run, because it is very playable right now and gets it into the hands of people quicker (rather than maybe in 2028). As such, the release date is currently planned to be in late April 2027. Not completely sure when yet, will confirm by the time Next Fest comes around in February. If you’d like to read about what’s planned to be in the Early Access release compared what’s currently in the playtest, you can check out the 0.5 section in the roadmap.
As a brief overview on the fun parts though:
- Re-implemented Exports system + hacking item expansion (more programs + new interface)
- New items (type 89, sk-12, more containers, helmets and other gear, and more)
- More office entrance room types (designed similar to the “local offices” in Tokyo)
- Cyberware expansion (new HUD elements, SmartVision, more)
New Stuff
As always, here’s a broad list of what I’ve added since the last post (not as much as usual, mostly been fixing stuff):
- New weapons: M1911, RPM-45 (pictured), VZ98 (9x18 smg)
- .45 ACP ammo types
- New map type: Slums (corridors can be a bit windy since I’m still working on finding a perfect map size, but I feel like this map generation fits this map type much better than Tokyo’s branch-type generation)
- Aforementioned lighting updates
- Implemented a full heal when extracting (may make this cost money in hardcore, but for now is free)
- Can now “overheal” stamina (effectively 150 stamina max now, technically goes up to 200 but stamina usage over 100 is doubled)
- Implemented varied footstep surface audio
Future
Please let me know what you think about the current version available in the playtest! After the playtest concludes and I’ve finished implementing feedback from it, I’ll put up a demo that will be available at least until release. The demo will have less content than the playtest does (I plan to remove the third region from it), but please try it even if you tried the playtest! Thank you for your support!