Letter from the Producer

February 2024

Greetings,

It has been a while since the last operational update in the form of a Letter from the Producer. We hope the wait has been sweetened by our regular game design blog posts where our Game Director went over the many aspects and philosophies of BitCraft, and the several interview-style videos on our YouTube channel.

The good news is, that you can again expect more regular letters from the producer moving forward. Yes, this means we are on track for the start of Closed Alpha testing and there will be more very soon.

Our most important challenge over the last months has been getting BitCraft running on our in-house build server solution: SpacetimeDB. It turned out that getting it to work was accomplished quickly, but getting it to run fast while being scalable requires all the engineering brain power available to us. Currently, the whole SpacetimeDB team is working exclusively on performance optimization for BitCraft, to have a serviceable product in time for the start of larger-scale Closed Alpha testing. We are confident about reaching our goal but we also know that the optimization process will not be complete when we open the gates for new testers.

Players will experience issues here and there, but that’s what testing is all about and the feedback will help us identify the problems so we can fix them.

A technical note regarding signing up as a tester — our website still allows you to register for Pre Alpha. This is not an oversight, although actual Pre Alpha testing has been concluded.
Signing up now will still grant you the “secret limited item.” Once we officially switch to Closed Alpha invites, this opportunity will be gone.

We are currently implementing a more sophisticated registration system for our tester pool, which will ultimately link email addresses to accounts, and will allow us to permanently assign things like the above-mentioned secret item to a player. No worries, we will contact and inform everyone who signed up for Pre Alpha about any required steps in this process.
More information on that front will be available soon.

Many of you, who have been following us on our journey and maybe even had a chance to play during Pre-Alpha are probably wondering how well BitCraft in Closed Alpha will match the picture we painted for the game.

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.

Now for the good stuff! BitCraft plays and looks much better than just a year before, and sound and music have also been added.
Our game and UX designers alongside our art team did an amazing job. Each biome feels more immersive, the interface is clear and intuitive and each profession feels unique.

There is also 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.

But don’t take our word for it, register as a tester and keep an eye out for player-created content during Closed Alpha. The test will not be under NDA so you can get unfiltered impressions directly from participants.

Thank you, and stay tuned for more!

Cheers,
Alessandro