Letter from the Producer

Pre-Alpha 9

Hi everyone!

First of all, from all of us at Clockwork Labs, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us playtest pre-alpha update 8. It was absolutely wonderful to finally see so many of you in-game; your hard work and creativity is truly humbling and we cannot wait to do this again. We’re going to spend a few days going through all the surveys and feedback, so we can incorporate as much as we can into future releases.

Now let’s get into what we’re all really here for, pre-alpha update 9! We started the new update immediately after the playtest ended, so this feels like a great time to start sharing what’s actually in it.

Here are the goals for pre-alpha update 9:

• Players have a stronger sense of goal-setting and progression as they discover the world
• Increase point of interest density through enclosed spaces
• Continue to scale game lifetime by adding a new tier of content (tier 3)

Players have a stronger sense of goal-setting and progression as they discover the world

Part of what feels really satisfying about the game is unlocking new things to make and discovering the world. The problem is that right now, it only really works well if you know the game. If you’re new to the game, knowing what materials you need to unlock recipes is really challenging. We’ve had a “discovery system” planned for a long time and, as we start scaling into larger public tests, now feels like the right time.

Ultimately, we want to make sure that new players who come into the game have a good sense of progression and “what’s next.” We also recognize that it’s complicated to get right, which is why we’re testing it this early.

Increase point of interest density through enclosed spaces

In BitCraft, we want to make sure that everyone, regardless of if you’re a blacksmith or a fisherman, is encouraged to venture out and enjoy the world. Part of that is creating a promise that you’ll find interesting and valuable things if you go looking for them. Today, the game is largely predictable when it comes to resources; you need x? Go to x area.

Solving that problem isn’t just about “creating more biomes”, it’s also about making what we have already more interesting. In this release, we’ll be making an addition to ancient ruins that we call “enclosed spaces”. Basically, when you find an ancient ruin, you (or other players around you, they’re NOT private instances), can enter it to find valuable rewards.

This will not only make our world more fun to go exploring in, it also serves as a first venture into technology that will facilitate lots of other applications in the future, including personal player housing.

Continue to scale game lifetime by adding a new tier of content (tier 3)

As some of you found out during our closed test, the top content level in the game is currently 2 (0, 1 and 2). That puts a pretty hard limit on how much progression is available; even if we ran a full week test, there just wouldn’t be enough content for it to really be fun. We have a pretty good schedule that ensures we grow our content tiers every two tests or so, moving us towards closed alpha, where our tests will be a lot longer.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Just like with pre-alpha update 8, we’ll be sharing information about the how’s and the when’s of testing later in the development cycle. We’re targeting early next year, as we expect the holidays to be a pretty slow period here. Since we’re testing progression and goal setting, we’re very likely to target player groups who have NOT played the game before. In other words, if you’ve not signed up via email or joined our Discord: get on it! This is a great opportunity to come play.

Until then, see you on Discord!

Hugs,

Stoffer aka PotatoMan