That’s right, the first alpha is almost ready to be unleashed into the wild. I haven’t had much time for development this month so my original soft deadline of the end of May will be missed for release. However I just have to sort out a placeholder level selection menu and place in some basic sounds to be at that point.

So what can you expect to see in this first Alpha build? Well here’s a short feature list:

• The game now supports Linux on top of the current Windows support! Alpha 1 will be the first Linux release you can get your hands on.

• A basic tutorial. This includes all currently planned player abilities (most of which you will not see during the alpha levels).

• A basic options menu to toggle fullscreen and change the volume that can be saved.

• A level select menu (In the full release you will only be able to access levels that you have access to in the story playthrough but for alpha, all levels will be accessible).

• World 1. It consists of a short intro cut scene (to be expanded in future with story implementation), 2 levels and then a boss.

• Hard mode! You can access the hard mode for world 1 in the level select screen.

There’s a few things to bare in mind during this release:

• It is an alpha build and, because of this, pretty much everything is in a placeholder or WIP state. Anything you see will be subject to change throughout the development lifecylce.

• ALL art assets are placeholder or a 1st iteration at most. So expect changes for it in future.

• All sounds are placeholder, although some sounds might remain if I feel they are a good fit to the theme.

• The 1 musical piece was created by me specifically for this game. I’m not 100% sure which part of the game this will belong to come full release, but for alpha it will just loop from start to finish to not make the game so quiet.

• The base movement mechanics are on their 2nd pass. I’m fairly happy with it for now but this will likely need a lot of minor tweaks going forward and, being a platformer, I am keen to get this in a place that feels good to players. So this is a key point of feedback that I am looking towards.

• The normal levels on display are likely not to change in terms of layout, unless players really dislike the layouts.

• The hard levels might have some additional hazard/enemy changes. I am keen to know if the difficulty increase feels right or if it should be made harder still (bare in mind that this is world 1).

While I have a few areas mentioned above that I specifically want feedback for, any feedback at all is really appreciated (even if it is regarding placeholder things). You can either comment of the release posts, or you can head over to the Official Discord server and create a thread in either the bugs or feedback forums.

I also have set up a YouTube channel which I intend to post some teasers for Alpha release over the next few weeks. Here’s a little teaser show normal vs hard mode on level 1. See you soon!