It’s official: the Techtonica Alpha will begin in July.

Since our announcement in March, we’ve identified the core features we want ready for you, our community, to experience and provide feedback on during the Alpha, and we’re now in the process of implementing those features for our July rollout.

You can sign up for the Techtonica Alpha here: https://bit.ly/TechtonicaAlphaSignup.

Most Important Information – READ THIS

Access to the Techtonica Alpha is free and will be granted via Steam keys for PC. These keys are temporary; they will be revoked at the end of the Alpha period. After the Alpha period, players will need to purchase Techtonica to play.

We will let volunteers into the Alpha slowly in waves. Not everyone will be able to play instantly—some folks may wait through several waves before they are granted access.

 Thanks in advance for your patience.

FAQ

Q: What does “Alpha” mean?

A: Alpha means different things to different companies in the games industry. To us, Alpha means a super early game state that we think/hope is already fun, despite missing lots of features and content. And, yes, the Alpha will be missing lots of features and content planned and in development for the full game.

Q. When is the Alpha going to be released?

A: The Techtonica Alpha rollout begins in July! We’ve identified a set of features we want ready for you, our community, to experience. We’re getting them ready right now.

Q: JULY?!? But I wanna play NOW!

A: We appreciate the enthusiasm, really. But we need the extra time. We’ve been doing focus testing, and we surfaced a half-dozen critical features / improvements that we need to implement before we’re comfortable giving the game out to our fans. Our schedule has us finishing these changes in July. Thanks for your patience!

Q: I prefer finished games. Should I play the Alpha?

A: Probably not, we wouldn’t recommend it for players that like things ready for launch. The Alpha is going to be light on features and content compared to the full game. If you’d rather wait for the full release, we totally understand.

Q: What should I expect in the Alpha?

A: Expect early gameplay in varying degrees of polish. We’ll be testing some things out and changing other things over time. The general gameplay and feel will be in the right ballpark, though.

Q: Can anyone play the Alpha?

A: Yes, anyone who signs up will be entered into the queue to play the Alpha. Those who join our Discord and share their Discord usernames will have access to exclusive, Alpha-only roles and channels to discuss the Alpha and connect with the team.

Q: Why offer the Alpha to waves of players?

A: Two reasons. First, we want regular feedback from a mix of both new and old players, and letting in waves is a good way to get that. Second, we’d rather make mistakes or missteps with smaller groups as opposed to everyone all at once.

Q: How are you determining turn order? How do you select who gets in each wave?

A: Sorry, we’re not sharing info on this. We have identified a process that we feel is fair and good for our community.

Q: Why are you (Fire Hose) bothering with an Alpha?

A: We really want feedback on the game. We want to learn more about what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, what we could improve, and what’s missing from the game. There’s no better way to do that than by opening the game up to fans.

Q: Is there a way to report bugs or give feedback in-game?

A: Yes, and we hope you do! At any point, you can pause the game, and in the pause menu, you’ll see a big FEEDBACK option. Select that, and then give your feedback and/or report the bug/problem you are experiencing. Feedback submitted this way is automatically and anonymously uploaded to our public Trello feedback board.

Q: A public feedback board? How does that work?

A: Players report issues in-game, and they are anonymously posted to the board itself. We’ll weigh feedback based on a combination of the severity/importance of the issue, how likely a player is to encounter the issue, and how much the community cares about the issue.

Q: I gave feedback and it’s been , why haven’t you addressed this yet?

A: It’s probably one of two reasons. One is that we are not going to address every bit of feedback we get. Two is that we may in fact be planning on addressing it, but game development takes time. We have a lot of content we already have slated to work on in the backlog, so it can often take months to go through the full process of triaging bugs/issues, finding time on our busy schedule to address them, testing the fixes/changes internally, and then finally pushing out a new build to the player base. Thanks for being patient and understanding.

Q: Can I keep my key and have Techtonica for free?

A: Nope.

Q: But I gave a lot of great feedback, isn’t that worth a free key?

A: We super appreciate the feedback you give during the Alpha. But in an effort to keep things fair for everyone, we’re just preemptively saying no to this. Access to the Alpha will be revoked, and you will have to purchase the game. Them’s the rules.

Q: Why do the characters sound like robots?

A: Weird, right? That’s text-to-speech you’re hearing, and it’s placeholder while we work on the game script and story since we’ll be making changes. We’ll replace it with real voice acting much later on since voice acting is one of the last things you do in game development. Don’t expect voice acting in the Alpha, it’s not going to happen.

Q: Will you be updating the Alpha?

A: Yes, though we haven’t announced when we will be doing that (nor will we).

Note: We’ll let you know when it happens, but due to the ongoing nature of Alpha development, updates may break your save files.

Q: What will be the difference between the Alpha and the full game?

A: The full game is going to be MUCH bigger than the Alpha, with lots more content, systems, and areas to explore. Plus, it’ll have major features currently not in the Alpha, like multiplayer.