The earliest commits of Beneath work in our source control software spans all the way back to July 2016. It became our primary development focus about 2.5 years ago and due to that we've not had many significant updates to the early access experience of Paint the Town Red in that time. It has taken longer than we expected, but we are now (almost) done. On November 26th (27th here in Australia) we will release the first Beneath update.
Paint the Town Red is still in Early Access and this Beneath update will be no different, but it will be more complete than any other aspect of the game has been. We'll continue to polish and improve it over the remainder of the Early Access development period, but this update will contain the whole mode playable from start to finish. For now it will only be single player, but we will be adding 2-4 player co-op multiplayer for Beneath early next year. We'll also be continuing to add to and improve music, sound effects and more following this initial release.
We've had test builds of an early WIP slice of Beneath available for a few months and have now removed that. We were very happy with the response to those builds and the feedback was invaluable so thanks to everyone that helped us out by playing those builds.

What is Beneath?

Beneath is a rogue-lite mode that is for all intents and purposes the 'story mode' of Paint the Town Red. It features procedurally generated levels that take you deeper underground as you fight hordes of monstrous new enemy types, gain new abilities and powers, and attempt to destroy the ancient gods that control the world below and have decimated the world above.
You can play as and upgrade 5 different classes that have different powers and attributes and unlock permanent upgrades that will make it easier to get further in Beneath every time you play. You'll need to explore and use your wits to uncover the secrets of how to advance to new areas as well as discover the clues behind the nature of the Paint the Town Red scenarios themselves.

Future Updates

Beneath development completely destroyed our ability to keep any regular cadence to the release of updates, but we will be targeting weekly updates following the Beneath update through to version 1.0. We've also been pretty radio silent for the most part which is not what we wanted, but it's because we've just been working to get this done and without knowing when it would be there was no definitive information we could give. Beneath isn't all we've been working on though, we have the majority of the next Scenario level already completed which will be the next major update after Beneath. We will also be rolling out new Arena Challenges regularly as well as adding more Level Editor features and props and characters including most of the Beneath content.