How time flies by! After the years spent making Monster Sanctuary, we are happy to be at one of the best parts again: sharing a new game with testers for the first time! Our studio has been working on Aethermancer since mid 2021, and today, we announce the start of our upcoming Alpha. Im sure you all can imagine that this is an exciting, but also a little nervous time for us at moi rai games, since this will be the first time people get to interact with our newest game, Aethermancer. [previewyoutube=LLacC7_hjk4;full][/previewyoutube]

Become a Tester

Important note: Testers won't be allowed to share gameplay footage in streams or videos, so please keep that in mind if you want to be a tester! To keep it fair, we are conducting a raffle in our Discord server until April 17th (check #announcements). For every 500 participants, we add +5 tester spots!

What is an Alpha?

Most people are familiar with a Beta, where a game is ready for testing, but can have a few bugs or glitches. The difference with an Alpha, however, is that its more rough than that. Instead, the game itself is somewhat further from complete, and anyone who tries it will expect to encounter many bugs. Additionally, an Alpha will be missing various key story and gameplay features in comparison to later versions.

Why have an Alpha?

If its so unfinished, why would we want others to look at it? Because we have a lot to gain by doing so! By having some people outside of our direct dev team experience the game and record feedback, it can give us insights which we may not have noticed from our perspective. We can always try to plan for anticipating how people will interact with our game, but nothing beats an actual hands-on approach and hearing directly from the players. Using this kind of info can help us evaluate how were doing, and if we feel like were accomplishing our goals or going in the right direction. Theoretically, we could wait for Aethermancer to be a little more complete before its first introduction to the playerbase, but getting an early checkup can diagnose potential issues earlier as opposed to later. Essentially, we prefer a more community-driven approach to our development processes, like we did with Monster Sanctuary.

Ive never participated in an Alpha before, what is it like?

If youre concerned about being qualified, dont worry, because its not overly complicated. What you do is: play the game, report bugs as you see them, and write your feedback about it. What if I dont know what to write about? Have no fear, for in addition to free-form writing in specially designated Discord channels, we will also have a preconstructed survey form. Not only does this make it easier for some to record their thoughts when being asked specific questions, but it also allows us to collate and quantify data into easier-to-digest formats. Having these multiple formats allow differing people to better express themselves for our consideration during the continued development of Aethermancer.

Where Can I See Alpha Content Streamed?

While those participating in the alpha wont be able to publicly stream game footage, we do have a dev stream scheduled. To be announced next week!

Why Cant Everyone Join In Yet?

Why are we doing a Raffle? Since running an alpha takes time and resources for us, we have to have some kind of limitation on who can participate in it. To help ensure a certain level of fairness, we have decided to utilize a raffle system to let in a certain amount of people. But what if I dont get in? Dont worry, because our Alpha occurring means that well have a publicly available demo soon-enough. So, it just means that its a matter of time till everyone can play around with Aethermancer! Join our Discord here to participate in the raffle!