Development Diary: April 2025

Hello Reclaimers,

As was foretold in the Road Map, this is the first of a monthly development update series filling you in on what we’ve been up to and what’s around the corner. We might switch the format up as we go along, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

IN THIS ISSUE:

The big things we worked on in April
What to expect (and not to expect) from the Closed Alpha playtests
Sneak peeks at new guns and equipment
Our priorities for May (streaming Rogue Core, for example)

Before we start, though, we’d like to say a big thanks to all of you who have shared your enthusiasm about the game and signed up for the playtests.

It’s been about three weeks since we announced the Closed Alpha, and we’ve been bowled over by the response so far. We get excited about you getting excited, and that’s great motivation as we keep hammering away at the game. So big thanks and much love to you all.

Alrighty, blog time. Let’s go.

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[h2]April in a nutshell[/h2]

The playtest is just around the corner! We’re working on getting a build together.

In game development, a ‘build’ means a packaged, playable version of the game. It’s sort of like when you hit ‘Save As’ on a file to print or export it. It’ll come as no surprise that getting that first playtest build nailed down has been the big theme of this month.

These have been the month’s big projects:

Nailing down the Closed Alpha gameplay loop. Our first playtests are focused on how people experience the core (pun not intended) gameplay loop. Like, the bread and butter of what it’s like to play the game: Drop in, get upgrades, do objectives, kill boss, get out. We’re balancing that to a point that we’re at least sort of happy with, or enough to share it for playtesters’ feedback.
Making sure the playtest build won’t explode. This is the technical part: rigging up the code that makes a server list functional, ensuring that our servers can handle the playtest traffic, and endless bug fixes and crash investigations. Not to say we’ve caught and fixed all the bugs, obviously. It’s still a Closed Alpha.
Preparing to receive a ton of feedback. Launching the playtest means opening the floodgates for loads of survey responses, Discord pings and wordy emails full of players’ thoughts on the game. We want all this, of course. It’s the whole point of a playtest. But we’ve also got to make sure we’ve got a good system in place for reading and reflecting on folks’ feedback, and facilitating all the discussions and fixes that’ll come from that feedback.

This whole thing is an exercise in anti-perfectionism. We keep feeling the impulse to make sure everything is just right, exactly how we imagined down to the teeny details. But if we get lost in that wormhole, the Closed Alpha will never come out.

It’s almost time to take a deep breath, share what we’ve got, and work from there.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Opening animation for a Bio-Booster console.

[h2]Setting expectations for the Closed Alpha playtests[/h2]

As we prepare for the playtests, we think it’s best if everyone’s clear on what to expect here, so we don’t set you up for expectations we can’t meet.

Here are three key things you should know about the playtests.

[h3]The Closed Alpha is not live yet.[/h3]

Just making this clear, as we’ve gotten a lot of people asking why they weren’t granted access, along with overall confusion around the exact start date.

That part’s on us, because we haven’t given a concrete start date. We still need a bit of time to finish the first playtest build, and make sure it doesn’t explode our servers or brick your computer. We’re aiming for the start of May, as we laid out in the FAQ article from earlier this month. Exactly which day, though, remains to be seen.

Let’s put it this way: Until you see an announcement here on Steam clearly titled something like “The Closed Alpha playtests are now live,” they haven’t started yet.

To stay tuned on all things Closed Alpha, make sure to go and ‘Follow’ Rogue Core on our Steam store page. That way you’ll be sure to get notified when that announcement is published.

Mockups for a side objective: the 'Bighorn' Ram-Hammer.

[h3]Your odds of getting into the playtest are very low – at least at the start.[/h3]

On the very first day of the very first playtest, we’ll only be letting a very small handful of people in. We’re starting slow, just to make sure the servers can handle it, and that our system for processing player feedback is working as expected.

This is to say, brace yourself: it’s quite possible (even likely) that you won’t get into the Closed Alpha at the start.

But don’t lose hope, Reclaimer! We’ll be letting more people in from there. We’ll probably be sending out more invites over the course of that first playtest, and will certainly be letting many more in for subsequent playtests. So if you don’t get in on day one (or even in the first playtest), your odds of getting in will only get better with time.

[h3]The Closed Alpha is not a finished product. Far from it.[/h3]

You should think of the Closed Alpha as a rough draft.

Right now, it’s not a polished game. It’ll have placeholders, bugs, wonky stuff, and game elements that people find frustrating and clunky and dumb. That’s the nature of a rough draft.

The point of this whole thing is for us to learn what works and what doesn’t. Your feedback is the key ingredient here, so we hope you’ll take time to fill out the player survey, and/or share your thoughts with us on Discord. Based on your feedback, we’ll make updates and improvements for subsequent playtests. It’s all a work in progress.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Firing, reload and idle animations for the new Hammer Caster 58mm.

[h2]Our main goals for May[/h2]

If April’s been about preparing for launch, May is about takeoff, and the climb toward cruising altitude. Or something like that. I don’t have a pilot’s license.

May is when we’ll begin the first round of the Closed Alpha playtests. We expect that will also require some quick-response patches to put out fires and fix major bugs, and stuff like that.

It’s also going to be the first month where we get a ton of peoples’ opinions on Rogue Core, which is both exciting and intimidating. We’ll spend a lot of time reading your feedback. We’ll also be analyzing data about how people play the game: what weapons get picked, causes of death, average session playtime, things like that. From there, we’ll make some sort of priority list for things we need to work on, and set a plan to get it done.

So in very general terms, May looks like:

Launch first playtest
Fix major bugs/crashes
Collect a bunch of feedback
Analyze and reflect on all that feedback
Make a plan on where to go from there

In May, we’ll also start to stream the Closed Alpha version of Rogue Core on our weekly dev streams. You’re very welcome to tune in, check it out, and ask us any questions you might have. We’re excited to hear your questions, jokes, thoughts, critiques, all of it.

We stream most every Tuesday and Thursday at 13:00 CEST, and you can join in on Twitch and Youtube. Not every stream this month will be the Rogue Core Closed Alpha, though – you can see the full month’s stream calendar below.

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That’s it for this update! It ended up being pretty long and detailed, so if you read it all, congratulations on your new membership of the Ghost Ship Book Club. Maybe we’ll do some future monthly updates in video format or something.

Got an idea for next month’s update? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading, and wishing you all the best of luck in getting picked for the playtests.
Rock and Stone!

With love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew