Greetings, Neighbors
I bring you good news. The Secret Neighbor Beta is coming. You've probably seen updates to the "Alpha" branch, which is the one we'll be using for the actual Beta. It will be renamed once it goes live.
When is the Beta coming?
We're doing final testing and Quality of Life improvements. We expect the Beta will launch early August.
What's coming to the Beta?
Character classes.
The team has been hard at work putting together more varied class systems for both the Neighbor and player characters. We've done extensive work in adding abilities and balancing them together. You can expect reworked character classes.
We went away from configuring your own characters, and instead went for classes -- this includes the Neighbor. Otherwise you ended up with the "perfect" config for your character and stuck with it, while we want to encourage player experimentation and trying out different playstyles.
My favorite Neighbor ability right now is throwing down a smoke bomb, like a ninja.
Animations
Character animations have been reworked. This was the biggest win we could do to make everything look and feel much better.
Quality of Life / User Flow
We found it incredibly frustrating when lobbies fill up and players don't press ready. The flow was a bit off - since you'd configure your character after you've joined a lobby. Instead, we enable players to configure their characters before they join Quick Game. An automatic countdown starts once a lobby hit minimum amounts of players.
Meanwhile, in Custom Games, players can mess around with game rules and take their time with configuring classes in-lobby. The idea is that when you're in a custom game, odds are you know people you're playing with. So you can spend some time chatting and experimenting.
So Quick Game will actually be for quick games. Press one button, and you're in.
Neighbor's Command Room & Sonar Nerf
In the Beta we decided to remove the "sonar" item from Neighbor's inventory and merge that with the Neighbor's Command Room. It's the room the Neighbor respawns in. Now you can enter it, and use it to teleport to multiple locations around the house. The sonar is now located there, allowing you to quickly scan the house and figure out where the players are.
Amongst other notable improvements, the Neighbor can now lock/open gates by activating a lever next to them. This used to be the sonar item's secondary ability and was a bit imbalanced.
Wishlist Secret Neighbor
Don't forget to Wishlist Secret Neighbor
https://store.steampowered.com/app/859570/Secret_Neighbor/
Subscribe to the Beta!
Subscribe at http://SecretNeighbor.com to get into the beta
Join our Discord
Join us at http://discord.gg/secretneighbor to get all your Secret Neighbor news and updates
