As Christmas nears, I feel increasingly confident that Galantrix will meet its 2024 goal of releasing a quality “Outsider-like” playtest build. I originally wanted to release a rough demo with a decent amount of content but, over time, I realized that it would be better to release a polished demo with a limited amount of content. And that’s what I’ll do!

The jury is still out there for which approach is the best. Given that Playtest One was a “rough demo with limited content”, I could have gone either way. Ultimately, I thought giving people a tasty small bite was better than a dull big bite. While I don’t yet have playtester data to support it, our intern Alex feels much more excited about the game as he sees increased UI polish, better graphics and special effects. I think that other players will feel the same.

Last week involved a ton of work related to taking what we already have and making it better. Full-quality renders with careful compositing replaced placeholder backgrounds, the sample map I shared a few months ago was completely redone, controller support was greatly improved, the pausing functionality was revamped to be more robust and brand-new music from Malds was brought into the game. Today’s build “feels” great!

This said, the content is still in the same state as it was a couple of months ago and that’s what I need to completely resolve over the next week. Playtest Two will contain a partially revamped tutorial and the first part of Chapter 1. This will mean roughly 20-40 minutes of gameplay (depending on reading speed and desire to replay story branches), leading to a saved game that, fingers crossed, will be compatible with the next build.

Despite being on the right track, there are only seven work days left before the holidays. This means I’ll have limited time to respond to setbacks, sick days etc. For instance, I realized I wouldn’t be able to release this build on Steam due to their build review timelines. I did a lot of work to prepare Outsider’s Steam presence, only to discover that Steam can take over a week to review a build. If you add the inevitable holiday delays, we’d probably be in a position where the build is ready, but players can’t download it.

Because of that, I’ll have to release the build through zip files - like Playtest One - and try to plan it better for the Q1'25 public demo. I now have “80% confidence” that we’ll have Playtest Two before the end of the year. We’ll know for sure next week!