Hi Everyone and welcome back to our second Dev Blog, by yours truly.

If you haven't already checked, we've just released our first Developer Blog introducing what Riftstorm is all about.

We are so close to our first early playtest! Personally, it’s been a nerve-wracking month, but we hope all of that will be paid off once we can see people experiencing it for the first time

(and for those that come to Gamescom 2023 and PAX, we’re so happy that you’re back!).

I'm also excited to finally introduce you to the hardworking peeps behind the scenes. Working with them has been one of the most engaging experiences as someone who has been dreaming of working in a game studio. It has been a humbling experience to understand what’s happening behind the scenes especially if you’re only judging a game from a gamer/reviewer perspective.

How do you feel that the public playtest is finally here?
Anything that you have in mind right now?

Fandry

We expect the players to protest and give a lot of complaints lol. Right now we’re trying to make the gameplay as enjoyable as possible, especially the core experience. If the not polished game core gameplay is not fun, then even if we polished it further, it’s still not going to be fun.

We want you to experience the raw form of Riftstorm.

And through this playtest, our hope is to bring the game that we’ve been working on for years, to the hands of gamers all around the world.

How is the team preparing for the playtest?​

Valent

There have been lots of debates inside the team. From nerfing or buffing the monsters, weapons, and so on. Most of it circles around the team's subjective feelings about the feature and the content of our build.

Sometimes, Fandry will ask questions like, "What is the intent of this? Why does it work like that?" and that often initiates start "the debate". Of course, my role is to ensure that these debates will be fruitful, and result in something we can implement in the game.

Personally, I always appreciate when these "debates" happen, especially when it comes to improving our playtest build.

As someone who hasn't worked on a game of this scale before, these playtests are crucial for us to move forward, and finally deliver a great top-down ARPG shooter gameplay for you guys.

Here's a video of them both on screen, as well as our other team members.​

So, why do we actually do the playtest?​

As a small studio from Indonesia, reaching out to gamers all around the world has been a huge challenge for us. Besides the language barrier, it's difficult to understand what gamers want outside Indonesia if you have never been stepping into their shoes.

Getting validation is important​

By validation, it’s as simple as we want to get it from people who actually enjoy playing games like Riftstorm. So we hope that you can enjoy playing a new game from a genre that you like while being a part of it! As someone who has participated in playtests before, having your favorite game improved based on your input makes me appreciate the game more.

We want to understand what you like and what you don't like

As early as this pre-alpha stage, it’s all about the core mechanics, and that’s what we’re trying to focus on in this playtest.

Is it fun playing it together or alone? Is shooting monsters satisfying enough? How about the UI and UX? Why the Community Manager is missing on Discord? and so on.

(the last one is just joking, but I hear you...)

In short, how you like or don’t like the game will mean a lot for us to make Riftstorm the best version that It can be.

We want to get to know (more) of you!​

Through this open playtest, we hope we can reach out to more people to play Riftstorm and we hope your first experience with Riftstorm is a great one!

So stay tuned to our social channels for more information on how you can become one of our pioneers for Riftstorm.

I will be on Riftstorm Discord if you have any questions so don’t hesitate to pay a visit to our Discord too!

Thank you for reading this, and see you in the next developer blog!

Cheers,
Keeks