Thanks for sharing Pitta. The simple fact that this game is still happening makes me feel all warm and squishy. Either that or I need to wear diapers...
Thanks a lot for your take on the game Pitta! There's a lot of writing in there and I'm glad to hear that 'it worked' and felt like the experience we wanted to convey. As soon as we get another build up, we'll add a few more testers if anyone is interested. We will let you know.
Well, so far so good, as long as you don't mind losing three characters on the first map alone. Of course that was probably just me, but that's okay. I've never claimed to be the best game player anyway. I just really like to play games. There have been way too many times where I've played something that's been highly anticipated and felt, much like others have expressed, that the product ended up not being worth the wait. That's definitely not the case here. It cracks me up sometimes that developers seem to be making such an effort to recreate the feel of the board game on electronic devices, because my first thought is "why not just make a board game". After spending a bit of time with Galactic Keep, however, I truly begin to understand the joy of having the best of both worlds. These guys have done a tremendous job of making Galactic Keep feel like a board game, yet I could see how before too long it would become quite cumbersome having to keep track of things like the inventory cards, which makes the electronic platform ideal for this type of game. I love how certain events will trigger as you're moving along the board and how you're treated with an initial rundown of a creature before battle ensues. They've worked really hard to make this just as much about story as game play without burdening you with pages and pages of script. It's really as much a finely crafted work of sci-fi art as it is a game. If they open up more beta testing slots and you've been waiting with baited breath to try this out, make sure you get in on it. You won't be disappointed. So now that I've probably just told you a whole lot of nothing, it's time for me to go back and get killed some more.
I've been waiting in this for a while. Really glad to see it's moving forward at a good clip. I'd love to be involved in the game.
This is phenomenal. PHENOMENAL. Second playthrough is even better than the first, even in the alpha state. Can't play anything else already.
Pre-Alpha Touch Arcade Testers V2 We're *slightly* opening the gates to testers again. Looking for 2 more people (or so) to take a look at the game. Like before, please PM me with an email address, device type and UDID. We will select 2 or 3 testers, sending them a testflight link soon (within a day). We will let you know as soon as we have enough testers for this, the second, round. Thanks so very much to the people who have taken a look at the game and sent us their impressions already! We will update your builds of Galactic Keep soon.
Pre-Alpha Group2: Enough for Now Thanks again! We have enough testers for this round. PM me if you'd like to be part of the next round of pre-alpha testers.
I'm not exactly sure. We haven't tested on a device running iOS 5.1.1 yet, I'm not 100% sure that Xcode supports it. We're trying to get a similar device into our hands (today) and I will let you know.
So I got GKDB Version 0.03 #2 and I installed another profile required to download the build and currently the build in downloading on my iPod!
We've run it on an iPad with 5.1.1 but it can have memory issues...it's currently unoptimized. Hopefully it will work, fingers crossed.
The runs on my device but up to a point. It crashes after I select my character and there is a pop up in which I press okay or the green button! So yeah...it crashes after all that.
Sorry to hear. We're going to optimize the game at some point, but for the moment it seems that devices with 5.1.1 are out. The experience isn't up to par. We're planning on adding more special effects to the attacks and that's sure to cause even more strain. We'll be sure to let you know as soon as we think that it'll run on your device.
Dear Gildeskull...LOVING THE NEW BUILD. LOVE LOVE LOVE. EVERYTHING you put in the game clicks with me, and even the little touches you added between builds make a huge difference (oh....THOSE SOUNDS!!!!). Loving the new balance too, both with enemies and loot. Sure, there are a lot of things to do/add...but even in this state it is already much more polished than a ton of 'final' games out there. Not to mention fun, tense, engaging... And believe me....all those years spent prototyping, planning, changing things....all the love and the fatigue you poured in this game...it really really shows. Even if I now know almost every inch of the locations (no spoilers here) the 'experience' is unchanged, fresh as the first time I put my ....limb.... on the ..... BTW...I do not know if it could be useful for the testing, but I wish there was a place where testers could talk about the game freely, to discuss ... things .... For everyone else (I know...can be painful ) but in particular new people attracted by the renewed traffic on this thread...I suggest they check out the official site which has many parts (including lore) that can really give you an idea and set the mood about this game. My favorite part? The (very old, I wonder if it is still active) twitter feed about the game itself...check it out. Fantastic scifi stuff.
I would second this thought. While I doubt we'd say something to deter others from being interested in the game, a forum that anyone has access to doesn't seem like quite the right place to discuss alpha / beta issues. Touch Arcade has facilities for private groups, so maybe just setting up one of those would be sufficient?
That's a fine idea, I'm just not sure how to make that happen, exactly. Maybe it's just a question of allowing threads (in the Upcoming section of the forum) to be 'public' or 'private', allowing the thread creator (must be a dev?) to mod who's in and who's out. I'm pretty sure that the current forum can't support this (I could be wrong...it could be restricted to mods..or I'm just not seeing the option). Best case scenario would be that if a thread was marked 'private' and your username wasn't associated with said thread, you wouldn't see it. For all I know, that could be happening now. The forum could be packed with private threads that we're not seeing...
I'm not 100% sure either, but here's one possible option: go to your profile page on Touch Arcade. On the right hand side it lists social groups if you belong to any (not sure what it will do if you don't belong to any). At the bottom of that list there is a link to Join Social Groups. If you follow that link then scroll to the bottom of that page there is a link to create a social group. It may be more trouble than it's worth, but if that's not too big of a deal then you could create the group and just invite all the beta testers to join it. As a disclaimer, I've been on a few social groups and they aren't the best for interaction with lots of people. However, they do a great job of segregating without making the general populace even aware that there's something out there they are missing. I'm not at all familiar with the possibility of making threads public versus private and how that all works. Of course, none of this should take priority over you guys actually working on the game It's just that there might be some things beta testers wish to discuss that probably aren't appropriate for a completely open forum at this point.
