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I have made various minor improvements and changes to the demo, and it should be ready to release on schedule.

I still want to do some more testing before I release it, I have about a week or two to do this.

Even though this is still a very early alpha build, I think there is enough gameplay to provide a good idea of what the game is about.

I have decided to limit the demo to 60 minutes of gameplay (I may reduce this to 45 minutes). Previously, the demo was at least 3 hours long (And before that, it was nearly 5 hours!) which is way too much for a demo.

A demo should be just that, a demo, not a full game. I think 60 minutes is enough to give a rough idea of what the game is about, and encourage people to play the full game (When it is out).

I am currently planning to release the demo about a week before the next fest, but this release date may change slightly.

I am working on putting the finishing touches to the demo for Spiritus Astrum, I am planning to launch this in time for the nextfest in September (starting on the 2nd).

So far, the demo is basically done, I just need to do a lot of testing and debugging with it.

The Closed Beta is still available for entry.

The demo for Spiritus Astrum is now available in limited, closed, Beta!

I have a small number of Steam Beta keys to give out.

Contact me at:

contact[AT]phoenixgamedevelopment[dot]com

If you would like a key.

The showcase post on the Unity forums is here:

Unity Showcase

I have finished most of the work that was still needed for the demo, including adding in the credits menu, and adding a specific “demo mode” which disables some features, like multiplayer.

I have also prepared a demo build on steam, and configured and uploaded it. This may not be the final releasable demo build, but I wanted to make sure that the process is setup and working properly.

I should be ready to look for beta testers for the demo soon.

The testing for the player server went very well, there were no issues found with the player server itself.

I did uncover some additional issues with the build, but these were minor, and were easily fixed.

The good news is that the playerserver is working properly.

I may release a demo version of spiritus astrum with just a single player mode enabled, to make initial public testing easier?

I have a few more minor bugs and some art improvements that I would like to do before the demo is released, but other than that, there is not much left to do.

I have added a large number of sound effects to the project.

There are still more that could be added, but I think that for the initial release I have enough.

I also need to optimise the audio code later.

The next goal is to test the player server.

Most of the testing that I have done so far is with the multiplayer server, the player server has not been properly tested yet.

I am now working on adding more sound effects, etc, to the game.

This is an area that I have not spent a lot of time on before now, since it is not essential to the functioning of the game, but even for an early release I do need some sound effects.

I have already added quite a large number of effects, and I have more left to do.

I have spent several days working on the documentation for Spiritus Astrum.

The first draft of this is now done.

This documentation is currently mostly in text form, but I have made some improvements to the in-game documentation too.

I have also made some improvements and optimisations to the server code, and to the UI’s, and fixed some more minor bugs.

I have spent a substantial amount of time working on the main UI for the game.

It was quite “busy”, with a lot of complex buttons, etc.

I have grouped several buttons into submenus, and added some larger buttons with more text to make it easier to see what the button does.

This is a substantial improvement to the most important menu in the game.