Alpha is out!

After over a month of frenetic work, I'm happy (relieved?) to introduce the early-access alpha release of Etherscape!  Today is my birthday, and I thought this might be a nice little present for myself.  The gift of a deadline.

I've had a few friends play test it, and encouragingly, they're all wasting lots of time on it.  So I'm excited to share the time-suck with all of you as well.

As a self-taught game developer, this is not my first 3D game, but it's the most complete player experience I've developed so far.  It's far from done, but already enjoyable to play.

A major inspiration for this game is that feeling when you're a little kid inside way to big of a space, like a stadium, or expo center, or Imax theater, unable to wrap your head around how far away the ceiling is.  I wanted to capture that somehow.

I wanted the music to be a core element of the game.  So all the music and sound effects are original, my own compositions.  I'm more of musician than a visual artist; I wanted to play to my strengths by utilizing intricate sound design while keeping the visual style minimalistic.  If you like the soundtrack, let me know in the comments!  I'd love to release the OST later, once it's fully fleshed out.

Up-coming features planned:

• full-screen mode
• missions or quests
• saving/loading game
• a tutorial level
• level editing
• fast travel (from nexus)
• starting game with a seed (which will make speed running or racing possible)

Feedback, comments, bug reports very welcome in the discussion board.  Hope you enjoy it!

-zinnoa