The battle for the next release is underway. The new immigration system is mostly finished, and only needs some more playtesting and balancing. It turned out to be quite a beast to implement, even though it doesn’t appear very complicated from the player’s perspective. But it sure solves a lot of gameplay issues!

A few months ago I promised new gameplay modes, and I’m working on them right now. The main obstacle so far has been the campaign starting screen, which has always been pretty cramped, and now I need to squeeze in some more knobs and dials. From now on it will also be used for single map configuration, which will make it easier to add more settings for that mode.

Unfortunately I have to hold off the release of the endless mode for now, as there are still a few loose ends in terms of gameplay to figure out, and I want to wrap things up as soon as possible, so that Alpha21 can arrive soon. So for now you will see the addition of a new “campaign” mode, and the current mode being renamed to “free play”.

On the bright side, female avatars for Keepers and Adventurers are finally arriving! I also took this opportunity to improve the Adventurer’s looks. Here they are:

For now the avatar choice has little effect on gameplay, except that the females are weaker and more dextrous, and the starting spell of male keepers will be “strength”. I hope to add more differences here in future updates. Ideas are welcome.

I don’t have any estimates yet on when Alpha21 will be out, but I hope to be able to post a testing build for volunteers in a week or two. Or at least as soon as I plow through the remaining list of bugs and features.