Once again, we prepare to play with our friends over at Iron Lore Entertainment for a playtest. The team is madly getting more artwork and features in the game in preparation. This playtest marks the completion of all the major portions of the game, and should allow us to catch a glimpse of the final gameplay. After this playtest, we'll be ramping up our internal playtesters (whom we will be contacting soon, so don't worry if you haven't heard anything yet) so we can start holding more regular playtests. For a humorous and perhaps insightful backwards look at our last playtest there, check out the following anecdote from a news update, written long ago:

8/17/01: Well, the first playtest was last night! Aside from a really awful bug (that of course, never showed it's face prior to last night) where every time a game ends, most of the people get kicked off the server and the host has to create a new game before anyone can connect again (grrrr), everything went "according to plan". OK, it didn't really go according to plan, but everyone seemed to have a great time. It was four marines versus four aliens most of the night and the matches were a blast to watch. Nothing is funnier than waiting for more ammo or a new weapon and watching two huge ugly aliens come rampaging in the room. They groan and scream like evil hippopotami (!) and mow you down with their huge teeth. The most common reaction was to run away backwards, screaming at the top of your lungs. Needless to say, the office was quite noisy. :) Commonly heard were things like "I NEED AMMO OVER HERE!", "OH MY GOD, EVERYONE'S DEAD AND THERE'S SOME BIG FLIER AND ONE OF THOSE.... ". Meanwhile, the alien players communicated wordlessly through grunts and squeals and seemed to respawn endlessly in a circle around their hive. That is, until some marine discovered the siege weaponry...

This is the beginning of the end, so they say.