Pre-alpha, SteamVR, and whatever happened to the Kickstarter?
Hello Zenitheans! We hope all of you are safe and happy out there. It’s been a while since our last blog post, and we have so many updates since then. Going forward, you can expect more regular content drops and updates. Let’s goooooo!
(I’m going to cheat and put the tl;dr at the top: the Kickstarter did great, the pre-alpha is out for Rift, and SteamVR headsets are launching on April 24th!)
Pre-alpha
We spent the last few months working furiously on the pre-alpha and released it on March 21st! Pre-alpha tests run every weekend, and we started with Oculus Rift/Rift S users while we roll out other headsets.
The server was unstable in the beginning, crashing every 30 minutes, but those brave pre-alpha players that stuck with it helped us fix the issues. We’re proud to report that we can now run the servers for 35 minutes! (Just kidding, they stay up throughout the whole weekend.)
SteamVR
As I said above, we started the pre-alpha with Oculus Rift/Rift S, but we’re pleased to announce that on April 24th we will roll out HTC Vive, Valve Index, Windows Mixed Reality, and all other SteamVR headsets! Oculus Quest is coming soon. We’re going to extend the pre-alpha by a few weeks to make sure that everyone who purchased it gets enough time to play.
Kickstarter
Since our last post, the Kickstarter ended, raising a grand total of $280,075. You unlocked all the stretch goals and made us Kickstarter’s most funded VR video game of all time! Thank you so much to everyone who backed the project; we won’t let you down! Between the Kickstarter funds and our investors, we were able to expand our team and bring on some incredible artists and engineers.
The other stuff
- We’re resuming weekly play tests! These tests are open to everyone, not just to people who purchased the pre-alpha. We’ll pick a few testers from the list and let them know a couple days in advance. If you want to sign up, you can fill out this form.
- Gameplay footage is coming! We know the last gameplay footage was from months ago and we’re really excited to show you what we have now.
- We’re going to take all the feedback from the pre-alpha testers and the weekly play testers and improve the game. In the months to come we’re also going to work on new game features like crafting, guilds, and new classes.
- We launched another Sky Wave Transmission a few weeks ago.
- We completed our first music collaboration with Emi Evans (lead Vocalist for NieR: Automata and vocalist for Dark Souls 3 among others). Introducing the main vocal theme for Zenith — Not Afraid (feat. Emi Evans), now live on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
That’s all, folks!
— Lauren
For more updates and Zenith community events, check out our Discord: https://discord.gg/uR7NNBS
