So I've been keeping up with this when you post updates but haven't really been convinced of pre-ordering just yet.

What all does the alpha entail so far? Is it just running around, beating things up or is there an overarching goal/story there already?

We just released our Sandbox Demo for anyone interested in trying the game out! 

http://xingthegame.com/demo.html

Man, right when my gaming PC is out of commission.

I'll probably download it and back it up until I can play it and in the meantime good luck!

I'm going to remove the click-and-drag to combine on mac/pc so it's only click-to-combine.

What exactly do you mean by this?

Awesome! Good luck with the KS!

I still haven't tried this out though I keep meaning to. Is the Mac version available yet? And I remember seeing it mentioned that multiplayer was hitting an alpha that was close number-wise but can't seem to find where I saw that, so is that implemented yet?

I am mostly curious about your third point - which objects did you ultimately use to stack to win the level?

I can't remember the exact objects but I distinctly recall giving up trying to stack the "fire totem" and went with at least the ice totem and the watermelon. I could have probably thrown the tower together using all the pieces but they just kept swinging around and grazing each other just enough.

I also recall assuming I'd need all of them, given I had to take the time to "unlock" them all.

Trying out the beta. Looks neat in motion. The puzzles are pretty easy to solve but it's aimed at kids so it makes sense.

I was able to break the level where you feed the robot the trash lying around the level in a way that still allows the repair robot to come out and fix the lights, even after the trash-eating robot is stuck. Not sure how but it happened twice before I was able to finish the level on the third try. I think it had something to do with dragging the trash-eating robot over the hole while the repair robot was repairing the lights as opposed to before breaking the lights.

EDIT: Done. Took about 15-20 minutes. A few things I had issues with:

- The pirate hat kid on the beach level broke the first time, getting stuck in place right after being given the shovel, probably because the X was placed in quick succession.

- Due to the physics, the space level involving the bubbles was a bit of a pain. Orientating the objects just right so that they stacked without destroying each other was a bit difficult, and their size compared to the size of the screen didn't help.

Looks awesome and I'm a huge fan of King of Dragon Pass. Can't wait to see more!

Long time no see haha.

Looks like you've changed and improved quite a bit of the content.

Noticed another bug. Every now and then, on the level-up board, I'll click on a set of 3 and it'll play the sound but the set of 3 won't disappear.

Made it to a second reaper, this time, if I remember correctly. That one really beat me down. The onslaught of reinforced life steal tiles was relentless and ended up being my downfall. The healer's heal ability just didn't recover fast enough.

I haven't been following this too closely but it looks intriguing so I've checked in a few times.

I personally like the logo. Not 100% on the font but the logo is nice overall.

I also wanted to say congrats on being so close to release.

However, as far as the price goes, I just have to say ouch. I definitely won't be buying it until there's a price drop unless there's a really convincing demo. I can't generally afford it and without knowing what it provides that similar games that cost less and do relatively the same thing don't, it's hard to convince myself to pay that. If I'm jumping the gun, though, and the price isn't finalized, then just ignore this.

We are now weeks rather than months away from getting an alpha build released and I expect things to ramp up progressively now.

Ooo. Can't wait. Been looking forward to actually playing this one for a while.

Sheesh. After three tries, I can't even get the reaper down to cracked tiles. That thing is tough!

It kind of bothers me that Life Drain lasts until the character dies.

EDIT: Finally beat him. Man that was tough. Though I can't help feeling I just got lucky.

The battles after that get really complex really quickly. I got overwhelmed by the new tiles and the increased amount of gray bricks and lost, I think, 3 battles later.

[I]

As for how to fix the enemies, I don't think you can really fix it by tweaking any values.
But perhaps if you added an "alert" time to the robots, where they are 'surprised' by your presence (perhaps less so if you had been shooting around them recently, but with the small levels, "around them" is kinda half to a quarter of the map).
Also perhaps make the tankbots fire a three shot volley, made of slower, but more damaging projectiles.
And those explosive hoverbots should probably be knocked back by melee damage. If I were hitting one of those things, I'd be shoving it the hell away from me.

My biggest problem with the AI, and it's a predictable one given the development time, is that they're so simple. It drives me insane. All they do is charge at you, guns-blazing. Due to the exceptionally high amount of small rooms and tight corridors, the only way I see to make it even slightly possible to not get hit all of the time is to make it so that the AI are careful and hide behind walls and doors, attempting not to get shot, giving you a chance to time when to hide and when to peek out, etc.

What's worse is that it becomes insulting in the current levels, capitalizing on the AI's shortcomings, creating cheaply designed "challenges" like on the first level with the hallway where the bots are in alternating cutaways in the wall, unable to charge you because of lower blocks in front of them. That is insanely cheap. The AI shoot fast and there's no way to dodge their shots. If you step in front of them, their internal shot timer is probably at 0, meaning you get shot the moment you're in their firing arc.

Combine that with the fact that the game is meant to have a survivalist nature and it gives you very few health/armor pickups and all it ends up being is frustrating.

One trick is using the heros' Skills, all of them (except for the Mage's) clear all the runes off the board, so in addition to their normal effects they can be used as a "save" when things go bonkers.

That is a helpful tip. I'll try doing that when I'm headed on a downward slope to failure.

Oh and I encountered a bug:

- Defeated a monster rat creature and, instead of going to the board where I level up the characters, the game just sat there at the end of the battle. Saving, exiting, and resuming fixed it.

Okay, slowly getting better at it. The reaper type creature is deadly though. I was on a slow road to defeat the whole time and once I was down to my last character, I almost had no control due to consistent blindness and frozen-ness. It was a depressingly slow defeat but, despite that, I kept hoping that maybe, just maybe I'd be able to survive.

If you already have a red striker (for example), making another red one is often not a good idea because the 3 chargers used to make it will provide a bigger bonus to your multiplier (3 extra runes as opposed to one).

Ah. I've done that a few times, yeah but sometimes I spend time struggling to get two strikers at all and it's definitely my fault, as opposed to the game's. Primarily, it's been since the square runes and the enemy's gray circular runes were introduced. Just not quite quick enough on the draw to move them around in time just yet.

EDIT: Also, I've noticed that I'll spend a significant amount of time creating single strikers just to clear out the enemy strikers, rather than to attack the enemy. And I've noticed that, since hexes were introduced, I'll often have trouble remembering to take care of the hexes, as opposed to the strikers. I couldn't say why but they slip by me a lot more than they should.

Also, just a nitpick but it was a little odd to see the Tutorial placed under the Options menu. I'm not sure if that's the only way to access it or if, by accessing it that way, I then cancelled it starting up on the first playthrough but it just felt odd that it was there.

Oh, and to follow up on the slowdown thing, it seems I get the most slowdown in the main menu.

Grabbed JF8ND-L460Q-2I428. Going to leave some feedback later. Thanks.

EDIT: Okay, played for about half an hour. I've concluded that I'll need to play longer before I'm any good at it haha. I often find myself looking for runes to put together as the strikers I've already put together are falling off-screen.

It feels a bit like the mouse (playing on a Mac right now) will drop runes occasionally if I move them around too fast, making it difficult to move things a sizable distance, even over empty space, quickly.

I really like the different abilities for each enemy.

I also really like the fact that you can save. I thought I was going to be stuck finishing the game I'd started or quitting haha.

Oh, if you still wanted a bit of performance feedback, I get a little bit of slowdown on this rig:

- Mac OS X 10.6.7
- 3.06 GHz i3 processor
- 4 GB RAM
- ATi Radeon HD 4670
- 1920x1080 desktop resolution.

Not a lot of slowdown. Just periodical drops. Runs like a charm most of the time.

The Dragon didn't change.

At all? Guess I just had a really bad few runs then. I remember the first alpha being a lot easier for me than this build has been (not sure about the last one because I didn't get to play much before my hard drive kicked the bucket).

And I'm confused. If the Knight can tank and the Mage can use charges, and you want them to be viable strategies, as well as other classes, like the Countess or the Diverter, then why push the player to go outside the strategies that they've developed that are effective in order to develop a more direct, reckless strategy that they may never use again?

It seems really counterintuitive from this perspective. You're telling people that their successful strategies aren't going to work all for the sake of a single battle. When they move on to the next quest, possibly even the next boss (I don't know yet...haven't seen any other bosses), they may use the same strategies they had been using the entire time. But that one battle is asking them to eschew that for what seems a lot like no reason.

Sure, some party builds are going to require you to out-DPS everything to survive. But not all of them. I didn't survive half the first quest with the starting lineup when attempting full-on DPS.

Not sure how I missed this but it looks great! Pretty unique idea for a puzzle game, as well.

I'm a bit confused as to how to read the playfield. Why is the one part of the one hex a reddish color?

Anyways, it does sound interesting.