As was foretold in the Road Map, this is the first of a monthly development update series filling you in on what we’ve been up to and what’s around the corner. We might switch the format up as we go along, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

IN THIS ISSUE:

• The big things we worked on in April
  
• What to expect (and not to expect) from the Closed Alpha playtests
  
• Sneak peeks at new guns and equipment
  
• Our priorities for May (streaming Rogue Core, for example)

Before we start, though, we’d like to say a big thanks to all of you who have shared your enthusiasm about the game and signed up for the playtests.

It’s been about three weeks since we announced the Closed Alpha, and we’ve been bowled over by the response so far. We get excited about you getting excited, and that’s great motivation as we keep hammering away at the game. So big thanks and much love to you all.

Alrighty, blog time. Let’s go.

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The playtest is just around the corner! We’re working on getting a build together.

In game development, a ‘build’ means a packaged, playable version of the game. It’s sort of like when you hit ‘Save As’ on a file to print or export it. It’ll come as no surprise that getting that first playtest build nailed down has been the big theme of this month.

These have been the month’s big projects:

• Nailing down the Closed Alpha gameplay loop. Our first playtests are focused on how people experience the core (pun not intended) gameplay loop. Like, the bread and butter of what it’s like to play the game: Drop in, get upgrades, do objectives, kill boss, get out. We’re balancing that to a point that we’re at least sort of happy with, or enough to share it for playtesters’ feedback.
  
• Making sure the playtest build won’t explode. This is the technical part: rigging up the code that makes a server list functional, ensuring that our servers can handle the playtest traffic, and endless bug fixes and crash investigations. Not to say we’ve caught and fixed all the bugs, obviously. It’s still a Closed Alpha.
  
• Preparing to receive a ton of feedback. Launching the playtest means opening the floodgates for loads of survey responses, Discord pings and wordy emails full of players’ thoughts on the game. We want all this, of course. It’s the whole point of a playtest. But we’ve also got to make sure we’ve got a good system in place for reading and reflecting on folks’ feedback, and facilitating all the discussions and fixes that’ll come from that feedback.

This whole thing is an exercise in anti-perfectionism. We keep feeling the impulse to make sure everything is just right, exactly how we imagined down to the teeny details. But if we get lost in that wormhole, the Closed Alpha will never come out.

It’s almost time to take a deep breath, share what we’ve got, and work from there.


Opening animation for a Bio-Booster console.
As we prepare for the playtests, we think it’s best if everyone’s clear on what to expect here, so we don’t set you up for expectations we can’t meet.

Here are three key things you should know about the playtests.


Just making this clear, as we’ve gotten a lot of people asking why they weren’t granted access, along with overall confusion around the exact start date.

That part’s on us, because we haven’t given a concrete start date. We still need a bit of time to finish the first playtest build, and make sure it doesn’t explode our servers or brick your computer. We’re aiming for the start of May, as we laid out in the FAQ article from earlier this month. Exactly which day, though, remains to be seen.

Let’s put it this way: Until you see an announcement here on Steam clearly titled something like “The Closed Alpha playtests are now live,” they haven’t started yet.

To stay tuned on all things Closed Alpha, make sure to go and ‘Follow’ Rogue Core on our Steam store page. That way you’ll be sure to get notified when that announcement is published.


Mockups for a side objective: the 'Bighorn' Ram-Hammer.
On the very first day of the very first playtest, we’ll only be letting a very small handful of people in. We’re starting slow, just to make sure the servers can handle it, and that our system for processing player feedback is working as expected.

This is to say, brace yourself: it’s quite possible (even likely) that you won’t get into the Closed Alpha at the start.

But don’t lose hope, Reclaimer! We’ll be letting more people in from there. We’ll probably be sending out more invites over the course of that first playtest, and will certainly be letting many more in for subsequent playtests. So if you don’t get in on day one (or even in the first playtest), your odds of getting in will only get better with time.


You should think of the Closed Alpha as a rough draft.

Right now, it’s not a polished game. It’ll have placeholders, bugs, wonky stuff, and game elements that people find frustrating and clunky and dumb. That’s the nature of a rough draft.

The point of this whole thing is for us to learn what works and what doesn’t. Your feedback is the key ingredient here, so we hope you’ll take time to fill out the player survey, and/or share your thoughts with us on Discord. Based on your feedback, we’ll make updates and improvements for subsequent playtests. It’s all a work in progress.


Firing, reload and idle animations for the new Hammer Caster 58mm.
If April’s been about preparing for launch, May is about takeoff, and the climb toward cruising altitude. Or something like that. I don’t have a pilot’s license.

May is when we’ll begin the first round of the Closed Alpha playtests. We expect that will also require some quick-response patches to put out fires and fix major bugs, and stuff like that.

It’s also going to be the first month where we get a ton of peoples’ opinions on Rogue Core, which is both exciting and intimidating. We’ll spend a lot of time reading your feedback. We’ll also be analyzing data about how people play the game: what weapons get picked, causes of death, average session playtime, things like that. From there, we’ll make some sort of priority list for things we need to work on, and set a plan to get it done.

So in very general terms, May looks like:

1. Launch first playtest
   
2. Fix major bugs/crashes
   
3. Collect a bunch of feedback
   
4. Analyze and reflect on all that feedback
   
5. Make a plan on where to go from there

In May, we’ll also start to stream the Closed Alpha version of Rogue Core on our weekly dev streams. You’re very welcome to tune in, check it out, and ask us any questions you might have. We’re excited to hear your questions, jokes, thoughts, critiques, all of it.

We stream most every Tuesday and Thursday at 13:00 CEST, and you can join in on Twitch[www.twitch.tv] and Youtube. Not every stream this month will be the Rogue Core Closed Alpha, though – you can see the full month’s stream calendar below.

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That’s it for this update! It ended up being pretty long and detailed, so if you read it all, congratulations on your new membership of the Ghost Ship Book Club. Maybe we’ll do some future monthly updates in video format or something.

Got an idea for next month’s update? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading, and wishing you all the best of luck in getting picked for the playtests.
Rock and Stone!

With love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

We've just premiered our new Closed Alpha gameplay trailer, and made the big announcement that signups for the Closed Alpha playtests are open now.

Lots of you have already requested access, and we figured you’ve probably got some questions while you’re waiting. That’s what this post is about!

Below is a 20-minute Q&A video interview we did as a follow-up to the Closed Alpha trailer, where we talk more about the playtests and what to expect. It’s got a lot more details, plus some additional gameplay footage that we couldn’t fit in the trailer.

Give it a watch if you like – or, if you’re in a hurry, you can breeze through the FAQ below it.

-- FAQ last updated May 1st 2025 --

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Our aim is to launch it within a month from now.

We’re not avoiding saying a specific date to be cagey and mysterious, we just need to do a bit more stress testing to make sure the game won’t fall apart and stuff first. That’ll take us a month at most. Once we’re confident all the technical considerations are in place, we’ll announce the exact start date.

We’re doing a Closed Alpha to collect preliminary feedback from players. It helps us see how people approach and play the game, identify issues we might be blind to, and get a feel for what people like and don’t like about Rogue Core. This is how we know what’s most important to work on as we push for the Early Access release, and thereby steer the direction of the game’s development.

Our hope is that playtesters understand that they’re not heading into a polished perfect game experience. This isn’t about what we’ve made, but what we’re making. It’ll be rough around the edges, with stuff that crashes and doesn’t work. But that’s sort of the point. We’d like to catch these things sooner rather than later.

Head over to the Steam store page and click the big green ‘Request Access’ button.

That depends on how many people request access. We’d be thrilled if a lot of people sign up, but of course that means your individual odds of getting picked go down, because it's a random selection process.

If you end up not getting in, please don’t take it personally. We’re flattered and delighted by your interest, and we promise there will be more opportunities to play Rogue Core in the future.

We’ll run the Closed Alpha playtests over multiple short sessions throughout the course of Q2 and Q3. We still don’t know how many, or exactly how long they’ll last. Probably about a week each.

Steam will send you a notification to whichever email address you have linked to your account. If you want to be extra certain you’re updated with all Rogue Core news, playtest and otherwise, go and click the ‘Follow’ button on the store page.

Yes. The thing is, Steam doesn’t tell you when the consecutive playtests go live. So you’ll only get pinged that very first time. It’s tricky. Our best advice is to ‘Follow’ the Rogue Core store page, to maximize notifications about subsequent playtests.

You sure can. We just ask that you make it clear that this is Closed Alpha gameplay, and not the finished, polished product. We'll probably add some little 'Closed Alpha' watermark in the HUD, but we'd be glad if you mention it too.

No, sorry. Of course it’s great to get feedback from people who know DRG really well, but it’s equally important to hear how the game is for people who are relatively inexperienced, or perhaps new to the franchise altogether. We’ve got to make sure the game is fun and interesting for greenbeards and graybeards alike.

Yes.

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Hope this helps! If you've got any other burning questions, drop 'em in the comments below. And as always, you can also ping us on Discord or chat with us directly during our weekly streams on Twitch[www.twitch.tv] and Youtube. We do those on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 13:00 CEST.

Thanks to all of you for your enthusiasm so far -- we've been thrilled with your response to the playtest announcement, and we can't wait for the months to come. Gonna be fun.

Rock and Stone, Reclaimers!

With love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew