Graphics, Gore and Gameplay: What is an alpha launch?

What to expect from the first release of The Red Village Tournament Mode, due March 15, 2022

The Red Village will go live with its long awaited first alpha release on March 15, 2022. There have been some questions from the community about what exactly an alpha is, and what to expect along the way. Here’s a rough guide which will hopefully answer a few of them.

What is an alpha? An overview

Pre-alpha, alpha, beta and stable releases essentially refer to different stages of a product lifecycle, each progressively becoming closer to the final product. They each play an important role in the development of a game, allowing for the identification and fixing of bugs by a tight knit user base outside of the core dev team.

Alpha releases are usually the first time that a product is released to an audience once the first round of internal testing is completed. That being said, in the modern day, many games remain in a ‘perpetual beta’ mode, and constantly release updates and patches throughout the life of the project.

Keep in mind, an alpha launch is, above all else, a testing phase. It is an opportunity for game teams to test the game, test the system and the infrastructure supporting it with a larger number of users — but it is not the final version or release. The idea is to get community feedback, iron out bugs, and then release another update (and often, many more updates) that incorporate changes.

When games go live in alpha, they are often in a ‘bones’ mode, which is designed to test system compatibility, get community feedback, and identify bugs that occur during the user experience.

There is a reason there are not currently many playable games on the blockchain; they are incredibly difficult to build, and the networking and infrastructure that underpins them is hugely complex.

So what about The Red Village alpha?

The Red Village looks brilliant as an alpha, and we are really excited for everyone to play; but of course this is just the first release; we are updating animations, gameplay, graphics, maps, UI/UX, even as we speak; and we will be rolling out improvements over the coming months to that end. In fact, let’s just say that we’ve had some pretty exciting updates on the game development front in the last couple of weeks — which we can’t wait to tell you about — but which will allow us to make some really, really cool things happen.

While we are of course lightly promoting The Red Village alpha release, we have not yet launched into our massive growth phase — we are keen to bring as many new users in as possible over the coming weeks and months — but we want to make sure that any potential issues are identified during alpha and the game works as smoothly as it possibly can before we line up giant Big Purse Tournaments, influencers, and go to market with an enormous splash.

What kind of feedback will users be asked for during alpha release?

During alpha we will be opening a discord channel for players to provide feedback, raise concerns, voice suggestions, and vote on changes in order of importance for our game department to action.

These could be things like thoughts on UI/UX, such as the way Tournaments are entered, price range of Tournaments, the format of the website and the way that Barracks are structured, to the game itself; feedback on animations, gameplay, camera angles and control. We will want your help and ideas in prioritising them to make sure that what is most important to our community, where possible, gets done first.

This approach means that we are going to keep innovating, keep introducing new features, keep responding to what everyone wants to see.

What can I expect during the alpha launch?

We have covered what to expect during the alpha launch in this article, The Red Village Alpha Launch, which outlines how many Tournaments will be scheduled over the first 24 hours, few days, weeks, and month. It also covers how many Tournaments each Battlemaster can enter, and more. It is worth a read to get a proper understanding of what to expect.

For those that are time poor, though, our advice is to avoid trying to enter Tournaments in the first week; we expect a fair bit of demand for places, and while we are stress-testing our system, we are warning players to expect delays. Our tech team is on around the clock to ‘put out fires’ that may arise, but as with any tech launch and blockchain interaction, there may be issues that occur that require diagnosis and repair, and this could, hypothetically, cause delays.

For a much smoother experience — if you don’t like being a ‘product tester’ and just want to stay as a Battlemaster!— we strongly recommend waiting until at least the second week of alpha to enter Tournaments and Blood your Champions.

Trust us, there are many, many moons of Tournaments ahead; a few days waiting will be worth it.