Second Test Recap

The following is an official news post, originally available here.

Hello everyone!

The second test of Corepunk has come to an end. First and foremost, we would like to express our huge gratitude to all participants for the time spent testing the game. We have collected a lot of feedback, and we still have to delve deeper into all aspects of the past test, but we are already able to draw some conclusions and prepare for the next, third test of the game, which will start from December 2nd. We'll focus on enabling all the craft content presented in the professions video in our December test.

The game is in the active stage of development and polishing. Some of what you have seen or felt during the tests may not represent the final quality of the product. We conduct game testing to understand how all the basic systems in the game work, identify critical errors that may only surface during real tests, to see the overall gameplay flow and at what stage certain bottlenecks occur in the basic gameplay.

Technical side - the test performed very well, for the first time we tested the infrastructure in several large regions around the world. During the testing process, critical bugs and errors related to characters arose, which is great and is the point of such tests. It is also great that the rest of the infrastructure worked reliably. The next stage is scaling and improving the existing infrastructure.

Gameplay - the main concern was related to basic health and mana regeneration. In Corepunk, there is no basic health and mana regeneration; it is only present with minimal damage and expenditure, from 90% and above health and mana slowly recover. But the main question is not whether there is basic regeneration in the game or not, but how well the player's toolkit is balanced to provide a smooth gaming experience. In this regard, we indeed have a lot of room for improvement, on which we are working and will present them in each new test. We know that the initial experience for newcomers and roam around the world should be a smoother immersion in the gameplay. Much will be worked out in subsequent tests.

In the context of this topic, we would like to pay attention to how we see the gameplay and what we are striving for. What we saw in the tests and what we liked. Perhaps this will answer some of the community's questions after testing and what to expect from Corepunk in the future.

Corepunk - is an atmospheric world where the player constantly feels danger around every corner and strives to move thoughtfully and cautiously. You could say that this has always been the main idea and backbone of Corepunk. From the very first announcement trailer, we showed that the game would be challenging, and the world dangerous. And perhaps you may die a few times at first. But over time, players will learn to navigate the world, wild lands and wastelands, minimizing unnecessary deaths, and some solo players with special talent tree sets will find ways to die very rarely. Although the penalty for death is extremely small, the game's atmosphere is such that the player intuitively tries to stay alive in the world as long as possible.

Gameplay in a group and solo - We highly value and love playing in a group, it is a unique experience and we have put a lot of effort into building gameplay that supports such a game. Also, we pay no less attention to solo play, perhaps this has not yet been revealed in the initial tests for a variety of reasons, but the fact that we pay a lot of attention to solo play and build the design in such a way that it is an interesting and unique experience, you will have to believe and check in the upcoming tests. The fact is that these are our intentions, and how we deal with them will be shown by the game.

Game difficulty - We never intended to create a hardcore game, the goal was to make a game with different gameplay possibilities and although this sounds standard, we have indeed implemented and continue to implement many mechanics that support this direction. In Corepunk, it is not necessary to rush to the top, you can stay and enjoy a calm, relaxed pace of the game. For this, we work a lot on the world and immersion in it, and this work is far from completion, it is only at the very beginning. Also, almost every system has built-in subsystems of horizontal progression. The second test, although not without unforeseen gaming bottlenecks, some players from the first test may have felt a smoother flow in the beginning of the game due to a greater variety of recipes. Food and consumables are always useful and necessary even with level increase, resources are necessary, skins, some artifacts and weapons that you find while traveling will be useful for you at high levels as well as in the beginning of the game.

A small example of the above in practice - In cooking, it is important not only to level up the profession to be able to cook more advanced food but also to constantly try to collect and expand your list of available recipes, as this will make cooking significantly more effective and increase your survivability and sustain many times over. With each new recipe found, gathering professions also become significantly more effective, the goal for the player is to be able to craft items and consumables from almost all types of available resources, which greatly increases the effectiveness of professions and will be very useful at high levels.

We do not intend to put deliberate pressure on the player to progress at maximum speed, but to make it a choice, so that the game also encourages a calm pace of gameplay and if the player wishes, he does not feel that he is missing something or falling behind events in the game world. It turns out that the harder you speedrun to max stats, the harder the game will become in terms of challenge and grind and gives you the opportunity to fully enjoy this style of play. If you chill for a couple of hours a day farming with a cup of coffee or tea chatting with friends, family, the game will seem very relaxing to you, at the same time rewarding and intriguing, because the atmosphere of danger will still be present, you will determine the degree of action yourself, and profit and satisfaction from finding useful items or resources will not diminish substantially.

It is nice to see how players arriving in an unfamiliar world find new different ways to survive, adapt, settle down, get on their feet, choose a strategy in their travels around the world. Some participants managed to find excellent ways to survive. Preparing before venturing into the world is very smart, trying to stay in it as long as possible for farming and bring out as many resources, useful items as possible before you run out of sustain options. Returning to the settlement, analyzing your loot, crafting artifacts and consumables, strengthening yourself and starting preparations for the next hike, preparing to last even longer and go even deeper and find even more interesting places, loot and skins, bring out more resources. We understand perfectly well that for such gameplay, the player must have all the necessary tools for enjoyable and streamlined experience, so that holes in the gameplay do not disrupt the flow. This is exactly what we are working on, to make an atmospheric, immersive and dangerous world and give the player all the necessary and interesting tools to explore it themselves. Most often, we see that bewilderment in players comes from the fact that not all mechanics are present in the test builds, but with each test, they expand, supplementing the existing gameplay and some questions arising at this stage will dissipate or gain the necessary logic.

Conclusion - The idea of Corepunk is actually very straightforward and simple. There is a dangerous, beautiful and atmospheric world, full of adventures, monsters, lost secrets, artifacts, different NPCs populating it, interesting places and finds. There is you, the player, who at the start of the game is at the very bottom of the food chain. Your first task is to adapt, collect more information and knowledge and survive in a new unexplored world. Develop your character so that he can travel the world and explore in the farthest and most dangerous corners. Corepunk has all the typical types of entertainment of a theme park, but there are no typical automatic navigation mechanics. Being in the game world more resembles a sandbox, as there is no goal to lead the player by the hand through the attractions, but on the contrary give the world, tools and the opportunity to find ways to survive, settle and develop themselves.

In conclusion, we would like to say that although we were inspired by many wonderful games, Corepunk is a completely self-contained game, with its character, mood and style. There were never plans to make a "killer of something". We understand when players enter a new game in search of their previous favorite games and we cannot tell you how to play, it is up to each person, but if once in the world of Corepunk you look at it from a different angle, as a new world in which you can find your features, your adventures and favorite mechanics, we are sure the game will open up to you from new unexpected sides.

P.S.: The game is in the active phase of development and polishing in all its aspects, with each test you will see more content, QOL features and the overall polish of all directions. We ask you to be patient and enjoy this exciting journey with us, for us it is as new as it is for you and we cannot guarantee that this will be the best game in the world, but we can guarantee that we will apply all our efforts, determination and perseverance in wanting to present you with a high-quality final product. And we will not back down until this is the case.

Your Corepunk team.