It’s only been three months since we announced Core Keeper to the world, and we can’t believe how much our community has grown in such a short space of time. As summer draws to a close, we’re looking forward to all that autumn has to offer. Crunchy leaves, cosy jumpers, hot chocolate, the Core Keeper Closed Alpha, Halloween – you know, typical autumn stuff. What’s that? You want to know more about the Core Keeper Closed Alpha? Well, you’re in the right place! [h2]What is the Core Keeper Closed Alpha?[/h2] The Core Keeper Closed Alpha is YOUR opportunity to experience Core Keeper before it hits Early Access in 2022. We’ve made no secret of the fact that our community is very important to us, and we want to give you the chance to tell us what you want from the game. That’s why we’re inviting you to sign up for our Closed Alpha to spend a week hands-on with Core Keeper. During this time, you can tell us what you like, what you think we could improve upon and what you think we could bring to the game to make it even more enjoyable. We can’t promise that we’ll input every single piece of feedback we receive, but we’ll be doing our best to ensure your feedback has an impact on the development of our game. [h2]How do I Sign Up?[/h2] You can sign up by visiting the Core Keeper Steam page and hitting the sign-up button [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1621690/Core_Keeper/]HERE[/url]. Please note that sign-ups close on the 23rd of September and that we will be picking participants at random. [h2]What Happens if I’m Selected?[/h2] If you are selected, you will receive an email of notification from Steam on the 23rd of September, you will also see your status on the store page for the base game. The Closed Alpha will run from the 23rd to the 30th of September. [u][i][b]Please be aware that Steam will not email you when a build for a Closed Alpha is set to playable/non-playable, so it’s up to you to navigate to the store page and download the playtest build of the game.[/b][/i][/u] While playtesting, participants will have the opportunity to provide as much feedback as they’d like about the game. Details on how to do so will be provided within the playtest build of the game. If you don’t get selected to participate in the Closed Alpha, don’t worry! There will definitely be more alpha/beta versions of the game to apply for in the future. [h2]What We Have Been Working On[/h2] In preparation for the Closed Alpha, we’ve been ironing out bugs that have been impacting the overall gameplay experience. Most of these have been pretty small, but others have been a bit more significant. Here are some of the bug fixes we’ve been working on for the Closed Alpha that we think you’ll enjoy hearing about: [b]Super-Buff Projectiles:[/b] We designed it so that any projectiles shot by players would utilise the ranged damage skill and crit chance of the player shooting them, but this resulted in projectiles that also inherited buffs/debuffs such as glow, poison, movement speed increase and healing over time. After this happy accident, we removed many of the unintentional buffs, but we decided to keep the functionality for projectiles to glow if the player has this buff on them. [b]Gate-ception:[/b] We resolved an issue with fence gates where the player could place a object on the same tile as the gate if the gate was open. This resulted in an Inception-style bug where players could place a fence gate inside an open gate, then open that new gate and place another gate inside that open gate and repeat this for all eternity – eventually crashing the entire game. And here are some slightly sillier bugs that we’re happy to see the back of! • Bird poop can no longer spawn on pits. • Players can no longer accidentally spawn in the middle of The Core. • Players can no longer place bombs on themselves. With these fixes, the Closed Alpha build of the game is looking great, and we’re very excited for some of you to get the opportunity to play. Your feedback is going to help us make Core Keeper all the more fun, and we can’t wait to hear what you have to tell us. Make sure you’re a part of [url=https://discord.com/invite/corekeeper]our Discord community[/url] to hear about activity like the Closed Alpha before it is announced anywhere else!