MMO sandbox BitCraft devs talk origins, overall gameplay, and latest round of pre-alpha testing

BitCraft has mostly shared development updates and insights through the use of dev blogs that are equal parts progress report and rumination on the MMORPG genre – we don’t really get a lot of videos in other words. That has changed just a little bit with an introductory video that features game director Carter Minshull and Clockwork Labs CEO Tyler Cloutier “interviewing” one another.

Cloutier’s time in the interview seat understandably talked about the origin of Clockwork Labs in general and BitCraft in specific, where he discussed the company’s start, its push for venture capital funding over publisher funding, and the creation of tech to make the planned MMORPG run like its SpacetimeDB backend stack.

Minshull’s portion talked about the overall design of BitCraft and its editable and cooperative sandbox gameplay loops as well as the game’s pre-alpha testing up to now. The tenth and most recent test, which wrapped up shortly before the video was recorded, reportedly went very successfully, as testing stayed open for a longer period of time and saw testers playing for over 100 hours. According to Minshull, this means that the gameplay loops are working, though there is still a lot of work to be done before BitCraft’s vision is fully realized.

As for what’s next, Minshull still states the next step is alpha, which readers will recall is projected for early 2024.

Advertisement