Drox Operative Reaches Alpha

In a brief blog entry, Soldak Entertainment's Steven Peeler announces that his space simulation/action RPG Drox Operative is now up to its third alpha build, which means that it probably won't be too much longer before we start seeing some hands-on previews and have a release date to look forward to.
So Drox Operative has been in alpha for a week now and I thought I would write up a short blog about what that means especially since alpha tends to mean different things to different developers and publishers.

For Soldak, alpha generally means the game is playable from start to finish, is fairly stable, and we hope is already fairly fun. It doesn't necessarily mean all of the assets are done or that all of the planned features have been implemented though. Alpha is also where we start getting people that aren't on the development team to play test, so we can get some outside opinions. These are almost always family and close friends.

So far the alpha seems to be going really well. We are up to our 3rd alpha build and have already made tons of changes. Sectors have been conquered, wars have been fought, there have been a few crashes here and there but it's very stable for an alpha, and most importantly it seems like everyone is having fun despite the rough edges.