You can now play three early alpha builds of Amid Evil via free DLC. That means New Blood and Indefatigable have done something more developers should: allow players to experience early versions of their game.
Early builds provide a history lesson. They’re a peek into the multilayered history of a game’s development. You see ideas that were scrapped and different visuals and audio for enemies and objects. There may also be cut content, either removed because there wasn’t time to finish it or removed because it didn’t fit in the final package.
These alpha builds are collectively named the “Ancient Alpha Builds.” It contains 5 early builds from 2016 through 2017. Some of the different areas you’ll be able to see include the difficulty selection area, “Gateway of the Ancients”, and one of the maps, “Aeternum.” There are also areas not used in the final release and promised “silly and strange development goodness.”
Teased also in the same announcement is an RTX version of Amid Evil, coming “Soon.” Assuming you have or will have an Nvidia RTX card, you can save the Ancients – with RTX on.
I played a bit of the Ancient Alpha Builds to get a feel for them. After installing and enabling the DLC, you can select one of three 2016 or two 2017 builds. The most striking differences were in the sounds: when the menu is brought up, when the player jumps or takes damage, or when the axe strikes a surface.
Beyond that, firing the Staff of the Azure Orb in one of the earlier alphas brought up an entirely different weapon sprite at the bottom of the screen. The whole shooting experience had a different punch to it. That’s why playing these early builds is so interesting: you experience how much refinement has gone into the final product.
If you own Amid Evil you can download this DLC for free right now.
If only more developers would do this…
Do you own Amid Evil and want to check out these alpha builds? Would you be interested in more developers releasing early builds of their game? Let us know in the comments below!
