Howdy all, just a quick update on what’s coming very soon, and a little recap on how things have gone so far. The fun part is that the first playtest for Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional is happening tomorrow on the 2nd of February. I’m really excited to get some quick and nasty feedback on where it’s at.

This playtest will run for at least a couple of days and is subject to extension, but don’t worry if you miss it because there will likely be another one in a week or so. The demo will also be in NextFest later this month.

The intention was to run this a lot earlier and only for a small audience. However, my goal of 100 playtest signups has ballooned well over 1000 now and I like to make good first impressions... even if this was only supposed to be a technical test (I also got rather sick, still am tbh, boohoo). If you’ve followed along and watched the two trailers so far you should have a fair idea of what’s going on here, and if you haven’t check out the latest one below.

A major new part that hasn’t been shown off yet is the Plugins and Keys systems. Moving forward from simple weapon and player stat upgrades, you can also collect Keys from opening Keygens. Use those keys on Plugin Installers and receive a Plugin boon that’s either conditional, triggered or permanent that could switch up your strategy for defeating viruses. These sorts of upgrades are my favourite thing in these survivors-like/rogue-lite games, so expect more to come in the future!

A handful of things have been turned off for this playtest as well, namely Boss Fights (they’re not great right now), Cursor Classes and Meta Progression Upgrades (I want to focus this initial feedback on the base default values for difficulty etc).

Rest assured I think it’s fun, I really hope you do too and if you don’t - let me know, we’ll get it there!

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