The major milestone you’ve all been waiting a very long time for.

The first 2 missions involving “Bad Luck” Bart are now included. The long awaited and unexpectedly complex mission system is now in place.

Alpha 1 marks a major milestone - and at this point the ‘core gameplay loop’ is complete. The core gameplay loop for Smugglers of Cygnus is:

• Customize your ship
  
• Find and complete jobs
  
• Engage with NPCs and the environment to find and complete missions
  
• Earn money and faction by completing missions and jobs
  
• Explore the environment in 1st and 3rd person

This obviously is not to say the game is done, or even that these are in a fully finished implementation (far from it) - just that the core gameplay loop is complete for the first time. Now that Alpha 1 has landed on Itch and Steam, we’ll be switching to feature enhancement and content creation mode.

That means a LOT more missions, jobs, NPCs, etc. More customization options. In-game customization using credits, faction, collectibles, etc. Character creation. More voice work, etc. Heck, we haven’t even finished the Alpha System yet, let alone added the ability to travel between systems. A complete redo of the flight control/handling system. Joystick support.

So, THANK YOU to everyone who’s been a part of this game, regardless of if you were a backer or just a retweeter. Thank you for your help, your questions, your frustrations, your suggestions.

We’re getting there, and this feels huge even though it’s still just the first big step towards the release candidate. We’re now at Waypoint 0, and it took 3 years and so much work with your support to get here.

[continued on the forum][forum.longplay.games]

Livestream patch notes here.