Hey everyone, just a quick update here. I’m back from travelling and am now working full-time on RimWorld. I’ve largely dealt with the paperwork tsunami that awaited me upon my return, so with my near-full attention as well as ongoing work from Piotr, the game is making smooth progress towards the Alpha 13 release.

The private testers are currently banging on the test version, while we fix bugs and sneak in some final improvements. Usually this phase takes a couple weeks, though this one could last longer because there is so much stuff in this update. Because of the long period since the last alpha (when Piotr was working and I was working quarter-time), this is the largest update since the initial pre-alpha in 2013.

I don’t have a release date, I’m afraid. I just wanted to let you all know that everything is moving along well. And I’m quite excited to see what you guys think of the new relationship system, marriages and lovers and breakups, social fights, fueled buildings, animal bonds, much more research, more better art, prison breaks, insect hives, on-foot trade caravans, and hundreds of other improvements to the game.

After Alpha 13 comes out, we’ll probably target doing the Steam release. However, the Steam release is a game’s most important moment. One does not simply release a game on Steam. It takes a lot of effort and time to prepare a proper, decently-marketed Steam release, plus any time Valve might take to approve the final build. So there’s no date – just know that it is coming.