Worlds of Magic - Impending Beta Release

Wastelands Interactive announces the developer is almost ready to release the Beta version of Worlds of Magic, and mentions the Early Access release on Steam.

Impending Beta

Greetings once again our wonderful, generous, thoughtful, and most importantly, patient, backers! There are several items we want to touch on in this update, the first of which is the impending beta. If all goes as planned we're going to send out the first small batch of beta keys (somewhere between one and two hundred) out somewhere around the end of July. The method we use for selecting the recipients of these few keys is still up in the air, but we're leaning toward sending them to the earliest backers from each campaign: First, Second, and PayPal. It's the “fairest” method we can think of. We know that most (if not all) of you want beta access and we're going to get you all in as soon as we can. If you don't get a key from the first batch, just console yourself with the idea that there will be less bugs and more game in the beta by the time you get it :)

Early Access

Now, as some of you may know, Steam allows publishers to put games up for “Early Access” before the game is 100% ready for release. This allows developers to pull in more beta testers and raise a little last minute capital to fund the polishing stage. Up to this point the development budget for Worlds of Magic has been close to $300,000 (yes, that's USD). Opening the game for Early Access would raise our budget ceiling a bit and give us a little more time for polishing. We're interested on hearing your thoughts on Early Access. Should we wait until the game is essentially ready for release and use it basically as a form of advertising? Or should we open it up as soon as we have a solid beta version ready, in order to raise more capital to help put all the final flourishes in place? We've asked for your opinions from the very beginning and we'd appreciate your feedback on this.