Natural Selection 2 Alpha Hits Steam Monday

The team at Unknown Worlds have just set the release date for Natural Selection 2's alpha and have revealed that after Monday, July 26th the Special Edition Marine armor will no longer be available to pre-orders. The alpha will feature one full map from the final version of the game along with some smaller ones specifically for testing purposes. After July 26th, not only will the special armor no longer be made available to pre-orders, but the special $20 price (for the regular edition of the game) will no longer be made available.

NS2 Alpha 1 content
* One of our shipping maps (ns2_tram), plus some smaller "test" maps
* Marine, with Rifle, Pistol, SwitchAx, Grenade Launcher (oops, and shotgun!)
* Skulks, Gorges, Lerks and their basic movement abilities and weapons
* Marine armory "buy" screen for purchasing new equipment
* Alien evolution menu for choosing your lifeform and upgrades
* Basic marine and alien commander interfaces including MACs, Drifters
* Much of our final sounds, artwork, animations, etc.


We will be adding new weapons, upgrades, commander abilities, maps, etc. throughout our development to v1.0. We expect to patch somewhere between 1-4 times per month. Sometimes we'll need to tweak balance, other times we'll need to take a step back and make a bigger change, but it will be a work in progress. The fact that we're shipping on Steam makes the updating progress much easier for us.

Please keep in mind that this version of NS2 will not be the ultimate super-fun game we're striving to create, it's "alpha" for a reason! While much of the game and systems are finished, we've had to work extremely hard to get to this stage...and I don't want to describe how much work we will still do over the next two weeks! This is an alpha and parts of it are rough. However, we know that the game will get better, and better faster, with your help.