In the post for Alpha 6 I said "from now on I'll release when I'm happy there's something significant". I certainly didn't think that this would take 168 days! However for this beta release I wanted something that I was reasonably proud of and something that would (at least nominally) be representative of the full release of v1.0 of the game. Okay, getting heavily into Helldivers 2 was not part of that plan.

All that said, I have covered a lot of ground, including a heavy rework of the internal code. In that last post I also said "I now feel that I've covered all the technical areas". What a fool I was!

So, what does Beta 1 bring?

• Themed graphics for all user interface elements
• Sounds for most actions
  
• Three new crops to plant
• Two new fruits to pick
• Follow the path to the right to find a market store - take a look at the notice board for trades that refresh daily
• You start in summer rather than spring to make growing crops easier during the early days, because...
• Crop growth rates vary depending on season and fruit on trees dies back in winter - don't miss that last autumn harvest!
• All buildings on the main map are now accessible
  
• You start with nothing in your inventory - time to go scavenging!
• Most actions expend energy and many require repetition to complete
• Inventory drops (wood, crops, fruit) can contain multiple items
• Fences drop wood when dismantled by axe or zombie
  
• Gates can be rotated with the R key so you can always get the orientation you want

There are also a few other fixes:

• Crafting buttons are only active if you can craft the item and have room for what you've made in your inventory
• Player and zombie physics tweaked to make them physically bigger, meaning less dense bunching of zombies but you might not get through small gaps now - don't get trapped!
• Zombies do not spawn on screen
• Updated the engine from Godot 4.2 to 4.3

Please give this beta a shot, it's a huge step forward from the alphas. Feedback is welcome here, on Discord or Mastodon. At this point I'm really looking for help squashing bugs and making the game work without adding any new features. That said, I do plan a Beta 2, mainly to address the rather underwhelming behaviour of the zombies.

Final note: I accidentally left "alpha" in the download file names but you can see they're tagged "2.0.0-beta-1".