Name change and Open Alpha

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First of all, a huge thanks to everyone who took part in the closed alpha! You made me look at my game with new eyes. Not surprisingly, then, there are some big changes.

For one, Devices are no longer one-trick ponies. Whereas we used to have Lenses, which transformed Heroes, and Mirrors, which were transformed by Heroes, we now have Devices with optional Lens and Mirror effects, among other effects.

There are also a couple of new effects: changing a World’s background color, and activating and deactivating Devices.

Most effects can now be reverted, either after a certain time has elapsed or after everyone has left the World (or in the case of an Entry Device: when someone new enters the World).

Also new: effect delays and conditional effects. The latter work by letting you specify one or more conditions to check the colliding Hero against, as well as the effects that should be triggered if the conditions are/aren’t met.

Other changes include a new starter world, replacing the old Museum of Dark Devising, and a new demo world called Field of Flowers. I hope you’ll have fun exploring them!

Note that the starter world, The Great Adventure, is single-player, introducing a second gameplay mode to complement the previously unique multiplayer mode.

I replaced “Imagination” with “Time” as in-game currency, and added a leveling system for exploring based on discovering Grails (which were called Treasures in the closed alpha). The leveling system is nominal only — higher levels don’t come with higher powers, and lower levels don’t lead to fewer chances.

The foreshadowed database wipe has also come to pass, I’m afraid. I apologize for the inconvenience of having to create a new account.

But the biggest change of them all is probably the one to the name of the game. Sometime during the closed alpha, The Dark Sign became Glyffe. And so, with a new name, our game enters open alpha, an event I thought fitting to announce in the Interactive Fiction Community Forum.

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