BigFire Games studio head and NCSOFT development consultant James Bae summarized the results of Cinder City’s pre-alpha testing in an interview with Japanese publication 4Gamer. The next phase of alpha testing will take place in the fourth quarter of 2026. Players from North America, Europe and Asia (including Japan) will be able to participate.
Pre-alpha testing took place in August in North America only. Over the course of three days, approximately 7,000 participants were spread across multiple worlds, with 1,000-2,000 people in each world. Testers loved the shooting, the sounds, and the story. The main complaints involve an overly difficult start, a lack of player-sourced ammo, poor optimization, and unfinished systems. Pei admitted that he set the difficulty level himself and made a mistake. During testing, patches will be released daily based on Discord feedback.
For in-game alphas they will change:
- It will be easier to open areas and start the game;
- In instances (dungeons and buildings for four), players will choose the difficulty themselves, and rewards will depend on it;
- Gamepad control will be improved: in pre-alpha, it was inconvenient to use.
For alpha, they will most likely launch separate servers for each region to reduce ping. The total number of participants has been determined and allocation to each region will be based on the number of applications. Bae is skeptical about cross-platform play between PC and consoles: then updates on PC would have to be released according to the console schedule.
There will be five characters when the game launches, and you can switch between them at any time. Not all heroes will receive individual stories: missing chapters will be added in updates. “Byzantium in the Tenth Century” shown in the announcement has been postponed.
Let us remind you that Cinder City is coming to PC and console versions soon. The game takes place in a destroyed Seoul. The shooter will be available for a fixed price and will release on PC first, and we also wrote about the opening of pre-Alpha test registrations.