Wasteland 3 Alpha for backers going live this month

inXile Entertainment has announced that the backer-only Alpha on the PC for their post-apocalyptic RPG game Wasteland 3 will be starting in just a few weeks. On August 21, users who have backed $75 or more will be able to play the game long before its official launch in Spring 2020 on the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The developer announced the news in their Fig crowdfunding campaign, which you can read in full here.

After the wildly successful rebirth of the original post-nuclear RPG Wasteland with the excellent Wasteland 2 in 2014, and its even better Director’s Cut one year later, it wasn’t really a surprise that inXile started work on the third game. Once again financed by the fans for the fans, Wasteland 3 quickly succeeded with its Fig campaign three years ago.

The Alpha is combat-focused, and revolves around the last leg of your journey to deal with one of the Patriarch’s children, lovingly known as the Psychopath. At this point in the game you’re higher level, and are taking the last few steps to deal with him in the mountain town of Aspen—however you choose to do that. You’ll get to experience most of the systems related to combat, including the player vehicle. We will have some things purposely blocked off, like the Perk and Skill menus, and multiplayer, which aren’t quite ready to see just yet.

Since then, the studio has been hard at work creating a worthy successor to not only Wasteland 2 but the Wasteland series in general. You might not know, but the Fallout franchise only exists today because of Wasteland. The original Wasteland from 1987 directly inspired the creation of the first Fallout game, in both setting and gameplay. As such, Wasteland 3 is seen as the spiritual successor of the first two isometric Fallout games.

And in two weeks, backers of it will be able to play the Alpha. Since it’s still deep in development, gamers shouldn’t expect a bug-free full experience with it. The developer is warning about performance and stability issues beforehand. But still, since participants of the Alpha are allowed to share videos and screenshots of the game, it will surely be fruitful for any prospect player.