The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep Update #43 – Backer Alpha Unleashed

The Backer Alpha for inXile’s The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is here. It offers a taste of combat, exploration, party management, and other dungeon-crawling staples like traps and puzzles to the Alpha-tier backers. The latest Kickstarter update offers some additional details and encourages those participating in the Alpha to report any bugs and issues they may encounter.

The update also mentions inXile’s presence at the currently ongoing GDC 2018 and provides a helpful Alpha FAQ. An excerpt:

Today is a day thirty years in the making! For the first time since players defeated the Mad God Tarjan in 1988’s The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate, fans will have a chance to play a sequel and experience new gameplay! This first playable version is an important stepping stone toward the game’s release later this year, and we’re all excited to finally share The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep with you. Whether you are one of our alpha backers or will be watching press coverage, we’re looking forward to hearing what you think!

Further in this update is a FAQ for our alpha backers. If that’s you and you can’t wait another moment, go ahead and skip on down the page (we totally understand)! For those backers, please be on the look out soon for a CrowdOx email containing:

• Your Steam key for the alpha test
• A message from VP of Development Chris Keenan & alpha test notes from QA Lead Daniel Dean

The FAQ at the bottom of this update should hopefully address any basic questions you have about the backer alpha and getting access to it.

In the meantime though, I wanted to share with all of you some of what we’re up to this week at GDC.

inXile at GDC 2018

You may remember this photo from our E3 2017 update.

Pictured are BT4 Producer Jeff Pellegrin and Creative Director David Rogers. As Chris noted in last week’s update, David and Jeff will be at the Epic Unreal Engine 4 booth (Moscone South 801) demoing the alpha. If you are on-site for the event, you’ll find them there from today through Friday, March, 23. I am told that the kilts are making a return as well!

For everyone interested, Jeff and BT4 Art Director Maxx Kaufman will be interviewed at 12:30pm PST on Thursday, March 22nd as part of Epic’s GDC livestream coverage. You will be able to watch that interview here.

In other Bard’s Tale-related GDC news, one of this year’s hugely popular Classic Game Post-Mortems will feature The Bard’s Tale and The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight. Headlined by series co-creator Michael Cranford, the talk happens today, March 21 from 5:00pm – 6:00pm PST in West Hall, Room 3016. If you are at GDC, this is a “must” for any Bard’s Tale fan! If you can’t be there, the talk is being recorded and we’ll be sure to share a link if and when it becomes publicly available!