Today is the day SOMA reached Pre-Pre Beta, which marked the first time the game could be played from start to finish.
Four of us have now played through 'til the end and it's really cool to be able to finally really feel what sort of game we're making, after almost 4.5 years in development.
While we've played the individual levels many times, you never really get the same sense as you do when you play the full thing. I personally think it's a significant experience as you now get a mental picture of the game as one complete thing, instead of a massive cluster of themes, systems and scenes. I finally know for sure what it is that we're working towards.
The testing took an average of 11 hours per person. This includes a lot of note-taking, quick discussions and bug-fixing. But, given prior experience, this should give a decent estimate of what it will take the average (and non stressing) player to complete SOMA.
While the game is still really rough in plenty of places, I think I dare to say that we've got something quite special brewing. There's still tons of work left to do, of course, but we're getting very anxious to show off our creation to the world.
