Information on Beta Testing for Tickle Magnet (Patreon)

I believe the game to be ready for its beta testing phase.  Unfortunately, I'm headed out of town the remainder of the week, and don't want to be out of town when the first wave of bug reports come in.

So I'm going to open up the beta testing during the first week of January 2024.

Few thoughts:

1.  If you are interested in taking part in the beta test, please send me a note directly here on Patreon or on Discord.  If you're reading this, you can join it, you just need to message me first.  I have a limited number of testing keys from Steam, and they will be handed out first come, first serve.  In the event I have more requests than I have keys, I will request a second batch from Steam.  Steam has to approve them, so there's no guarantee they will do so.  I don't know why they wouldn't, but it's not up to me since it's their platform.  Each player taking part will be given a unique key to get into the game's beta testing phase.  This key cannot be shared.

2.  Alpha and beta keys only work until the end of the testing phase, then they are revoked.  If you want to access the game after its launch, you will need to purchase it on Steam.  I am unsure of the launch date for the game, it depends entirely on how beta testing goes.  If beta is a buggy mess, I need to take time to ensure the game is stable.

3.  Your save files "should" work between testing and launch phases, but I cannot guarantee that.

4. If you have bugs to report, please report them to me via message here on the Patreon, or on my Discord server under the #tickle-magnet-beta-test channel that's exclusively available to beta testers of the game.  What is helpful to me is share any information you can about the bug.  What date (in the game) did it occur, what were you doing ("I was on my fourth date with Kelly" "I was working as assistant manager in the coffee shop", etc. is helpful for me to pinpoint what caused the problem) and what is the game's behavior?

5. You have 40 save slots for the game, and I would make liberal use of them.  This is still beta, so there will likely be game breaking bugs in the game still.

6. There's no official Non-Disclosure Agreement with the testing phase of this game.  There's only one of me, and life is too short to be managing several dozen legal agreements which each of you.  Instead, I'd like you to just report bugs within the testers channels, don't post media from the game to the public unless we've talked about it first privately, but feel free to hype the game in non-specific terms.  I'll be relying quite a bit on word of mouth for the game's success, and you all can help me out tremendously through both your testing exercise, and also letting the tickling community know the game exists.

This is an awesome milestone, and I can't wait to share it with you all in the coming week.