This post is safe to read - no spoilers here
I had every intention NOT to play any alpha that might appear preferring, as many others have said, to wait for the finished 2.0 version - but then an alpha appears the night before my day off work and my self control went right out of the window.
I'm not going to give anything away here and spoil the joy of discovery to any genuine fans reading this but here are my thoughts on the alpha. So, as someone who has played every second of 1.632, who has read every page of this thread, who is completely independent with no connection with Deem, his friends or his haters. I think............it's really rather good!
Even in a relatively short time I have found several new developments to existing scenes (one of which took me completely by surprise) and several totally new ones. There are new characters, new places and the 'map' idea seems to work well. OK, there are a few rough edges and placeholders but as we'd been warned about them beforehand several times I can't fathom why anyone is complaining about them at this stage.
In short, 'well done, so far' to Deem (and friends). I'm now even more psyched for v2.0 than I was before. My only disappointment is that during the clothes shopping trip, 'D' and Sara didn't get to try on matching Cookie Monster t-shirts (sorry Shiva0067 - maybe in 2.1?)