After six months of development I’m excited to announce that the soundStrider beta—its largest update yet—has arrived!

In the Mountain palette, players will ascend to treacherous heights to enjoy chance music produced by standing bells and wind chimes. With its new mouse controls its procedurally generated worlds can be traversed in entirely new ways. And a remix of every sound ensures they can be enjoyed across a variety of audio setups.

Hello again

soundStrider is an auditory exploration game, psychedelic walking simulator, ambient music generator, and relaxation tool. Explore its worlds at your own pace, save bookmarks of your favorite locations, and revisit them for meditation, studying, or sleep.

To celebrate its beta release, please enjoy a new trailer:

Introducing the Mountain palette

Ascend a mountain and enjoy the view in the excerpt below:

Developer update

From the latest shiftBacktick blog post:

Graduating to beta is only the first step toward realizing the soundStrider experience. The main objective of its alpha was to finish its environmental sounds and lay a foundation for Adventure mode. Leading up to its late-June release will be a handful of beta updates that implement new quests, enhance existing ones, and prepare its remaining launch features.

This milestone would not have been met without your support. Don’t forget that the price of soundStrider will be increasing to $9.99 USD when it launches on Steam. Your purchase here will grant early access to the beta and comes with a Steam key.

In the meantime, please leave your favorite bookmarks below and wishlist soundStrider on Steam. Thanks for playing!

Beta 1 changes

• Added palettes
  • Mountain
• Added mouse controls
  • Locked pointer while in-game
  • Added turning via mouse x-axis
  • Move forward with Mouse 1 (e.g. left click)
  • Move backward with Mouse 3 (e.g. right click)
  • Toggle auto move with Mouse 2 (e.g. mouse wheel)
  • Open game menu with Mouse 4 (e.g. back button)
  • Updated game manual with mouse controls
• Compass system improvements
  • Added slight dissonance to destination
  • Added slight vibrato to breadcrumb directional cues
  • Added triad to notifications
  • Improved note selection
  • Reduced brightness of compass sounds
• Dynamic range improvements
  • Remixed breadcrumbs
  • Remixed compass
  • Remixed footsteps
  • Remixed props
  • Remixed wind
• World generation improvements
  • Adjusted chunk size
  • Adjusted prop densities
  • Adjusted prop frequencies
  • Reworked Elemental palette
  • Reworked Pulse palette
  • Reworked Storm palette
  • Reworked Trance palette
  • Bookmarks are affected by this update
• Miscellaneous
  • Added idle behaviors to props in inventory
  • Added roll-off to acoustic shadow modeling
  • Added Start Adventure option for first-time players
  • Removed watermark from game screen
  • Various performance optimizations