Cube World beta will kick off next week, but you need alpha access to play it

After half a decade of silence, Cube World re-emerged this month with news that it will launch on Steam later this year. But if you're among those who purchased the alpha version of the game years ago, here's good news: a beta kicks off on September 23, and owners of the current game will get a Steam code dropped into their Picroma account.

That's according to a new post on the game's official subreddit. The beta is for the version of the game that will launch on Steam, which is scheduled to release some time in late September or October, according to an announcement made earlier this month. The bad news is, if you don't currently have alpha access then you can rule out getting into the beta, unless something changes between now and next week.

Cube World developer Wolfram von Funck opened up about the game's long silence in a blogpost shortly after the Steam announcement. von Funck has also been publishing gifs and screenshots on his Twitter page, with the below demonstration of the game's world map the highlight among them.

Here's a short clip demonstrating the "Travel History" feature of the world map. On the lower left you can navigate to all previously visited lands. E.g. after a multiplayer session with your friend in a different land, you can easily return to your current "questing land". pic.twitter.com/wMzNaCTMh9September 8, 2019

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.