Stratus: Battle for the Sky — New Steam Test Build Now Available

Stratus: Battle for the Sky — New Steam Test Build Now Available

After significant development progress over the past several weeks, we are excited to announce that a new playable test build of Stratus: Battle for the Sky has now been posted to Steam.

One of the biggest milestones achieved in this build is the successful implementation of multiplayer session hosting and joining through the in-game session browser. Players are now able to directly host and join matches depending on their firewall and network configurations.

This system has already undergone closed testing with players across multiple regions, including the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada, where users successfully connected and played matches across continents.

Multiplayer & Battle Lobby Progress

The battle lobby system is now fully operational, allowing players to smoothly configure teams and starting locations before launching into battle maps.

Current Gameplay Features

The following gameplay systems are currently functional in the test build:

• Temple construction for the Rain, Wind, and Thunder factions is operational. The Sun Temple currently requires additional setup adjustments before it can be constructed properly.

• Workshops for all four elemental factions — Rain, Wind, Sun, and Thunder — are constructable, with technology production correctly feeding into their respective production queues and progress bars.

• At this stage, the Rain faction has the most complete unit implementation. Current development efforts have primarily focused on rebuilding the networking backend and ensuring full gameplay replication across multiplayer sessions.

• Shrine construction, island capture mechanics, and player team-color assignment on both the world map and minimap are functioning correctly.

• Altar construction, captured priest placement, and ritual victory/loss conditions are now implemented and operational.

• Bridges can be placed successfully, although several bridge segments still require debugging and placement detection adjustments.

• Most small islands are functioning correctly, though some currently require collision and navigation mesh updates. On affected islands, priests may experience navigation issues when moving from bridges onto island surfaces. These issues are already identified and scheduled for upcoming patches.

Ongoing Development

This build marks an important milestone by allowing players to finally jump in and begin testing the new Unreal Engine version of the game.

Now that the core systems and networking foundation are in place, development will continue with regular patches, gameplay improvements, bug fixes, feature additions, and new content updates moving forward.

How to Access the Test Build

For players who already own a copy of the game on Steam:

1. Open Steam and select Stratus: Battle for the Sky

2. Right-click the game and open Properties

3. Navigate to Game Versions & Betas

4. Enter the provided beta access code “AFg309sg0MAD9219”to join the testing branch

Dedicated Servers

At this time, dedicated servers are not yet available. Dedicated server infrastructure is planned for Stage 2 of development once the current multiplayer systems and gameplay framework are fully stabilized and bug and feature tested.

We are incredibly excited to continue pushing development forward now that the project has successfully passed the major integration stage into the new engine.

Thank you to everyone continuing to support Stratus and participate in testing as development progresses.