Not long now until the beta! We said 'March' for expected delivery: inevitably it was always going to be end March, but it might slip into April now. You know how these things go. It won't slip as far as May.

So what you can expect in the beta? Working core mechanics, and working combat without some of the whizzier sfx. About a third of the final map developed into full assets - some familiar landscape around London, and a couple of more exotic areas like Whither and the Principles of Coral. The rest of the map in a minimal placeholdery state that you can, nevertheless, sail round and preview, rather like an inspection tour of the Earth before they'd put the sky on. The explorable areas will have enough story and beasties to keep you busy.

For another narrative teaser about one of the farther regions of the Unterzee, make sure you're following our Twitter or Facebook account for another narrative snippet on Monday...

And music! We have Maribeth - an experienced film composer and a fan of Fallen London from way back - working on the main soundtrack. She's worked on undersea documentaries, among other things, so it's an excellent match. And Meghann, a writer-journalist-composer-developer (who you may remember from Thirst Frontier) has convinced us to experiment with some procedural aleatory music for combat - we're still fitting that together, but it's very promising.

Here's a sample of the music to whet your appetite...

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...and here's some more screenshots. Alert Fallen London players may notice that the Echo Bazaar itself is visible in two of these shots...