AVS03 Playtest (February 2026) — First Hands-On Test

What the announcement said

The developer announced on February 1, 2026 that the first playtest would run the next day, February 2 — planned as “at least a couple of days” and subject to extension. The original goal was 100 playtest signups; by the time of the post it had “ballooned well over 1000”. The post also confirmed the demo would appear in Steam Next Fest later that month — which it did (see the Next Fest recap).

First official look at Plugins and Keys

This post is the first official description of the plugin economy that the full game expands on:

• You collect Keys from opening Keygens.
• Keys are spent at Plugin Installers, which grant a Plugin boon that is “either conditional, triggered or permanent”.
• The developer framed these as strategy-warping upgrades in the survivors-like tradition.

The full-game version of this system grew installer tiers and a key store — see the plugins hub for what is confirmed so far, and the glossary entries on Keygens and Plugin Installers.

What was switched off for the playtest

Three systems were disabled for this test, per the announcement:

1. Boss Fights (“they’re not great right now” — the 6 bosses shipped later).
2. Cursor Classes.
3. Meta Progression Upgrades — the system later renamed Ranks (read the Warmfix entry).

Cursor Classes have not been described in detail in any official post since; their full-game status is unconfirmed and this wiki will not guess at it.

Where this fits in the timeline

Playtest (Feb 2) → demo launch (Feb 13) → Next Fest (Feb 24) → Warmfix (May 2) → Demo Update 1.2 (Jul 14) → release date announcement (Sep 10) → Steam Deck Verified (Sep 17) → launch on September 28, 2026.