Rivet Reach alpha 0.1.0 is in testing — come try the game

I keep coming back to the same question while building Rivet Reach: what happens after you have made it through the first night? The answer I want is a world where a rough shelter can grow into a workshop, and that workshop can become a small, noisy production line you actually understand because you built it yourself.

The next step toward that is running now as an alpha 0.1.0 Windows test build. It is still being checked before a public 0.1.0 release. Named saves, Load Game and Continue Latest Save are already working in that build. The screenshots here show the newer candidate; the public Windows alpha you can download today is the older 0.0.1 ZIP.

A first-person view of a workshop with connected glass, slabs and machinery in the Rivet Reach 0.1.0 test build — A workshop in the 0.1.0 test build. The new glass joins cleanly around its open front.

A place to survive, then a place to build

You begin with the basics: gather wood and stone, make tools, find food and give yourself somewhere to return to. The caves and ores draw you further out. Eventually the question changes from “where do I get this?” to “how do I keep it moving?” That is where furnaces, crushers, pipes, tanks and power begin to fit together.

The 0.1.0 candidate is making that journey easier to read. It now offers clues about which ores are likely at your current depth and why a connected machine is waiting for a supply. A bed can mark home, and a direction to your last death helps when an expedition goes badly. Wooden and stone slabs and connected glass make the workshop feel more like a place you built, too. The explorer has a fresh machinist look.

A large lit Rivet Reach factory by the water at dusk in a constructed test world — A deliberately constructed factory test world at dusk, showing where the machinery can lead. It is not a normal starting world.

Come try the public alpha

If that sounds like your kind of sandbox, download the 0.0.1 Windows x64 ZIP from GitHub, extract the whole archive and run RivetReach.exe. You do not need the Unity editor. Start with a shelter, see how far you can take a little workshop, and tell me which part of the journey makes you want to keep going.

Save Game, Load Game and Continue Latest Save are implemented and tested in the current alpha build. Saving is manual: use Escape → Save Game or Save & Quit; there is no periodic autosave. The public 0.0.1 ZIP was published before that save work and was not replaced, so that particular download still has session-only progress. The next public package is waiting on smoothness, pacing and final checks, not on saves. I will link it when it is ready.

The Rivet Reach wiki can help you find your feet. If something breaks, feels confusing or gives you an idea for what to build next, leave an issue on GitHub. At this stage, a player getting stuck in an unexpected place is especially useful to hear about.