98% positive rating. Number 10 on Steam’s Top Sellers chart. 1,860 concurrent players on day two. The most-upvoted review? “Don’t buy this yet.”

That’s the beautiful, contradictory situation Alabaster Dawn finds itself in. Radical Fish Games — the studio behind CrossCode, widely regarded as one of the finest indie RPGs ever made — released the first public slice of their sophomore effort on May 7th. The community showed up with wallets open and immediately started telling each other to go play something else.

“If you want a game NOW - get Crosscode (masterpiece, by the way). Only buy this game to support the project and play it in ~2 years (planned Early Access period),” reads the top-voted Steam review, posted by someone with 18 minutes of playtime. They gave it a thumbs up anyway.

They’re not wrong about the timeline. Radical Fish estimates the current build represents roughly 20% of the finished game, spanning the first chapter and a half with 5-10 hours of content. The studio expects at least two years of development ahead, according to their developer blog. This is proper Early Access — a funding round with a playable vertical slice attached, not a nearly-complete product hunting for day-one buzz.

What’s already there appears to be the real deal. GameSpot praised the fluid animation — doubled frame count compared to CrossCode — tight combat, and a “thoroughly modern” spin on classic top-down Zelda design. Radical Fish rebuilt their engine from scratch, moving from JavaScript to TypeScript and adding WebGL for 3D graphics. A few rough edges remain: placeholder text items, an unfinished dialogue line that a character self-awarely announces in red font. Honest work-in-progress scuffs, not red flags.

The result is a game simultaneously celebrated and gatekept by its own fanbase. Pay $21.24 now to bankroll the dream, or wait two years and get the finished article. The people who love this studio most are crystal clear on which they’d recommend.

Sources