Whether you play as one of the elite marine Frontiersmen or the vicious alien Kharaa, you must use unique strategies and your abilities to win. Marines form persistent squads to find and destroy alien hives. Aliens can choose a wall-running Skulk, pudgy Gorge, flying Lerk, murderous Fade or gigantic Onos that can smash through doors.

Commanders play from overhead to lead their team to victory. Build structures anywhere, collect resources and research upgrades. Marines buy weapons at an Armory or build sentry turrets and siege cannons to assault the enemy. Aliens build upgrade chambers, evolve special abilities and plant traps.

Spreading alien infestation deforms hallways and causes space station power failure, turning off lights and shutting down marine powered structures. Use a flamethrower to clear infestation or weld a bulkhead shut for a last defense. Every game is different.

On Monday, July 26th, we will be releasing the NS2 Playable Alpha to all the Special Edition pre-orderers, on Steam. Like with NS1, this is not the complete game, this is the first of many versions. Here's what you can expect on that day:

NS2 Alpha 1 content

• One of our shipping maps (ns2_tram), plus some smaller "test" maps
• Marine, with Rifle, Pistol, SwitchAx, Grenade Launcher
• Skulks, Gorges, Lerks and their basic movement abilities and weapons
• Marine armory "buy" screen for purchasing new equipment
• Alien evolution menu for choosing your lifeform and upgrades
• Basic marine and alien commander interfaces including MACs, Drifters
• Much of our final sounds, artwork, animations, etc.

We will be adding new weapons, upgrades, commander abilities, maps, etc. throughout our development to v1.0. We expect to patch somewhere between 1-4 times per month. Sometimes we'll need to tweak balance, other times we'll need to take a step back and make a bigger change, but it will be a work in progress. The fact that we're shipping on Steam makes the updating progress much easier for us.

Please keep in mind that this version of NS2 will not be the ultimate super-fun game we're striving to create, it's "alpha" for a reason! While much of the game and systems are finished, we've had to work extremely hard to get to this stage...and I don't want to describe how much work we will still do over the next two weeks! This is an alpha and parts of it are rough. However, we know that the game will get better, and better faster, with your help.

Something else you should know is that when we release alpha 1 at the end of this month, we are also discontinuing the NS2 Special Edition and all-black marine armor. It will no longer be available after this date, ever. Also, players that order NS2 after July 26th won't be able to play in the release date alpha.

Features:

• Truly unique sides. Whether you play as one of the elite marine Frontiersmen or the vicious alien Kharaa, you must use unique strategies and your abilities to win. Marines form persistent squads to find and destroy alien hives. Aliens can choose a wall-running Skulk, pudgy Gorge, flying Lerk, murderous Fade or gigantic Onos that can smash through doors.
• Real-time strategy. Commanders play from overhead to lead their team to victory. Build structures anywhere, collect resources and research upgrades. Marines buy weapons at an Armory or build sentry turrets and siege cannons to assault the enemy. Aliens build chambers, evolve special abilities and plant traps.
• Dynamic environments. Spreading alien infestation deforms hallways and causes space station power failure, turning off lights and shutting down marine powered structures. Use a flamethrower to clear infestation or weld a bulkhead shut for a last defense. Every game is different.
• Unlimited variations. WYSIWYG graphical tools and powerful scripting allow you to create new weapons, scenarios or entirely new games. You'll get all our tools and Lua source code we're using to build NS2. Ongoing automatic updates keep the game fresh by adding new maps, weapons and abilities.

Natural Selection 2 can be pre-ordered for at a special price of $19.95/€14.75 (Standard Edition) or for $39.95/€29.56 (Special Edition). Over 10,000 players have pre-ordered to date. The tools and SDK are available now at the official website