While developer inXile had hoped to release the beta for Planescape: Torment successor Torment: Tides of Numenera sometime before the end of this year, their plans – as well-intentioned as they were – simply didn’t line up with reality. As such, any hope for seeing a playable beta of Numenera has been officially squashed.

Though the beta won’t launch until sometime next year, work seems to be progressing very rapidly, according to inXile’s latest Kickstarter update:

Chris here. Our team is continuing to work hard on getting the Beta Test ready to deliver to you. Torment is in that exciting stage where things are coming together rapidly, and it’s been amazing over the last few months to see so many elements of the game take shape. We want to continue cleaning up some rough edges so that you can have the best experience possible. For that reason, we are planning to release the Torment Beta Test early next year so we can deliver a more polished and complete Beta Test.

We know that you have been waiting for this, and we want to get the game to you as soon as we can, but we felt that the Beta version we could bring you would be that much better with a little more time in development. We appreciate your patience.

We were quite happy with the release of the Alpha Systems Test, in that it allowed us to collect useful feedback on even the smallest elements of the game. We want the Beta Test to be a continuation of that level of collaboration with our community, while also being a great first hands-on impression for Torment. And this is going to be a legitimate hands-on. While the Alpha Systems Tests could be finished in around 20 minutes, the upcoming Beta release will contain over 10 hours of gameplay on a normal playthrough.

The update also includes an image (which can be seen at the top of this article) and a short description of The Order of Truth, one of the factions in Sagus Cliffs.