The beta for Torment: Tides of Numenera was originally slated for December last year but had to be delayed until January 17th due to some last minute bug fixing and general polishing-up.

However, even the January 17th release had to be delayed due to some unforeseen problems and the final, 100% going to happen, date for the beta is set on January 21st. Here's the short announcement message:

"Tomorrow is the day, friends! We'll be distributing keys to our backers tomorrow (21st of January). We'll have more details for you tomorrow so keep your eyes peeled!"

The beta will start you at the beginning of the game and will contain the introduction as well as most of the first major location, Sagus Cliffs. Sagus is a very old city built on top of ancient ruins which predate even the return of humanity to the Ninth World. It's split in to five main districts filled with plenty of lore to discover, characters to talk to and a bunch of quest to complete.

Its going to be fairly long for a beta test and will probably take you around a dozen or so hours to fully finish. What this also means is that you will most likely encounter bugs or broken quests so if that's not your cup of tea I'd recommend you wait until Torment is closer to release. But if you are willing to endure some bugs in order to help Torment's development make sure to use the in-game bug reporting tool to ensure that those annoying little buggers get ironed out by release.

The Kickstarter-backer beta is going to start on January 21st with an Early Access release following shortly on January 26th.