Just in case anyone else was wondering, I'll repost my response here too:
The long and the short of it is that it's ready when it's ready. I really can't give you a timeframe without it being highly likely that I won't meet it anyway.
However, there may be a public alpha version relatively soon. And by relatively I mean within the next few months, so think possibly June. But it'll be nowhere near complete by then or anything, just playable.