Hello folks!
Welcome to 2024 and another year of ongoing development for Exipelago! In this post, I am going to recap the last year and give some information about what expect from 2024 - with pure honesty from my side
Recap
First off - the last year was not "great" for Exipelago. It started strong in terms of dedicated time but it soon became clear, that the generel interest in the game seems to be very low. The game gathered a total amount of only 1700 Wishlist entries. I initally had high hopes in terms of success of the game idea but it turned out I may have not done my homework well and it felt like riding a dead horse at some point.
So I was literally forced to put my time into regular client work as "hopes" does not fill the stomach. Unfortunately in my business this can easily take up most of my available focus and it can be hard to schedule, which is basically what happened for the rest of the year.
Outlook
Anyway - even tho regular updates to the game dried out I am still working on the game behind the scenes and while there was no update to it I was working on some technical features and a refresh of the underlying engine to account for newer versions of available components. Another thing I am working on is several mechanics about ingame progression. I was tinkering with research-mechanics and also in overall villager-happiness as a necessity to gain more villagers. One of the main points currently lacking is some sort of "goal" for the game. Right now Exipelago is more like a cozy village builder where you can just build things and many have asked for some "reason" to actually build - so this will be one of the main points for 2024.
Another point in 2024 is the addition of more block shapes. I like the idea of building castles and for that to work, there has to be some more block shapes available, like arcs, bends or an inverted version of the current blocks. One minor problem with those is the current implementation of the water/light simulation which - at this point - is only able to either "full blocking" or "not blocking" .. which is something I am eager to solve as well at some point
The game will not leave Early Access any time soon and I am confident that a higher amount of players enjoying the game will be beneficial for the game itself.
I also want to create more videos about current features which are not really covered yet like the ingame editors. Some people mentioned they were not sure if this editors where in there by accident - no, they are there by purpose. They basically enable the option to add whatever content you want to the game, being it materials, items or plants - but as they do a lot of things it may be really hard to understand how to operate them properly, so that's something I really want to cover in some indepth videos about how to add things and share them via steam workshop.
Price Drop
Looking at the past year and the low interest in the game I decided to adapt my efforts as I simply can't sustain working fulltime on an idea only a few seem to really enjoy. So further development will take much longer than initially planned and to accommodate to that I will drop the price of the game radically. I will do this by an initial 50% discount to the game potentially followed by a regular price reduction.
This year starts with a 50% discount for the full half of january.
I hope noone is going to judge this in a bad manner as the simple truth is, that putting it on discount first will give the game a free boost of visibility which it desperately needs and unfortunately it's the systems involved which encourages such things and I can't really miss out on it.
The sole purpose really is to gauge if (enough) people are interested in the game idea. Of course, you can also just help to spread the word, which would be very helpful as well.
Early Adaptors
This pricing measurement is basically a temporary action. The game may return to it's initial price at some point but I am so grateful for the people who decided to purchase for the full price (the game became what it is, because of you!), that I will definitely find something to appreciate it. There will be either free keys for my other games, you may get free keys for any future games or you will have to opportunity of special ingame things. I am going to find something for everyone having purchased the game before the price drop. Feel free to make recommendations in discord.
2024 hopefully brings more people to Exipelago as I wanted it to be more community driven and being extended by community feedback. I want to work on things people enjoy playing for one reason or the other.
Looking forward to great adventures!
Feel free to respond somewhere in this forum, join the games discord, reddit or steam community boards.
Welcome to 2024 and another year of ongoing development for Exipelago! In this post, I am going to recap the last year and give some information about what expect from 2024 - with pure honesty from my side
Recap
First off - the last year was not "great" for Exipelago. It started strong in terms of dedicated time but it soon became clear, that the generel interest in the game seems to be very low. The game gathered a total amount of only 1700 Wishlist entries. I initally had high hopes in terms of success of the game idea but it turned out I may have not done my homework well and it felt like riding a dead horse at some point.
So I was literally forced to put my time into regular client work as "hopes" does not fill the stomach. Unfortunately in my business this can easily take up most of my available focus and it can be hard to schedule, which is basically what happened for the rest of the year.
Outlook
Anyway - even tho regular updates to the game dried out I am still working on the game behind the scenes and while there was no update to it I was working on some technical features and a refresh of the underlying engine to account for newer versions of available components. Another thing I am working on is several mechanics about ingame progression. I was tinkering with research-mechanics and also in overall villager-happiness as a necessity to gain more villagers. One of the main points currently lacking is some sort of "goal" for the game. Right now Exipelago is more like a cozy village builder where you can just build things and many have asked for some "reason" to actually build - so this will be one of the main points for 2024.
Another point in 2024 is the addition of more block shapes. I like the idea of building castles and for that to work, there has to be some more block shapes available, like arcs, bends or an inverted version of the current blocks. One minor problem with those is the current implementation of the water/light simulation which - at this point - is only able to either "full blocking" or "not blocking" .. which is something I am eager to solve as well at some point
The game will not leave Early Access any time soon and I am confident that a higher amount of players enjoying the game will be beneficial for the game itself.
I also want to create more videos about current features which are not really covered yet like the ingame editors. Some people mentioned they were not sure if this editors where in there by accident - no, they are there by purpose. They basically enable the option to add whatever content you want to the game, being it materials, items or plants - but as they do a lot of things it may be really hard to understand how to operate them properly, so that's something I really want to cover in some indepth videos about how to add things and share them via steam workshop.
Price Drop
Looking at the past year and the low interest in the game I decided to adapt my efforts as I simply can't sustain working fulltime on an idea only a few seem to really enjoy. So further development will take much longer than initially planned and to accommodate to that I will drop the price of the game radically. I will do this by an initial 50% discount to the game potentially followed by a regular price reduction.
This year starts with a 50% discount for the full half of january.
I hope noone is going to judge this in a bad manner as the simple truth is, that putting it on discount first will give the game a free boost of visibility which it desperately needs and unfortunately it's the systems involved which encourages such things and I can't really miss out on it.
The sole purpose really is to gauge if (enough) people are interested in the game idea. Of course, you can also just help to spread the word, which would be very helpful as well.
Early Adaptors
This pricing measurement is basically a temporary action. The game may return to it's initial price at some point but I am so grateful for the people who decided to purchase for the full price (the game became what it is, because of you!), that I will definitely find something to appreciate it. There will be either free keys for my other games, you may get free keys for any future games or you will have to opportunity of special ingame things. I am going to find something for everyone having purchased the game before the price drop. Feel free to make recommendations in discord.
2024 hopefully brings more people to Exipelago as I wanted it to be more community driven and being extended by community feedback. I want to work on things people enjoy playing for one reason or the other.
Looking forward to great adventures!
Feel free to respond somewhere in this forum, join the games discord, reddit or steam community boards.
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