Hello fellow readers!
2024 started with a big discount of the game to decide about the future of Exipelago. I am going to start with a little summary of the last year. This post is meant as being informational about the decisions made
I am not mentioning any actual sale numbers as they don't really matter for me but the little was all used up by initial marketing, fees and some asset purchases (mainly audio) - so don't make any wrong assumptions, the profits on this game are basically zero. I tried my best to spread the word while also working on enhancing the game but as you can see, it feels like noone is really interested in the idea and so I have to rethink the project as a whole. While I still enjoy working on the game, I mainly do so for myself - at least it feels like so - which is not bad in it's own but it's a hobby then and has to be handled as such. As a sidenote, ~20% of buyers have returned the game after purchase. Not sure why they just didn't try the demo instead.
So don't get me wrong here, I would be all in for working on something people are going to enjoy, but that just does not seem to be the case, when even wishlisting is asked too much.
As a first measure I will drop the base price of the game to something that's going to be adequate for what it is right now and no longer what it can become in the future. I may adapt the price in the future but that progress will be slow. Maybe the game picks up more interest/feedback. Of course - as it always was - as soon as someone brings in a request via discord/etc I will most likely be happy to implement it.
Let's also summarize what the game currently is. It's basically a voxel colony builder. It comes with editors to add your own things to the game (plants, trees, items, materials and even production chains). There is a creative mode where you can just build whatever you want for the sake of building/designing and the sim mode, where you start with a low amount of villagers which have needs to be fulfilled and you build a colony for them. In that mode is a steady (but unregular) income of new villagers you have to care for.
There is a day night/cylce, you can schedule the tasks of your villagers, you can do automation, digging, harvesting, farming, shape your world, care for light, food and shelter in a fully destructable voxel world. There is no combat, in it's current form it's basically a chill colony sim or voxel builder.
Please only consider buying if this is something you would enjoy - otherwise wishlist to show me your interest and maybe join discord and let me know what you would wish
The games base price is going to get reduced permanently to adapt what the game currently IS. This does not mean a full stop on development nor does it mean that the game will leave Early Access and be considered finished. More likely it's going to be in Early Access for much (much) longer than initially supposed. Maybe forever.
Whoever purchased the base game in 2023 will get free keys for every future game I make, I highly recommend to join the games discord, as everything related is going to be announced there
I am going to adapt the steam store page as well, as it also needs newer screenshots and such to better reflect the current state.
Project "Exipelago" is something I always wanted to make, I was inspired by many other games and when I started in 2019 (basically making a whole engine for it). I envisioned a highly customizable voxel builder which is actually inhabited by people doing their stuff while you build them a village. It came a long way and many of my goals where actually implemented. I started early with doing videos about the development progress and there was some good feedback but also a bit of hate (which I never really understood)
While working on it, several other games in this genres also were made - so that may be just too much competition with way more marketing capabilities. Let's not forget, that currently there is 50 games released every day on steam and most of them never succeed to get a significant followship. Maybe Exipelago is one of those and as unfortunate as it is - the games idea is too complex/time consuming to invest several months/years with almost no followship, I hope everyone understands.
Anyway, there ARE players out there which have dumped many 100 hours into the game by just enjoying building and maybe all the work so far was then already worth it
I do want to add so much more to the game tho, so whenever I have some time available I will most likely get updates out - just make sure join the beta branch in steam to get the latest version as deploying to the default version will take much longer. Also be aware, that - as the data above suggests - the game will never leave Early Access and may keep in a "floating" state. I will be more than happy to implement features asked by community tho.
Let's see what 2024 brings - I am looking forward!
2024 started with a big discount of the game to decide about the future of Exipelago. I am going to start with a little summary of the last year. This post is meant as being informational about the decisions made
- 750.000 People have visited the steam store page
- only 1700 people have wishlisted the game (most of it after release)
- the games discord (at this point of writing) has only 50 members
- the games subreddit has 15 members
- my youtube channel gained 50 more subscribers since start of Early Access
- all other social channels aren't even worth to be considered (including this website)
I am not mentioning any actual sale numbers as they don't really matter for me but the little was all used up by initial marketing, fees and some asset purchases (mainly audio) - so don't make any wrong assumptions, the profits on this game are basically zero. I tried my best to spread the word while also working on enhancing the game but as you can see, it feels like noone is really interested in the idea and so I have to rethink the project as a whole. While I still enjoy working on the game, I mainly do so for myself - at least it feels like so - which is not bad in it's own but it's a hobby then and has to be handled as such. As a sidenote, ~20% of buyers have returned the game after purchase. Not sure why they just didn't try the demo instead.
So don't get me wrong here, I would be all in for working on something people are going to enjoy, but that just does not seem to be the case, when even wishlisting is asked too much.
As a first measure I will drop the base price of the game to something that's going to be adequate for what it is right now and no longer what it can become in the future. I may adapt the price in the future but that progress will be slow. Maybe the game picks up more interest/feedback. Of course - as it always was - as soon as someone brings in a request via discord/etc I will most likely be happy to implement it.
What is the current state of the game?
Let's also summarize what the game currently is. It's basically a voxel colony builder. It comes with editors to add your own things to the game (plants, trees, items, materials and even production chains). There is a creative mode where you can just build whatever you want for the sake of building/designing and the sim mode, where you start with a low amount of villagers which have needs to be fulfilled and you build a colony for them. In that mode is a steady (but unregular) income of new villagers you have to care for.
There is a day night/cylce, you can schedule the tasks of your villagers, you can do automation, digging, harvesting, farming, shape your world, care for light, food and shelter in a fully destructable voxel world. There is no combat, in it's current form it's basically a chill colony sim or voxel builder.
Please only consider buying if this is something you would enjoy - otherwise wishlist to show me your interest and maybe join discord and let me know what you would wish
Base Price Reduction
The games base price is going to get reduced permanently to adapt what the game currently IS. This does not mean a full stop on development nor does it mean that the game will leave Early Access and be considered finished. More likely it's going to be in Early Access for much (much) longer than initially supposed. Maybe forever.
Whoever purchased the base game in 2023 will get free keys for every future game I make, I highly recommend to join the games discord, as everything related is going to be announced there
I am going to adapt the steam store page as well, as it also needs newer screenshots and such to better reflect the current state.
Conclusion
Project "Exipelago" is something I always wanted to make, I was inspired by many other games and when I started in 2019 (basically making a whole engine for it). I envisioned a highly customizable voxel builder which is actually inhabited by people doing their stuff while you build them a village. It came a long way and many of my goals where actually implemented. I started early with doing videos about the development progress and there was some good feedback but also a bit of hate (which I never really understood)
While working on it, several other games in this genres also were made - so that may be just too much competition with way more marketing capabilities. Let's not forget, that currently there is 50 games released every day on steam and most of them never succeed to get a significant followship. Maybe Exipelago is one of those and as unfortunate as it is - the games idea is too complex/time consuming to invest several months/years with almost no followship, I hope everyone understands.
Anyway, there ARE players out there which have dumped many 100 hours into the game by just enjoying building and maybe all the work so far was then already worth it
I do want to add so much more to the game tho, so whenever I have some time available I will most likely get updates out - just make sure join the beta branch in steam to get the latest version as deploying to the default version will take much longer. Also be aware, that - as the data above suggests - the game will never leave Early Access and may keep in a "floating" state. I will be more than happy to implement features asked by community tho.
Let's see what 2024 brings - I am looking forward!
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