It is now about a year and four months since Edge of War entered Early Access, and it is time for us to give a bigger update on how things have been going so far and what the future looks like.
This is quite a long post with many things, but at least it should be quite extensive as we really want to keep things transparent and our community informed.
The beginning of Early Access
As has been told before, going to Early Access was forced by external conditions. We had lost our publisher and were running out of money which meant that everyone in the team had to look for jobs elsewhere. As we did not want the game to be buried without anybody ever playing it, five of us decided to keep on continuing development in our spare time and to prepare for that we spent our last months working full-time in getting the game to Early Access condition. It was not in the level that we would have wanted to be when entering Early Access, but the situation was clear in the sense that if we really want to keep on developing the game, we need to build a community around it to support us and walk the path together with us.
Before the unfortunate situation, we had a team of around 15 persons working on the game full-time, so the amount of hours we could put into development dropped quite dramatically.
Time in Early Access so far
The time we have been developing the game in Early Access has been quite a learning path so far. It was extremely hard to evaluate how fast we can progress with things and how many hours we could put into the game. First half a year two us (me and our Lead Level Designer Antti) spend quite a lot time on pushing the game forward. The biggest priority was to push forward quest content that we were really lacking. Luckily Antti proved to be also extremely good in working on the narrative part of quest content and we managed to have quite a push there. Of course we were lacking lots of elements for quest development still, so we had to limit ourselves on working on the content that we really could already support. I was mostly working on coding and game design related things as well as trying to organize our work in the way that we can manage it better while working in our spare time. With that work, we managed to get an important update of getting some more story content in and improving the existing one, which really added a lot to the game (which before that was primarily just exploration and combat, which could be pretty fun, but a bit aimless).
After that period, Antti got occupied by happy things in his personal life and have not yet taken that much time in development since that.
After that, I mostly worked on the things myself. The initial update was quite a big one and having worked on bigger things it was extremely hard to adjust on scoping things to smaller updates and therefore shorter periods between updates. That is something we are still learning. To improve that, lots of time has also been spent on technical things to improve our own tooling for being more effective. Unfortunately that is something that is not immediately seen in updates themselves, but should help us when going forward. There was quite a bit of tweaking on game mechanics as well (and there is still some to do).
Also, there were other learnings as well. We had been (and still are) missing for example lots of VFX, which makes things sometimes really unpolished. So, I’ve been spending quite a bit of my time to also work on the VFX side of things. It’s fun stuff, but of course very time consuming still to get things “right”.
At the start of Early Access I spent lots of weekends and evenings developing the game, so in the summer I was quite tired with it, so we had a two month break. After that, I did get active again and we got a few updates in as well. Our Lead Artist Lyde also jumped in to finish some facial hair so that we finally got those in game. In addition our CEO Sami worked on a pile of animations for NPCs, so that we can get them out of just standing idle in the place. Unfortunately I have not yet had time to work on the tech side of getting those in use, so they are still waiting to be used.
Thinking of the progress so far and how far we have come now, I feel like things have been much slower than I was hoping for. Of course it is totally understandable, and something to take into account in future when planning on new features and what we should prioritize. We need to learn to be even smarter in picking our battles during development. Sometimes it feels sort of insane to work on developing a game of this size in our spare time, even though we got a good head start for it during the time we worked on it full-time. But being a bit insane can be advantageous in working in the gaming business in any case.
The sales of the game have been pretty low. That is somewhat expected for an Early Access title. That is something I’m quite okay with though, it has been just enough for us to be able to pay costs of some of the tooling like version control and so on, so that we don’t need to put our own money into those monthly as we have managed to minimize such costs. That is important, of course and lets hope we can keep even that small regular income coming. We have not been pushing marketing for the game much either. It's mostly me telling us to still keep it on hold before spending our time on it as I feel that the game is not yet in the shape that I’d want it to be to really show how good it can be.
What I’ve been really happy about is that even though the game is still long way to being nearly as good as I’d want it to be in Early Access, it has been quite well received. Currently the game stands in 81% positive ratings, which is nice in this phase. It makes me believe that when we get the polish of the current content to the desired level, we can start aiming for much higher numbers still. It is a great indication of the potential. Also, we have had some really positive interaction with our community. All of that is extremely important in keeping the fire of passion burning. When you are in a situation where there is a mountain of work to be done in your spare time and you really cannot expect any compensation for it (at least in near future, and maybe never), all of those positive words and encouragement are extremely valuable. I really want to thank all of you who have given it. If you would not have done that, it is very possible that we would not be here still developing the game.
What does the future look like?
As mentioned before, it is quite a long path ahead. There is tons of work before the game is finished, so it is important to focus on nearby goals. The development pace will likely not improve much of what it has been (unless we can find some treasure goblin to loot and be able to hire some of us full-time again). We are still working on the game, update by update. Time will tell when we are ready (if ever). Maybe it's two years, maybe ten, maybe we will get it released from retirement home. There is still a chance that at some point we notice that the passion has burned out and we will finish the things properly to that point. In any case, we will keep you all updated and there will be no sudden disappearance or anything such.
Instead of focusing on the final release somewhere in the distant future, it is important to focus on something more tangible.
The next important goal for the game is to get it to the level where we would have wanted it to be when initially entering Early Access.
Some of the major things that we will be focusing for that are:
- Some improvements on game mechanics for ability usage and combat. For example shields should become more useful and we want more variety on how combat feels, for which we have quite good ideas on how to get that done.
- All the enemy encounters should be revisited after mechanics changes. There is lots of polish required for most of the enemies. There are some enemy skills missing animation, vfx and such.
- Character skills and skill progress should be revisited. Some of the skills and skill trees really don’t work as nicely as wanted at the moment, so there is room for overhaul there.
- We would need a pile of usability improvements. Some things with highlight indicators cluttering the screen at some points, better showing interactables and so on.
- Party management also needs a major update. It has been lacking quite a bit and will need some love.
- Revisiting for some of the dialogue is needed as well as some additional quest content. We have some additional mechanics to tell the story coming to help us with that.
- Some UI usability improvements would still be in need. We should be able to better teach some of the game mechanics, have some place to find all the hotkeys and such. Life of quality things. And of course some location map, even on a simple level, to make it easier to find your way inside locations.
- And of course a pile of bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements (would be really nice to get those NPC animations into use and so on).
This all will of course come in a series of small updates, so we will not lock ourselves in our wizard’s tower and appear in a year or so and just toss all at once.
So, that is the next big goal ahead.
That should take us to the place where we can tell that even though we still are missing some major systems and lots of content, you can happily jump into the game and get a good impression of what you will be getting. And that would be a good place for us to start putting some extra effort in marketing the game for a wider audience as well. And that does not mean that we are not happy to get all the visibility before that as well as all new players are more than welcome already.
I think that would be sort of the next big check point on where we will be heading with the game in the future.
Of course there are likely some smaller content additions and polish outside the main goal as well, but those are nice bonus to appear every now and then.
The goal is there, the pace will reveal itself while we see how the path opens in front of us.
Thanks to all of you who have been walking this path together with us so far, and all of those who will join us in future. You all make the path much more fun to walk.
Cheers,
HP - Lead Developer
