We are sorry for being silent over the last months, but after the very intense time at the begin of the year (publisher deal and Steam Next Fest), we decided to calm down a bit, check the feedback, take a breath, check the feedback again, talk to our brand-new publisher, sit back, check the feedback again, do some planning, talk to the publisher and continue to work 😊
Based on the feedback and the possibility to get access to additional budget (via our publisher) we decided that increasing the team size, especially for software development, would be the best step for the project.
To achieve this, we needed to change things organizational and code-wise. So currently we are still in this transformational process while improving the AI in the meantime (code-aspects are really high-priority right now).
As AI improvements or the mentioned organizational aspects are quite difficult to demonstrate via an update, we have not much to share right now, sorry!
But things are going very well for Fata Deum and the mentioned steps will results in an improved development speed during this year and also allows us to already have much better support at the begin of the EA phase (instead of ramping these things up after getting new budget during the EA release).
So, it is very great that our publisher supports us in this direction!
The Steam Next Fest has been a great success and we received a lot of new input (2000+ filled out queries…) so this needed time 😊
The cooperation with the publisher means more money and more quality for Fata Deum before we release to EA, but it also means: a later release!
Thereby, we decided to move the release date to 2023.
A good god game needs time!
Steam Next Fest Was a Great Success!
Over 25.000 gamer played the Fata Deum demo and over 2.000 feedback forms have been filled out!
We have been able to more than double our Steam wishlists count and have now more than 100.000 outstanding wishlists (still increasing day by day). For an indie developer these wishlists numbers are very important to get enough coverage by Steam during release.
We have more than doubled our wishlist numbers during the Steam Next Fest! (https://steamdb.info/app/1330360/graphs/)
Having 100.000 wishlists is a great success for a small indie team like us and this would not have been possible without your support.
Thank you so much!
Our publisher Hooded Horse did also a great job during the Steam Next Fest so we could reach a new level of visibility. We are now on position 132 in the Steam global wishlists charts. Considering that more than 10.000 games are launched at Steam every year, this is just amazing!
Feedback Evaluation
2.000 filled out feedback forms during the Steam Next Fest… that’s a lot 😊
And we have taken them seriously analyzing each of these feedbacks!
While the overall picture is already quite good, we still have issues with controls and the tutorials ☹
So, this is something we will add another iteration for!
We also received a lot of nice ideas we will would like to put in the game either before or after EA release!
Of course, we would love to read that everyone is already totally happy with the game and ship it, but we are willing to get the mentioned issues fixed and ship afterwards!
That is what feedback is for😊 And our publisher sees things very similar.
Next Steps
We will now take a break (summer holidays) and continue to work afterwards! Next available Alpha build will be the big AI patch! So, stay tuned! A real godly opponent will kick your ass soon 😉 (this brand-new experience will only be available for Kickstarter Alpha backers, sorry)