Retrospective on the Game
Hello all!
ARRIVAL: ZERO EARTH has finally exited Early Access and graduated to the 1.0!
About three years ago I started working on something that would eventually evolve into the game it's today.
About two years ago I released the first playtests and demos to the public.
About a year ago the game started the Early Access journey.
When the early demos/prototypes were released two years ago, seeing your favorite youtubers playing the game was a very surreal feeling. This together with the feedback from the players encouraged me to work more on the game.
After the first demos and playtests I decided to spend a year before even launching it in an early access. In hindsight I could have probably launched the early access earlier after the initial exposure, but I wanted to add more of the ideas I had for the game and polish the game before launching the early access.
The great thing when launching the early access is that you got a lot of feedback in a short amount of time time and you were able to see some features or fixes requested more over the others.
Things added and changed during Early Access
During the early access I tried to make it so that most of the updates released would be based on the feedback received from the players when the early access was released.
Some of the Features added during the Early Access, most based on the player feedback:
- BIOMES (Originally there was only the snow biome when Early Access Started)
- Multiple fixes to hopefully improve the unit visibility in the middle of the action and explosions
- Made the game slightly more challenging
- Movement Tweaks (now "lag" less behind other units and removed the "stand still to attack")
- Custom sprites for all the units
- Achievements
- Leaderboards
- Keyboard Keybindings
- Graphical Improvements (especially the icons/ui)
- Stats Screen that shows the damage done by units and various other stats
- More Enemies
- More Units
- More Items
- Localization to 11 new languages
Thoughts about feedback etc
I appreciate all the feedback received, even when I couldn't add everything requested to the game, I think all the feedback was really high quality and I could see the point from the player's perspective from the feedback.
It's also important for the players to give criticism since that's the best way for the developers to know how the players feel. I think it's good to try to see all criticism as something positive as long as it's something constructive.
I was surprised by how nice everyone has been and how encouraging people were especially during the early steps of the game. I hope that everyone knows that generally people are very nice, polite and well-meaning.
So thank you everyone who's been here for this journey, it has been a great motivator to know that people are interested in this game!
I hope everyone has had fun playing the game and those who have not tried it yet, will have fun playing it.
- jounitus