Releasing a game to you, the player, is terrifying. Really, genuinely, terrifying. After years of work there is always the fear that you completely missed the mark, or - possibly worse - that you graced the mark but missed anyway. Up to release, there is a constant lingering anxiety that we missed some minor detail that could have been fixed if spotted early enough, but was somehow missed.
Today, 12 days after release, over 150.000 of you have decided that Bellwright is a game worthy of your time and money, and it’s growing steadily every day. It is hard to explain just how much this means to us. You have taken away the anxiety and replaced it with motivation, encouragement and even trust. We understand what this means, and we will not disappoint you. The message is clear: Bellwright is ambitious and unique, but it’s also early, raw, and needs more work. And work, we will.
What I am personally thankful for is the community that is forming around the game. No matter where I look - Steam, Discord, Reddit, Twitch - people are friendly, respectful and helping each other out. You are all incredibly pleasant to talk to :)
One thing you may have noticed is that we have been somewhat reluctant to reveal what is planned for the future. This was a very deliberate decision: We wanted to avoid hyping you up about features that do not exist yet in the game. We feel very strongly that you should only buy Bellwright if you feel it is in a worthy state right now. On the other hand we get asked more and more often to share where we’re headed. There are actually a couple of features in the prototype stage that we could consider previewing. Please give me some advice here, do you prefer us to keep silent about features until they are ready, or would you like us to give you a sneak peek into features we’re working on?