Setting the stage
This will be the last post before Plague Alchemist enters Early Access. There are only three weeks left, but the amount of work still to do to be fully prepared feels like a lot more than that.
We wanted to take a moment to explain what Plague Alchemist really is, set expectations, and share how things will look going forward after the Early Access launch.
Final shape of Plague Alchemist
Relatively recently, Plague Alchemist went through a big change: the removal of all combat and death mechanics.
Originally, we wanted to create a game that involved combat and build a portion of the gameplay around it. But when the actual release dates came onto the horizon, we realized that creating all the combat systems, the surrounding content and art, and the immersive world we envisioned simply wasn’t realistic to the degree we wanted. We had to make a difficult choice: sacrifice combat in favor of a much deeper and more immersive world.
This did mean that a portion of already completed work had to be discarded, but it also freed up much-needed resources to focus on the things that really matter to us: creating a world worth exploring.
After stabilizing the game and rolling out the first version without combat, the direction actually became much clearer. It no longer felt like a compromise—it felt like the game finally found its identity. At this point, Plague Alchemist has a clear idea of what it is and what it wants to be, and we’re very happy we took this route.
Setting expectations
We are a two-person team: a developer and an artist.
(We’ve also had help from some amazing people in shaping the story, the continents, and the art you’ve seen on the store page.)
We have never made a game of this scale before, and over the three-year development period it has been a rollercoaster, to say the least.
The ideas are big, and the enthusiasm has only grown since the first lines of code and the first pixels were placed in the project.
We truly hope that you will enjoy playing Plague Alchemist as much as we’re enjoying making it.
Communication during the Early Access period
We are very excited—and at the same time quite terrified—to release this game into the wild, but it has to happen sometime.
Our main lines of communication during the Early Access period will be:
Monthly devlog on Steam
Discord
About the devlog
As you may have noticed, we stopped the “Weekly devlog” on December 12th. This is because the weekly format turned out to be more of a pressure point than we anticipated (these posts take more time and effort to write than we thought), and during this period of preparing for Early Access it proved to be too much to handle alongside development.
A great lesson, nevertheless.
We’ll be moving to a monthly devlog format for the entire Early Access period. This should let us communicate more clearly and in more depth, with less pressure on our side.
About Discord
We’ll be ramping up communication on our Discord channel:
Up until now, the game has only been accessible to a small circle of people, so the Discord hasn’t seen much activity. With Early Access going live, we’ll be much more active there and use it as a primary place for discussion and feedback.
Let the crunch continue
The next step is the Early Access launch on February 27th.
After that, we’ll be working on a roadmap to share with you so you know what’s coming next.
Thank you for following the development of Plague Alchemist, and see you on Discord.