Hey guys,
Let's talk about the launch.
Where we are currently
All in all the launch went about as we expected, which is to say not great. We did what we could to get as many features ready for release as possible, but given the strict budget there was never much hope for anything but a very basic release. Since we're a small team we didn't have much of a testing setup either, the result being a lot of bugs slipped past us when we tested the game internally.
While this type of release is not that uncommon among small indie teams, they usually launch through vendors other than Steam to smaller audiences that are more dedicated. We found that our core base that has been following the state of development and our news updates has been able to enjoy the game a lot, even in this early state. Unfortunately, launching on Steam exposed the game to a large crowd of people with very different expectations, people who are used to big studio productions using Early Access as cover for open betas or open-ended development, or who were burned by other titles getting abandoned soon after launch. Suffice to say there is nothing we could do to live up to expectations like that given our limited resources. The game has been getting review-bombed as a result, hurting our chances to hit our sales target significantly.
To make it to this point we had to stretch the limited budget as far as we could, meaning this launch was a now-or-never affair. Delaying any longer was not an option because the game would've simply run out of money and died. That also means we're completely reliant on sales from here on out to continue development. So far sales performance has been good enough to keep us going for a few more weeks, and we've been putting the dev time towards fixing critical issues. Over the weekend we've already released two hotfix updates to address the biggest problems people have encountered, with a third hotfix in progress.
Lessons in Indie Marketing
They say hindsight is 20/20, and this is very much a case of that. Looking back at the launch, there are a number of things we should have done differently. When we originally launched our Kickstarter, our marketing plan was what most Indie games in our position do: a low-key release through a smaller distributor, selling the game through our own website and slowly building up a dedicated fanbase as the game matures from an early prototype to a more fleshed out game. When we partnered with our publisher Camlann Games, they wanted to do a more traditional marketing campaign focused around building maximum hype and exposure. The problem is this type of marketing is focused only on generating clicks, with no regard to how the game would eventually be received. It works for big studios because they already have all the resources they need to release to a very high standard. With small releases like ours you need to be very careful about who you're marketing to and what expectations you're setting. Camlann's bombastic trailers used embellished cinematics based on Kickstarter material, and while they certainly built a lot of hype around the game they also created distorted expectations that we were never going to live up to with our first launch. After breaking with Camlann, we tried our best to correct peoples perception through our own messaging, but we never managed to get the same level of reach that those trailers and press releases did.
While we did eventually break our ties, another mistake we made was keeping to their release plan. They had already set us up with Steam and GOG pages we were supposed to launch to, with as wide an audience as possible. What we should have done is go back to our original plan of a low-key release through our website, done much earlier than this with a less feature-complete build. It would have allowed us to generate early revenue to boost our budget, the feedback and bug reports from players would've been invaluable in improving the game before a wider release and boosted team morale. While the possibility of doing so crossed my mind, I dismissed it at the time. I was fearful that such an early release would disappoint people, that if all we had was base building and basic management our players would feel disappointed and abandon the game forever. Looking back this fear seems silly given how overwhelmingly supportive and patient our core community has been throughout development. After everything that happened with Camlann burnout was a major issue for me and I was in a very bad state of mind, causing feelings like that to cloud my better judgement. As it stands I can only blame myself for making such a foolish mistake. Now we have to deal with the consequences.
Next Steps
We can't change the past, but we can do our best to move forward with the current situation as it is. What this means for the game is we'll continue to support and update it as best we can within our current capabilities, and hope that sales pick up once it becomes apparent this game isn't just another dump-and-run scheme.
We're currently working on the third hotfix update to solve various remaining issues with save games not working and expedition-related errors. After that we want to turn our attention to some more extensive issues and quality-of-life features. Priority items include adding tutorial popups and UI tooltips to help players learn the game, adding a system for plants and animals on the home map to replenish and an auto-save feature. Afterwards we'd like to expand on the combat features a bit more with some basic functionality like raid events, burials and stealth. We also have some ideas for how to improve the current expedition system for example by adding additional NPC spawns to the various residential buildings. Another priority feature is animal taming, to allow pack animals to carry large amounts of resources back to base (steel in particular).
So far our community has mostly been centered around Discord. While this works for general chatting, it's not a very good format for bug reports or more in-depth discussion of balance issues, gameplay suggestions, etc. Because of that we're currently working on setting up an official forum for the community to talk about the game in more depth and help us process bug reports more easily. We'll also open recruitment for volunteer beta testers to help ensure future updates live up to a high standard of polish.
I'm not going to mince words and pretend that the current situation is looking rosy, but we didn't come this far to just abandon the game over a bumpy launch. We're going to do what we can to turn things around and with any luck sales performance will pick up enough to continue development well into the future.
Kickstarter Status Update
Aside from hotfixes, our top priority remains getting our Kickstarter backers their game keys. I still haven't heard back from itch.io's customer support and I'm now looking into Humble as an alternative service. Setting it up would likely take a few days to get a store page set up and approved, but should provide a solid platform to distribute both Steam keys and DRM-free downloads. If this doesn't work out either I will start manually distributing keys via email. Taking a good two days out of my schedule to mail 970 backers personally is not something I'm keen on doing when there's so much other work to be done, but if automated services fail us that's what has to be done.
That’s it for today. Until next time, stay safe and keep surviving!