It's time to come back and talk to you about the game!
First, a few figures.
Of the 9,000 players registered for the last playtest, just under 5,000 played the game.
The average playing time was 1 hour 30 minutes, and over 600 players played for more than 3 hours.
We received a huge amount of feedback, and the main topics were :
- Problems with the game's interfaces, particularly the legibility of text.
- Balancing problems, particularly during the Middle Ages
- The lack of a tutorial
- Bugs and crashes
The whole team is working hard to fix all these issues and improve the interfaces and text visibility, especially at high resolutions.
Sometimes, the problems raised were due to a misunderstanding of certain game mechanics, such as the limited construction area, the automatic generation of neighbourhoods, or faction management.
We've therefore decided to include a full tutorial and codex with the early access version to help you better understand certain gameplay loops and constraints.
We've also taken the opportunity to improve the game's 3D with, for example, the addition of drop shadows on the pitch.
We've also completely overhauled certain interfaces, such as the one for choosing your destiny:
We've still got quite a few things to do, but the team is making good progress and we're on schedule. We should soon be able to commit to a release date.
In video games, it's often said that completing the last 5 per cent of a game takes as long as completing the previous 95 per cent. I can confirm that ːsteamhappyː.