Hi all!
As you can imagine it’s been a pretty crazy week here at Monster HQ and to be honest we’re still a little dazed from the whirlwind of excitement that was Steam Next Fest.
Saying that, I thought now might be a good time to write a round up on the event while things are still fresh in my head.
Read ahead for some developer ramblings…
The Event
Steam Next Fest was always going to be a big week for Star Trucker. It was our first time showing the game outside of expos and our first real test of it running on such a wide range of hardware.
As you might have experienced, the demo was not without issues. Thankfully many of you powered through, providing words of encouragement and useful feedback.
We also had some fabulous guest streams including an interview with the voice of Red Eddie, Jay Britton and another with our lovely Raw Fury game producer, Rasmus. We hope you enjoyed those and we’ll do our best to set up some new informative chats in the near future.
The event also saw streamers from all over the world boot up the demo, crash, deliver, freeze to death and accidentally launch themselves into the harsh void of space. We had a blast watching what we could and it was a genuine relief to see so many excited viewers in the comments and streamers enjoying themselves.
Rocket Powered Wishlists
You might not realize it but wishlists are super important for indie developers and small publishers.
Thanks to Steam Next Fest and the incredible response from players we saw a mind-boggling spike of wishlists during the event and gained a ton of new followers keen to keep tabs on the game.
This boost not only helps us reach a larger audience but also shows we’re on the right track with our weird idea of putting big-rigs in space
Oh! And it also helped us land in the official top 50 list alongside a whole lot of other awesome games.
Key Takeaways
We’re still collating the huge number of comments and survey responses but here are just a few of our takeaways from your feedback on the demo…
Better Tutorials
We absolutely want to do a better job of teaching the essentials while still allowing room for discovery and experimentation.
One small step towards this has been implementing a user manual that can be found in the glove box. This provides a way to revisit any tutorials you encounter and read up on smaller features.
However there’s certainly more we can do beyond this and we have our thinking caps on with that in mind!
Fine Tuning
There’s been a lot of good feedback around game balance. This has been great to read and although some issues were a side effect of an overclocked demo, you’ve still given us some great indicators for where we need to tweak and poke various values.
In fact, items being easily damaged in zero-g has already been addressed and system degradation rates are being adjusted as I type!
Fair warning
We’ve also made a lot of notes from watching streams and playthroughs regarding how we time critical warnings and the visual cues around low oxygen and extreme temperatures.
As part of our balance pass we’ll tweak the min and max temperature limits but more importantly we’ll address how much warning you get when something is wrong.
Hopefully this will provide players more opportunity to rectify cab issues or jump into their space suit before roasting to death or running out of oxygen.
Tasks and Waypoints
We also feel more work can be done around this area of the game, in particular making sure players know where the key locations are for their active quests.
So, more prominent quest waypoints, better guidance and an introduction to the map! Some time will also be spent in making sure task instructions are nice and clear and never cut short.
What’s Next
Well...alongside everything discussed we’re still hard at work building the rest of the galaxy and wrapping up feature work.
Bug squashing and stability improvements are also ongoing and Monster Dan continues to keep his head down as he hooks up various side jobs.
These NPC focused mini quests should provide a great way to learn about mechanics, explore gameplay concepts and provide our voice actors lots of CB slang to chew through!
Signing Off
Lastly I want to take another moment to say how thankful we are to everyone who took the time to play the demo and provide feedback.
Seeing so many people enjoy Star Trucker despite the rough edges has been a heart-warming experience and we can’t wait to share more about the game with you all very soon.
Until then I’ll be down, out and on the side.
- Monster Dave