Hello everyone!
What a day!
It started good, then turned into a bit of a roller coaster, then crashed and burned!
We didn't expect that wave of negative reviews from China and it has affected us quite a bit.
At the current rate, if things don't change we'll probably be reaching a negative reception rating this Saturday. I suspect we may even reach a record in negative reviews!
We're still alive and working though! And, on the bright side, for what's worth our reception in the rest of the world is sitting at good 91% approval rating!
Negative Reviews:
There's a combination of factors that lead to this situation, one is that our Chinese community had joined Tropical Island as it was just out of Early Access, and we think they didn't have a measure of the progress that our games go through from EA to release.
We know Fantasy Forest is still far from finished, and that it's far from the goals and ambitions we have for it. But we also know that it already has more content than Tropical Island did when it first came out in Early Access, and having played the game for hundreds of hours, we trust in our vision. To those of you who might be harbouring doubts, we would like to ask that you have faith in us. We will continue to work hard and iterate, and with the feedback of the community we can really make the game a lot better than its predecessor.
This is how we work, we start small, and then grow from there.
Your feedback is very valuable, but sending it to us in the form of a negative review can really be detrimental to the future of the game. With us being a small team and the game having a relatively small audience, every negative review has a lot of impact, including on us as individuals. If you want to let us know what you think, please consider doing it through our Discord server, the Steam forums, the QQ group or our personal email. Of course you are free to leave a review if you didn't enjoy the game, but please keep in mind that these alternatives exist if you want to communicate your feedback to us.
As it stands, we have been greatly affected by this wave of negative reviews from our Chinese playerbase, so if you like our game and think our project is worth it but have yet to leave a review, please consider doing so. It would greatly help us retain some visibility on Steam during these important days after the release.
And to those of you who have written positive reviews, thank you for your support, we're very happy that you like the game, you really keep us going. 🙂
Speaking of feedback, we wanted to address some of the main recurring themes that we found in the reviews:
Feedback:
- Getting lost in the woods...
I understand that many of you don't like this, so we'll be working on some features to alleviate some of those concerns, including drawing more art for the locations.
- Food rots too fast!
We hear you! This is something we've been tweaking again and again, but perception is that things are still rotting too fast. This has been fixed as of now.
- Quests vs Freedom!
We understand some players perceive that quests are too constraining.
We will be working on releasing a quest-less mode soon for those of you who want it. In the meantime, if you really dislike quests, you can also equip the "All Knowing" perk, which should unlock all blueprints from the start.
- The game is not finished enough:
Unfortunately there's not much I can say about this one. We are going to be working hard on adding more content, but know that there is already a large amount of new things to experience in Fantasy Forest. The game has enough content for dozens of hours and you should definitely try to survive winter and try the magic system.
Tonight's Patch:
We have just pushed a new patch with some nice new additions that we believe should address some of the issues mentioned before.
- Tutorial Skipping:
The tutorial can now be skipped when starting a new game. This should unlock all basic blueprints, unlock the first branching quests and make you start directly in the river clearing.
- Rot Nerf:
We have substantially increased the time carcasses, meats, mushrooms and nettle leaves take to rot.
- Fishing Buff:
It should now be easier to catch fish in Summer. Both in terms of chances and fish variety.
- Help Screens:
We've added 3 help screens to help players learn the basics of the UI and well as many tips on how to get the most of the advanced interface features.
Official Patch Notes since release:
- Added help screens.
- Added the possibility to skip the tutorial.
- Improved Chop Wood subquest text to make it less confusing.
- Eat actions no longer costs any stamina.
- Boiled Moss is now shown in the food filter.
- Improvised Bed now drops the materials it was made from.
- Deconstructing an Improvised Shelter no longer destroys its inventory contents.
- Increased Fish variety and doubled catch rates of Fish in Summer.
- Significantly increased the amount of time carcasses, meat, forest caps and nettle leaves need to rot.
That is all for now.
See you in the next announcement!