It might have taken us 4 years, but we got NET.CRAWL 1.0 before GTA 6.
It's a big day, and I assume a higher-than-usual number of people are going to read this post. And those people (you) might all have different backgrounds.
So let's try to break it down a little bit.
If you are new here:
There is a demo, and the first 2–3 hours are identical to the full game. You can safely start there. The game is hard to gauge from the outside. Play the demo. Based on my stats, it usually takes less than 5 minutes for someone to figure out whether the game is for them.
If you are among those 10% who completed the Early Access in full:
First of all, glad to see you again, friends. Depth-3 was added for you to explore, and you are guaranteed to see some new stuff on the way there. There are Pro difficulty achievements, which I believe are worth completing once each.
Unfortunately, challenges aren't ready yet. But there will be updates. I have no desire to turn NET.CRAWL into a 100+ hour game, let alone 300+. But we still haven't reached a point where it's a "guaranteed" 25 hours of good fun for a hardcore "strategy" gamer (whatever that is).
If you were waiting for 1.0 to avoid playing in Early Access:
Hmm, that's the tough one. I genuinely believe that waiting just a little bit won't make much of a difference. Waiting a full year should make a lot more difference, but that's like refusing to play a board game because there will be an expansion next year.
The game is in a very good spot -the best it has ever been.
Some of the fresh QoL features are amazing (I'm talking about the logging window). Controller support is pretty smooth, new nodes and aspects are pretty fun. The balance is better overall, and there are fewer rough edges.
But it's not the final and the best version of the game. No. That being said, I plan to focus much more on adding new stuff, and change things less often than during the EA period.
In fact, once we wrap up some post-release polishing, I plan to lock myself in the _dev branch until 1.5. That's the plan.
To everyone who sent us feedback during EA/playtest
Thank you. Your insights shaped this game more than you know.
None of the above:
There's a comment section under the post. Ask me anything about the project.
I'd be happy to answer. Tomorrow. Now I need to get some sleep.
Thanks for reading.
ps. I almost forgot. The updated roadmap is here (it's a trello board):