Thanks again to everyone that joined the playtest. It was a lot of fun and we have some really useful feedback. Playtest sign-ups are now closed, but if you've already signed up then you should be able to continue a little longer before we take that down.
Some things we learnt
Players LOVE kicking seagulls, (payback for those times at the beach perhaps?)
Poop is hilarious.. (but our waste system needs to be explained better).
Our unique sinking island mechanics were interesting and surprising.
Bunkers and the story have a lot of people hooked.
Players love being able to directly control characters (in addition to automation), it makes them feel more involved and attached to their characters. We need to continue improving some controls (such as the raft).
Players were really surprised at how polished and bug free it was (don't worry there are bugs!)
Players really love the art direction, vibe and slightly humorous tone.
People that don't often play colony-sims have been really enjoying the game.
We need to improve onboarding & tutorials.
Oceaneers appeals to a lot of different players (survival-crafters, colony-sim gamers, and life/farming sim gamers), and there is a lot of depth and mechanics in the game.
Sure, a lot of players did pick everything up really quickly, but we still need better guidance.
Part of this is that unlike a lot of other games, we let you both have direct control over your characters, and automate tasks. Players love being able to do both of these, but it adds a little bit to the learning curve.
We have already started to improve the tutorials and UI in the latest patches, but we have a few more ideas, so rest assured this will be smoother come demo time.
We will improve the tutorials an onboarding.
Simplify instructions, and "show don't tell" more where possible.
Continue to improve UI and QoL.
We need to tweak the controls.
While controlling characters is easy in most situations, it can get a little finicky on the raft. Part of this is due to how versatile our rafts are - for example you can have a character driving and having other characters standing on the raft, when given a "Work Here" command in the ocean, everyone will salvage in the area and get back on the raft when they are done (on top of this, work here commands can be queued).
We want to keep this multi-character functionality as it's really neat, so we will continue to improve the controls and character behavior (we have already made several improvements). Tutorials play a part here as well, some players not realizing you can just click a raft to select it, so we need to do a better job with the raft instructions.
We will continue to improve controls.
Improve instructions for control rafts.
Add game options to let players customize how some controls work.
"What game is it like"
We like to ask players what game it reminds them of, and, "oh buoy", we have seen just about every game under the sun mentioned by now!
It's been really interesting to see what type of games players have brought up - obviously this depends a lot on which games payers have played in the past. In no particular order:
Don't Starve and Paper Mario (in relation to the art style).
Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, The Survivalist, Cult of the Lamb.
Raft (and open world survival crafting games in general).
The Flame in The Flood, Flotsam, Frostpunk & Sheltered.
A hint of Fallout/Fallout Shelter.
Monkey Island, The Sims, Craft the World, Clanfolk.
We knew there would be comparisons to similar looking games (like Don't Starve and Oxygen Not Included), so we were extremely pleased to see players add comments to this comparison that Oceaneers is still very different and innovative, it's very much doing its own thing.
What's Next!?
We are working on improving the experience for the upcoming demo. If you have already signed up for the playtest, keep it installed as we will probably drop a few patches for you to try (and we will keep it active for a while to anyone that signed up, even though the sign-up itself will come down).
Come have a chat!
Our community is growing, and everyone has been amazing and really friendly. Come chat with the devs and other players in our Discord
Leaving Feedback
If you encounter any bugs, or would love to discuss features please do so via the Steam forums or our Discord. It's really helpful to know about the parts of the game you enjoy, as well as anything you don't.
You can also check discord for a list of known bugs, community suggestions and upcoming plans!
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⚡ Be sure to Wishlist Oceaneers, and stay tuned for the next dev diary and more announcements. ❤️
Join Us!
Join our discord to discuss the game and share your ideas!
Join discord here
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Some recent Dev Diaries in case you missed them:
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