Hello dear followers!
Sorry for no news from us for such a long time. The release date is closer and closer, we're trying to fix bugs as quickly as possible but seems like we need more time.
The whole past week we have been busy on bug fixes and content improvement. Besides, we trying to understand how to work with Steam and make a proper build. Seems like we almost done with it.
But the game is not ready yet to launch...
Interesting thing. Creating of various features is not enough to make a "game". We just analyze many reviews from various early access games and noticed that people don't like when the game have no any goal. The game may have nice graphic, some basic features, but don't have actually "gameplay".
And it makes sense. Let's take for example the FTL, but imagine that all weapons, upgrades and crew is available on the start. Such a game will become boring after 20 minutes of playing. Or let's take any other game and imagine that you have everything on the start. It will be not very interesting. So this is a current state of Celestial Command, and we're not very happy with this fact.
We noticed that some early access games have even less features and more bugs than Celestial Command have now, and people are still satisfied. But we want to use one additional week to make the game slightly better.
So right now we're working on a quests. It will be pretty simple system for now, but we think that even few randomly generated goals will make game much better.
Probably we should implement some kind of money, reputation and upgrades. Seems like learning curve and possibility to gradually open new technology is very important factors for attractive gameplay.
By the way, this is not very pleasant paradox. Some games have a lot of possibilities but have no gameplay goals, while another games, almost have no any possibilities, but can attract players due long and smooth growing curve or just due online score board.
You can just browse games in the Steam and make note that lot's of simple arcade games have almost perfect reviews, while many interesting sandbox games have a lots of frustrated players. Of course It makes sense, more complicated plans is harder to realize, but anyway, it's quite a sad.
Or maybe we just too worried before release. :)
So! We hope that new release date is November 20. If no, it will be in this month anyway.
By the way! Early access will be available for PC, Linux and SteamOS (when it will be available). But we have some problem with Mac, so release on the Mac will be available later.