We have decided to publish a demo version of Panoptic, for free, on Steam. Why not Early Access? Well, there are several reasons :
- VR is still a new and developing field. We want to gather as much feedback on the game as possible, while experimenting with solutions to various game design problem.
- We wanted to get the game in front of players as fast as possible, and reach the widest possible audience without forfeiting all chances of releasing a succeful commercial game.
- The content of this demo is not huge, and we feel it would not yet warrant an Early Access version. Once we add to said content, we will feel more comfortable using Early Access.
That said, we will be treating this demo as kind of an alpha version, so you can expect a lot of changes in the next few months. We plan on working on the demo until something like February 2017, and the first few items we are tackling are :
- Expanding controller support (including Steam controller)
- Online play
- Rules modifiers to increase replayability
- ...
If you want to give us feedback, please do so in the brand new Steam community hub for the game! Or you can always reach us @panopticvr on Twitter or Facebook. We also have a subreddit over at /r/panoptic if you prefer to use Reddit.
Thanks for your support, and we hope you enjoy Panoptic!