The day has arrived: Dropzone is now in Early Access! All of us here at Sparkypants Studios are really excited to be getting the game into your hands, and we can't wait to hear what you think.
Over the past few months, we've been working alongside our Closed Beta testers to polish core gameplay, iterate on new features, and squash bugs; and today we're thrilled to involve more players in the development of Dropzone through Early Access.
For all new Commanders just joining us, welcome! To help you prepare for your first Core-hunting missions on Europa, here are a few tips:
- Be sure to run through the tutorial! It'll teach you everything you need to know about how to play Dropzone.
- Dropzone has a replay system that allows you to watch matches featuring other players! Click on the WATCH tab in the menu to browse through recently-played games. It's a helpful way to pick up some new tactics. You can even watch your own replays (easily located in your Profile > Match History) to see what your opponent did during the match!
- Dropzone is all about customizing your squad of three Rigs and their Gear. From the BUILD menu, you can test your squad's abilities before you bring them into battle against human or AI opponents.
After you've gotten a few drops under your belt, we'd love to hear your thoughts here on the Steam forums. At Sparkypants, collaborating with our players is a big part of what we do, and your feedback helps to improve Dropzone. We're also big believers in keeping our players informed about the direction we're planning to take with Dropzone, so today we'd like to share with you our development Roadmap. This isn't an exhaustive list of all the things we want to add to the game during Early Access (and YOU, our players, might come up with some cool ideas we'll want to incorporate in the future), but it's high priority stuff we're working on. In the coming months, you can expect to see:
- Ranked Play mode, for players who want to test their skills in a division format. If you click on the Ranked Play tab (in the Versus menu), you can see an overview of what we have planned for our ranking system.
- An ad-hoc tournament system for creating and competing in short daily tournaments .
- Additional Infestation and PvE content.
- A brand new 5th class, including three new Pilots and 24 new pieces of class-specific gear.
- A new Season of Gear!
- More pilots!
- More maps!
As we roll out new updates to Dropzone, we'll dicsuss them with you and listen to your input. If you have suggestions, run across issues, or just want to share your thoughts on the game, be sure to let us know in the forums!
Now get out there and grab some Cores, Commander!