TLDR; If you haven’t already, leave us a review! Tell us what you think about Estranged – we read every single review.
The reviews on Steam are very important, as players use them to decide which games to play. Estranged: Act II currently sits with an average Steam score of over 70%, which we are extremely proud of for an unfinished Early Access game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/582890/
Addressing Reviews
I check the reviews on a regular basis, and work to either make a conscious effort to reply with corrections, or weigh up whether a work item should come out of the feedback to change the game.
A good example of that is this review, where the author highlighted some pain points with the current game. I had the changes in the pipeline anyway so decided to prioritise them for the next build, and the author updated the review once they were put live.
Early Access
The cases are not always that simple however, some of the pieces of feedback which are difficult to address revolve around the game not being finished yet. That is always quite frustrating and in some ways paradoxical feedback – I decided to put the game forward for Early Access to get it into the hands of players sooner and get them involved in content during development.
That does mean that the game is in an unfinished state during that time – and the expectations for Early Access vary from player to player. I think we need to do a better job at communicating at what state the development is in to players picking up the game for the first time. Ideas for that are welcome.
The Switch to UE4
There are a lot of reviews covering the switch to UE4, with some players rating Act II unfavourably as it no longer runs on the Source Engine.
Addressing that kind of feedback is tricky – the decision to switch to UE4 was made by the team, to make development easier using the industry standard game engine tech. This is a case where a change made development easier for us as a development team, unfortunately disappointing the fans of Source.
We are committed to continuing the feel of the first game in Act II, even with the engine difference.
Like I said in the opening of the post, if you haven’t already please leave us a review! If you like the game, it lets us know we’re on the right track, and if you don’t it lets us know what to do to improve.
Thanks for playing Estranged!
Alan