Hey, everyone.
We're a few weeks past the Early Access release day now and would like to say a few words about our current situation as well as the road ahead.
Feedback
Suffice to say, the 'Overwhelmingly Positive' feedback on the Early Access version of Death Trash has exceeded our expectations. We got lots of incredible messages about the game through Steam reviews, the forum, social media, e-mail and private messages. Thank you so much for writing them.
Through our in-game feedback tool as well as the other channels we also got a lot of feedback on what's working good, what's not so good, and what could be added.
The most common negative was "not enough content yet", which should of course be improved over time. Most of the other concerns should also be met with improvements in the future.
We've updated the game a few times now since release, fixing technical as well as gameplay issues and will try to keep this flow of improvements.
Financial Situation
Good news: Death Trash has sold enough now that it made back its development costs and we can finish it on our own.
Apart from that we we'll have to see how it continues long-term. So no change in plans for now regarding team size, for example. But we're very happy that we can finish Death Trash according to our own vision.
Roadmap
Let's take a look at what's ahead for Death Trash.
The most common request and also our main development goal is of course "new content", but due to its nature and potential spoilers we'll be a bit tight-lipped here.
Content
Story Chapter One (Early Access Start Content)
- continue main quest through southern world map locations, improve temporary ending
- improve current dialogue and add more player decisions, add more depth
- revisit a few locations and improve level design, add more environment details
Story Chapter Two (During Early Access)
The Perished One, Steel Waste
Story Chapter Three (For the full release of the game)
Woundland, and more
Gameplay and other improvements
Gameplay Improvements
- expand mind items gameplay
- rebalancing the existing content regarding difficulty and economy
- add player stash / bank
- reorganize stats, add more usage for non-combat stats, more combat values affected by combat skills
- more detailed info through area overview map (e.g. on mouse hover)
- update crafting recipes
Combat Improvements
- add different type of energy weapons
- more animalistic, mutant and machine-based enemy types
- more advanced humanoid NPC combat behaviours for higher ranked enemies
NPC improvements
- reacting to scene events (e.g. door getting opened by player in stealth mode)
- better gameplay faction handling, not being able to easily exploit making them hostile to each other
- make them remember player actions
Support for community translations
- add simple modding system, including Steam Workshop, for text import / export
- add support for multiple fonts
Technical Stuff
- investigate and fix a few types of crashes for individual users
- local co-op bug-fixing and polishing
- add better user communication and support opportunity through in-game F1 tool
- fix level collisions, especially rolling into small spaces and getting stuck
- improve controller support by implementing Steam Input
- add more accessibility options
This list is not in chronological order. We’re a small team and will work on these tasks step by step, dynamically prioritizing, including community feedback. For the same reasons we’re also not dating any updates. We might finish this list in 2022, but if it takes more time then we'll take that time.
Onwards
Again, thank you so much for all your support and feedback. I know that much of your support is related to the promise of being able to experience the final version of Death Trash, and we're doing our best to bring that to life.
If you want to accompany us on this journey, please consider buying Death Trash:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/941460/Death_Trash/
If you have bought and played Death Trash already, consider writing a Steam review. It helps a lot with our visibility on the Steam Store.
- Stephan