Hi everyone,
This is a post seemingly out of nowhere, but we wanted to address some stuff about the game since it's release. First off, we realize we made a mistake in how we rolled out this project. It's something both us (as the publisher) and the developer themselves really deeply regret. We were excited to release the game coming off of the last project we had worked on, and in that excitement, we obviously missed a lot. A lot doesn't cover it. We amateurishly tried going through a 3 day QA prior to the original release, but that clearly wasn't even remotely enough; we made a big mistake in how we released it. We had pushed back the game several times, and we rushed to get it out after receiving a wave of criticism for having trouble determining a release date. We know the game has gotten a lot of negative feedback since release (as of now, the game sits at mostly negative, or mixed if you count curator reviews).
A few months ago, in September, we tried rolling out the overhaul patch to fix things. We wanted to address player feedback, but clearly this didn't help with much, as feedback on the game actually got worse. We understand that we did a poor job in the rollout for the game and the game's update. I want people to know that it's been a massive learning experience for the developer (and for us, having published the game), and this will not happen again, ever. We know hotfixes and overhaul patches are no match for a polished game on release. We should have went with early access if anything at the time if anything. It's a retroactive decision which has haunted us.
The quality of this rollout was upsetting to us because we did not intend to ship a broken product. It was not done out of malicious intent; we simply did not do as good of a job in QAing as we thought. It was a mixture of incompetence on our part as well as over-excitement and stress. After the release (May to September), we tried to ship as many hotfixes as we could. Since the September patch, most crashes luckily have dissipated, but feedback is obviously still negative. We want to make things clear though - even though we're ashamed of this situation, we aren't just moving on. We want to fix issues players have with the game. We genuinely want to make things right and give players the game they originally wanted. People have expressed interest in the story, the gameplay, and the quests, but felt the engine held back their enjoyment of the game.
We want to fix things. We know we can't retroactively, but we want to bring the game up to speed. As such, we are asking players to submit any form of feedback they can. We are taking extra time to QA the game from the ground up again over the next month internally; but even with that we want players to submit any and all feedback. Quality of life suggestions. Any bugs - no matter how small, even a typo - anything. Anything you feel is currently bulky or needs work mechanically. We want to do our best to fix this game. You can either let us know here, on the steam forums, or in our discord server in the #adv-tale channel (https://discordapp.com/invite/tophat).
This is a genuine message for everyone, no matter if you hated the game, or even if you liked it. We want to fix things.