Why Early Access?

As well as Early Access being a good opportunity to gather and incorporate feedback, it's also a great chance to provide extra revenue to hire a professional artist. At the moment, the team is comprised of a developer handling the art and programming, while there is a composer for the music. Whilst not required to finish the game, having extra resources to hire an additional person for the art would drastically help improve the visual quality and tremendously increase the amount of content which would be possible to include in the final version of the game.

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

The game will be in Early Access for 1-2 years as the content and initial roadmap will be fully built out. However, the plan is to continue adding new features, and content for many years after that!

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

For the V1.0 release version, the biggest aim is to expand on the content for the game. The goal would be to especially focus on increasing the number of buildings, items, and related actions available to you and your villagers. Since the core of the game is centered around the AI, we would also like to continue expanding on additional and deeper functionality surrounding the villagers. Furthermore, during Early Access we'd really like to explore how merchants & markets would work, as well as the world-building side of things.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

  • ~600 different dialogue phrases where (for most of these) each is dynamic and specific to the experiences and knowledge of the villager and your world state

  • 102 different items

  • 21 different buildings

  • 3 biomes

  • Procedurally-generated playable map

  • AI: experiences, likes / dislikes, personalities, quests, stories, changes, villagers talking to each other, friendships, pleasure-based emotions, goals, family history, trading

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

Throughout the Early Access period, the game will be discounted until it reaches its complete set of features and content, then it will increase to the full price.

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

The feedback from play-testers and on social media posts has already hugely benefited the game in many places and has helped raise the quality of features significantly. The best place for this feedback has been in the Discord. There's also an opportunity to help shape the game by voting on any feature in the roadmap and through occasional polls which deep dive into a choice between a handful of features to decide what comes next.