The Voxel Tycoon State of Affairs
If you’ve been following the development of VT for some time, you may notice that our estimated release date has changed several times. It was never an exact date, but regardless, we didn’t meet them. From that, a reasonable question arises - why is that? And what’s taking so long?
The bright side of Indie
We are an independent developer. This means we are free to work on the game in the way we feel will be better for Voxel Tycoon and our future players. This also means we have no strict deadlines, and thus can continue polishing things without sacrificing quality. This exact method resulted in all the stuff we’ve done already and you found interesting when joining our ever-growing community.
When we see something not quite fit our level of quality, we may return to that feature and work more on it until we’re satisfied with it. This is the main reason why our estimated deadlines are not met.
With all of that aside, we do have a strong motivation to release Voxel Tycoon alpha as soon as possible. The day when you can finally play the game, and when we find out what we did right and wrong, is the most important day for us.
In the end, we are just balancing these aspects — quality, and release.
A few words about the team
As some of you may know, there are just two guys working on the game, full time, 7 days per week without holidays. At the beginning, we worked remotely, but in April we gathered our equipment in one room where we set up an improvised office.
What’s left to do?
The most important things that aren’t done yet are as follows:
Under active development
- Final tools
- Modular stations / Hubs
- Electricity
- Pipes / Liquids
- Finalized UI
Still in concept stage
- Geological surveying
- Tech Tree / Research and Development
Also, we should note that to make a release come sooner, we may be forced to remove some features that were planned for the first alpha and continue working on them outside. If that happens, we’ll give another update on the situation.
What’s already done?
Everything that needed to make the game basically playable except listed above. Of course, there’s a lot of things will be tuned here and there, but nothing that major that can move release for months.
What’s in development right now?
Maxim is improving the user experience of laying out roads, rails, and conveyors as we feel previous implementations were too hard to use without outbursts of rage.
Andrew is working on the final implementation of the modular stations (or hubs) concept, which defines how stations, cities, storage facilities, and factories interact with each other.
If you haven’t yet, we invite you to join our Discord community where you can talk to us, or just see what we’re up to.
Why are there so few gameplay videos out at the moment?
There are two reasons for this. First, as the game is in a very active state of development, it gets broken over and over again as we change features. And second, even more important — as you read before, many parts of the game go through many iterations. Anything we show in a video could (and probably would) change before the game makes it to alpha release. We simply don’t want to misinform you.
Release flow
A month or so before the release, we will run a closed beta test with some trusted community members.
You shouldn’t ask to be a beta tester, we will choose it ourselves. Whether or not you have donated will have no effect on this. Don’t feel left out if you aren’t picked - the real, open beta test will be Early Access. Remember that the alpha, when it’s out, will still be in early stages of life - as such, it will probably still be buggy enough to give the full range beta-testing experience!
Around the same time, we’ll start to publish a lot more gameplay footage, as well as sending the game to our press contacts. You’ll definitely get a final idea of what to expect from the game before buying it.
It’s at that moment when we will probably post a final, solid release date.
Thank you!
Big thanks for your support, guys. Special appreciation goes to the kind folks who donate their money to us, not expecting anything in exchange. Especially our Patrons — you rock!
This is an incredible journey for us, and we hope we’re making it fun enough for you as well.
