Why Early Access?

“I’ve fallen in love with the idea of building a gardening and potion simulator in virtual reality.

Morrowind’s near-perfect Alchemy skill tree offers a great inspiration to me. In Morrowind, alchemists explored the wilderness looking for new plants, sometimes purchasing (or stealing) materials from a vendor in order to grow in skill and knowledge. Players ground down potion materials into powder using a mortar and pestle then distilled them in an alembic to form a potion. The potions provided unique abilities such as levitation or telekinesis, which would give them access to new areas and opportunities.

Potioneer’s goal is to bring this experience to room-scale virtual reality. I want players to collect and harvest plants, use a mortar and pestle to grind them down, then combine them using an alembic.

Potioneer also operates on a 24-hour real-time clock, just as Animal Crossing does. Eventually, the game will have well-written and crafted NPCs who visit, offer quests, and purchase from/sell to the player.

I want to see how many players are also interested in this. I want to get fans in on the ground floor so we can add and tweak new features together as the game grows.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“There are three main pieces that need to be completed for the game to be considered “done.”

• Players should be able to grow plants in a personal garden (core mechanics done).
  
• Players should be able to craft their living quarters, along with tools and alchemy bench (core mechanics done).
  
• Players should be able to explore the countryside to find new plants, NPCs, and collectables (not done).

It’s impossible to say exactly how long a polished, complete version of these things will take, but it’s my personal goal to make the Christmas 2017 holiday for solid and fun implementations of these features. Virtual Reality is going to be huge this year and I don’t want Potioneer to miss it.”

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

“In addition to simple gardening using the included tools and provided seeds, players are able to explore the countryside looking for new plants to grow.

There will be an in-game market where the player can sell to and buy from NPCs. These NPCs will have well-written backstories and unique characters to make them interesting.

Multiplayer is also a goal, but the core mechanics of the game need to be proven before a lot of time is invested in adding networking code.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Currently, Potioneer features the ability for players to grow plants in a personal garden. Potioneer gives players the ability to express their creativity by hammering together wood using nails and a hammer. All manners of things can be crafted and the player is not limited from a set of recipes. Whatever you think you can build, you can build.”

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

“Yes. The price will increase as featured are added to the game.”

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

“When players play my game and I see them become excited as their first plant grows, the fuel for me to keep going burns brighter; I thrive on seeing players “get” the game as they start to talk about things they’d love to do or see while playing.

In a way, it’s also a sort of market validation: I think there’s a real game here, but I might be crazy. Early Access provides me a real way to find out whether or not that’s true.”