Why Early Access?

“While Galaxicus is already a very playable space exploration and colonization game, we, the developers, need Early Access participation from the Steam Community to build it into the kind of game that we all will be proud to play. The quickest way to level up the game is to encourage gamers to play it and to cast a wide net in which to gather all of their feedback and to very transparently take action to incorporate the best aspects of it into the game.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We expect six to eight months of Early Access participation to complete play testing and resulting modifications. The actual amount of time required will be determined by the community; we expect their feedback will actively tell us when the game is complete.”

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

“Even now Galaxicus promotes an extremely level playing field for all participants, one that will never, ever be, “pay to win.” But that’s not to say there won’t be microtransactions to make the game playing experience more personal for each player. We want player input on what upgrades are valuable enough to pay for. Microtransactions might include:

• awesome spaceship models,
  
• more dramatic weapon, damage and shield effects,
  
• different classes of eye-catching structures and architecture that could brand colonies to certain players, or simply to help them look less generic.
  
• special wars that offer prizes to the winners

As people play the Early Access game, they will request various products as microtransactions that we never even thought of. What we offer in the game’s full release and how we roll it out will be heavily weighted by the feedback we get during Early Access.

Player feedback will also provide us with information about whether we need to introduce higher quality graphics (and clues to what they might look like), better basic classes of spaceships, and perhaps a tech tree to provide structure for players looking to level up their skills and to become more competitive.

Lastly, we have already identified that each Galaxicus player must undertake a very steep learning curve before the game truly becomes as fun as it can be. In part, this is because the current build lacks tutorials, documentation, and non-English language support.

• Currently, Galaxicus does not have tutorials that would make the game easier to learn over a shorter period. Such tutorials would take the player step-by-step through the beginning of the game, introducing how it structures such common features as space exploration, planet colonization, and ship-to-ship combat. This action is vital to the game. Learning it quickly makes the game more fun more quickly. Such tutorials are in the works. Installing them and evaluating them would be part of the Early Access experience.
  
• Production of comprehensive support documentation is in progress and, like a robust set of tutorials, it will provide a standalone source of reference information to help new players bridge the gap and enable them to feel comfortable with the economic and planet management side of the game. Early Access player participation will enable us to hone in on the parts of the game that need help docs more quickly than others and we will complete and publish this information on the fly, then compile it into a finished document that can be posted for digital perusal.
  
• During Galaxicus' Early Access period, only English language speakers can fully participate in the game. However, Early Access will provide Crimson Leaf with time to introduce support for Spanish, German, and French, and possibly other languages, thus enlarging the game’s popularity amongst international fans of the game.

It is Crimson Leaf’s goal to ensure that the community playing Galaxicus in Early Access will become the foundation for dynamic expansion of the game into the next decade and beyond.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Currently, Early Access Galaxicus is very playable, but requires players to undertake a steep learning curve before feeling they've mastered the intricacies of the game. Even in Early Access, players can pilot spaceships, use Warp drive to go from system to system, resupply their ship via the Space Dock, colonize planets, etc. There is a full range of options. While there is a brief in-game tutorial to help launch players quickly into the game, it will be better to have even more tutorials and videos to make the process more complete. Even the Early Access version should have more in-game tutorials that it currently does. Player feedback will help us to judge areas that are under served in the current slate of tutorials. And because economic modeling is an extremely important part of the game, players must currently work out their own methods to grow their colonies. This is not optimal and the more robust version of the game will have a large online document or searchable wiki page to guide decision making, provide proven strategies, and/or narrow the choices players might take. There is currently no news feed or telemetry, so players must communicate via discord and/or email. Only English-speaking players can enjoy full engagement with the game.”

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

“We do not plan to, but it may be necessary to change the pricing structure due to economic conditions.”

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

“One method the development team will use to promote dialog with the game’s Early Access community is the Galaxicus discord channel and the game’s Steam forums. Traditional surveys and direct communication with player will help to assess the overall gameplay experience.

We also plan to introduce and support a news feed so that players can easily drop informative notes to us about what is working and what is not. We will also introduce telemetry and data analysis so that we can plot the position of a player when a note is sent. Such constructive forms of data analysis will enable us to keep track of the parts of the game that are most interesting, as well as the activities that provide the most entertainment, motivation, and fun. Conversely, we also want to know about anything that is too difficult, misunderstood, arcane, or, well, that needs fixing or improving. Player feedback will give us that information, too.

All of this will be done strictly to better meet the needs of our players. No data will be sold or trafficked in any way.”