Why Early Access?

“Systems-driven city-builders are the perfect fit for a participatory style of development in collaboration with the game's community. Being able to get hands-on player feedback about what's working, what's more surprising/interesting than we anticipated (we can go deeper on these features) and what's a source of more friction than we imagined (so we can smooth those things out) is invaluable and will let us create the best game possible, with your help.

Every playtest we've done for Generation Exile has been a genuine delight and we are very much excited to bring the same spirit of feedback and collaboration to the wider audience of Steam.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“It's difficult to know for certain, as sim/strategy games like this tend to take a long time to get their core systems in place, and then adding the final amount of game can sometimes come together surprisingly quickly. We'd roughly estimate between 6 and 12 months.

We have a clear picture of the core game content we will be building for 1.0 but we also want to allow sufficient flexibility for the community to discover what parts of Generation Exile they are really engaging with, so we can flesh those out as much as possible.”

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

“The game's core mechanics and interactions are in a near final state (but of course, we'll endeavour to still make them as clear and robust as possible in response to player feedback).

The plan for moving from Early Access to 1.0 will be heavily informed by what aspects of the game the community is connecting with most and seems the ripest for additional content. That might be more narrative events or biomes or buildings or character traits; we'd like to know what players are finding the most engaging and focus on content building efforts in that direction.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Generation Exile's first two biomes are fully playable, with all their core systems, structures and goals in place. Full procedural generation of maps on every new game along with all the characters population the simulation is fully functional. The UI/UX is as polished as we can make it without more hands-on feedback and evaluation (we know there will always be more to do here!). There is a significant number of reactive and procedurally triggered narrative events in place, with high-quality presentation.

In short, the game's core systems are fully in place and what we are intending to do through Early Access is finalize the remaining biomes as well as continuing to layer in more content and options to mix up the experience.”

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

“It's very unlikely that the price will change when we leave Early Access. Recognising the peril of making absolute predictions of the future, should that unlikely scenario end up coming to pass, we'll provide an abundance of notice so anyone who might have not purchased the Early Access version can jump in before the change. But it's almost certainly the case that Generation Exile leaves Early Access without increasing its price.

Additionally, for anyone still getting a feel for Early Access or possibly feeling hesitant, there will be periodic seasonal discounts to help lower the barrier to entry for folks feeling curious.”

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

“We'll keep the impending changes in an experimental branch anyone can opt into, we have robust online bug reporting and feedback tools and we'll be engaging the community on our Discord server with periodic surveys (in addition to ongoing ad hoc feedback) about what is working well and what is needing further refinement.”