Why Early Access?

“As a company and family, we want Trash Can Tactics to be community-driven from the start. While we're implementing features we're excited about, we're open to suggestions about what would make the game better. Our mission is to make games that friends and family can play together. Early Access lets us get the feedback needed to make it genuinely fun for everyone.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We plan to have the game ready after 12 months of development, reaching 1.0 by early 2027. We'll release major patches that change the map, introduce new classes with new playstyles, or overhaul existing classes based on community feedback.”

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

“First, we'll look into the current class structure. Based off what players like/dislike, we hope to refine the classes into the best forms of themselves. If there's a gap that the community finds, we plan to fill said gap with something like new abilities or maybe even a new class.
Playing with others is most fun when you can create custom scenarios, like overwhelming forces on one side or classic 1v1s. While we're initially balancing for 1-2 humans and 1-3 raccoons, we hope to create a dynamic system for varying lobby settings so you can play any scenario regardless of how many friends are online. We plan for public lobbies will stay within set size ranges for a standard experience.
Based on feedback, we may add a leveling system for each class and environmental events that change how matches play out—like exhibit shows and visitor happiness affecting the museum.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“

• Low-stress solo lobby to test different human and raccoon playstyles
  
• Multiplayer lobbies for 2-5 players (1-2 humans, 1-3 raccoons)
  
• 3 raccoon classes: stealth, brute force, and destruction, each with 1 unique active ability, 1 passive ability, and the ability to disguise themselves as items if alone, or as humans when together.
  
• 3 human classes: disruption, surveillance, and trap-laying, each with 2 unique active and 1 passive ability.
  
• Additional tech pieces usable by humans, raccoons, or both.
  
• A dynamic overtime that increases when raccoons complete objectives, and decreases when humans complete objectives, allowing for a secondary battle of time.

”

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

“We'll increase the price when we leave Early Access to reflect the additional content.”

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

“We aim to be transparent about the development cycle and stay in constant communication about progress, setbacks, and everything else during development. We'll have a Discord for direct community interaction, and will monitor feedback on all social media platforms and Steam Forums. On our Discord, we'll have a dedicated section for people to report bugs, and also separate sections where we will run polls to shape future updates and game direction based on the feedback we get from our community.”