Why Early Access?

“Today the very beginning of the adventure is already playable and balanced.
Over 20 000 players have been playing the game since our Kickstarter campaign (the game was named Planets³ at the time). Thanks to their many feedbacks on our forum, they have helped us get to this first “early access” version on Steam.

Today we’d like to get even more feedbacks, this time from the Steam community, in order to help us finish the game and add all the features that are still missing.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“At least one year of development is still required to finalize the game.
This being said, we have a quality ambition for Stellar Overload and we won’t leave the early access state until the game reaches our quality goal regarding both the game stability and the gameplay.”

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

“Some of the game’s features will directly be driven by the players’ feedbacks.

We still need to add important elements of the game’s user interface, like for example the implementation of the quest log and codex. The codex will be a sort of evolving encyclopedia of all the things the players will discover during their progression in the adventure.

It is also planned to add more weapons, more armors and more tools for the construction. We also want to introduce an “upgrade” mechanic to improve all the weapons and armors.

On the community sharing side, we will have to implement soon the tools enabling players to share their creations using the Workshop.

These features aside, it’s mostly the playground that will be expanded and enriched.
Even if the 10 planets are reachable today (using "stellar gates"), only one has actually been worked on (you’ll notice the "work in progress" sign when arriving on the other planets).
So, we have 9 planets to build. This means create, for each of these planets, its wildlife, its flora, all the key places related to the main quest (villages, dungeons, …), and all the side spots filled with secondary quests.

The game, today, is not fully optimized, and requires a lot of resources (processor, memory and graphic card). Our optimization efforts will go on, through the implementation of new algorithms or the improvements of existing ones in our voxel engine.

The game has been translated in 4 languages for now. It is planned to add other languages in the future depending on the community’s feedback.

It is also planned to implement an API and an editor, to give the community the possibility to “mod” the game and to create scenarios/planets/items to share with other players.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The game is playable, but only the very beginning of the adventure is accessible.
The player can unlock some weapons, and armors, have access to over 200 resources, and go through a small and a large dungeon linked to the main quest.

Some players from the community have already played hundreds of hours with the last 4 alpha versions, enjoying all the new opportunities given by the construction mechanics of Stellar Overload.”

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

“The price of the early access version is lower than the final game’s price. We believe that since there’s less content, the price should be cheaper.

It is also possible that, after we finished certain stages in the development process of the early access game, the price changes (in an increasing way), to be more representative of the available content.”

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

“For the past 2 years, the community has already had a very important role in the development process of the game. We gathered thousands of feedbacks from the community.

We have, for example, changed the behavior of certain weapons, modified the game interface (to offer larger slots, easier to read), we also made a more understandable list of the game’s resources, and so on. All this thanks to community feedbacks.

The more feedbacks we’ll get from the early access version of the game, the more we’ll be able to improve it accordingly. And if these feedbacks arrive early in the development process, changes will be easier to perform.

Moreover, as Stellar Overload is a construction game, we will actively engage the community through various building contests. The "winners" of these contests will see their constructions integrated in-game or printed in 3D.
The first contest took place in the summer of 2016 and today you can see the ship that won the "Dev Price" in the visuals of the game (trailer and images)!

We also organize an anonymous survey with each new release of a version. Anonymity often frees us and sometimes gives us better feedback from the community. This is of course done in addition to all the feedbacks we already collected.

Finally, the community is regularly informed via the home page of our website and now also via the Stellar Overload Steam page. News are regularly posted (usually one per week) showing the latest progress of the team.”