Why Early Access?

“We want people to be able to play the game sooner rather than later. We will have a demo out, which is one way to get it into people's hands, but if you like the game and are looking for a way to support its development - this is it.

Really that's the main reason - we've been working on this as a side project for some time now, and we're getting anxious to get it into peoples hands and get some real feedback so that together we can make the game as good as it can be. (be. all that you can be...... - now that's going to be in my head all day)

We want the Early Access release to be a complete experience however. Our goal is that if you partake in Early Access for Comets Have Feathers, that you come away feeling both satisfied that you got what you paid for, and excited to see what the full release will bring.

Also, I should emphasize, the game's full release does not depend on Early Access doing well - the point of Early Access for us is to make the game better and we fully intend on our full release whether anyone buys the game in EA or not.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“4 or 5 months.

The plan is to not do too many content updates while in Early Access - i.e. don't expect a new pantheon of enemies or a new biome to appear. Of course, we will do bug fixes and content updates to polish things with the goal of making the whole game better, but probably no chunky content drops until full release.

I'm sure this will not come back to haunt me.”

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

“The full version should mostly differ by the amount of content - there should be additional areas to explore, more enemies to defeat, more challenges to overcome and more mechanics to play with.

We've already identified and prototyped the vast majority of the content and mechanics that should be present in the full release. There is room for adjustments and tweaks, but no major changes to things like mechanics or art style are planned. So it's a matter of polishing the implementations rather than coming up with new ideas.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Early access features:

- Access to about 80% of Comet's skill set

- A single expansive map with two fully explorable biomes (called "Plateaus" in the game)

- More than 30 challenges to discover and overcome

- Half a dozen enemy units to engage in combat

- And a boss to challenge

The goal is that the content that's present in the Early Access game should be in its final form - that means that the content that's already in Early Access shouldn't differ by much when it gets to Final Release.

The Demo provides more context on what can be expected in Early Access.”

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

“Yes.

We plan on the game being priced higher once it reaches full release, however there is room for feedback here and we will price the game based on player feedback just as much as how much 'game' there is to play.”

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

“We would like to try to stay transparent about the development process, but we're not really 'Youtuber' type of people, so we're planning on keeping things mostly in the Steam Community while we progress on the game in EA - there may be a discord channel at some point in EA, but for the time being we'd like to keep things centralized here on Steam.

This should also make it easier for yall to participate - instead of going out to some external landing page, or worse, several different communities, everything should be easy to find here.

That should also make it easier for us to gather and respond to feedback.”