Why Early Access?

“I want to actively involve the community in the overall development of the game, and I think it makes only sense to do so to create something that's fun and original to as many players as possible. Interaction with the community can help a lot in deciding to prioritize features, work on suggestions for gameplay and so on.

Moreover, I think it's only fair to set your expectations straight. This is an "unfinished", early state of the game that you're getting here, but your helping a lot by getting involved.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Based on the current state of development, I expect the game to leave Early Access no earlier than some time in 2027. However, this timeline strongly depends on development progress and community feedback. The way to go from the game being in early access to releasing a full version 1.0 will be fluent. There probably won't be a single huge update that magically adds all the features to make it a full release.

There definitely will be regular updates and comments from my side so that you know where the journey is taking us.”

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

“Currently planned for the full release are mobs, a fully featured survival experience, a more comprehensive world generator, and multiplayer. Depending on player feedback, there will also be other things or changes to the game.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“From the current point of view, the following major things are done and working:

- Player movement, inventory system and simple inventory crafting are done.
- Building and breaking systems for voxels are done, together with fluid voxel flow, multi-voxel blocks such as doors and paintings, as well as item drops. Interactions with foliage, and voxels in general, such as sound effects and particles.
- Items such as tools that help break specific blocks, and have durability.
- Multiple chests with different stats.
- A basic world generator with a single biome exists, that can generate slightly over 200 million blocks in every direction (xyz) with caves, trees, lakes, and mountains. You can choose between flat and default world types.
- Things such as grass and tree saplings have random ticks to grow, naturally spawned leaves decay randomly when the tree has been destroyed.
- (Auto)Saving and loading worlds works. There may be breaking changes between some of the updates, though, this will be announced.
- Lighting has been "proof-of-concepted" with differently colored light voxels, and the day and night system.
- Modding support for custom voxels, or changing built-in voxels is there, it just needs to be documented and exposed to players in the menu.
- There are a number of "chat" commands that you can change properties of your world with, e.g. setting the time, giving items, changing the gamemode from survival to creative.”

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

“I plan on increasing the price slowly step-by-step after reaching big milestones, I think that's fair. There may also be another price increase after the full version release, but I'm not sure about that, since it will be more of a fluent transition like I mentioned.

That's not set in stone, though, it will depend on the feedback that I will be getting too.”

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

“I will keep posting regularly on my IndieDB dev blog and on my YouTube channel. Your comments, suggestions, and feedback will be highly appreciated there! Some time before the early access release I will also set up a discord server.

For the more tech-savvy, I will maintain a GitHub page with all the technical documentation about modding, and a discussions page there, so you can always contact me there too!”