Why Early Access?

“Starship Fighter is already a fully playable game with a complete core loop: build a ship, fight waves and bosses, earn currency, unlock parts, and improve your loadout. We’re choosing Early Access because the ship builder and combat balance benefit massively from real player data and feedback, especially around weapon feel, difficulty curves, progression pacing, and what ship designs players gravitate toward.

Early Access allows us to:
• Balance the builder + combat meta: weapon strength, fire rate, projectile behavior, recoil/spread, boosters and thrust needs, armor vs speed tradeoffs, and part synergy.
• Improve usability and clarity: ship builder UI/UX, part stats readability, tooltips, tutorials, and making “what to do next” obvious for new players.
• Expand content in the right direction: add more parts, enemy behaviors, bosses, and progression content based on what the community actually enjoys.
• Harden performance and stability across a wide range of PCs, and fix edge-case bugs that only appear with many different hardware and playstyles.

We want players to buy the game for what it is today, and then help shape what it becomes during development, rather than treating Early Access as a pre-purchase or a promise of specific future features.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We currently expect Starship Fighter to be in Early Access for approximately 6–12 months.

We’re keeping this as a range because balance, UI iteration, and content additions are influenced by player feedback and testing results. Our goal is to leave Early Access when the game reaches a feature-complete, polished, and stable state, meaning the ship builder, progression, and combat feel consistent and satisfying, and the game delivers a complete experience.”

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

“The full version is planned to be a more complete and polished version of what you can play today. During Early Access, we plan to focus on expanding content, improving the ship builder experience, and refining balance and stability.

Examples of planned improvements, subject to change based on feedback and development realities:
• More ship parts and build variety: additional weapons, hull shapes, boosters, and utilities with clearer tradeoffs and meaningful build choices.
• More enemy and boss variety: additional enemy behaviors, attacks, and encounter patterns that reward different builds and strategies.
• More progression depth: improved pacing, clearer checkpoints, better difficulty scaling, and additional unlock paths so progression feels rewarding rather than grindy.
• Better onboarding: improved tutorialization, clearer UI explanations, and smoother first-time experience.
• Quality improvements: performance optimizations, bug fixes, better visual clarity in combat, improved feedback (hit effects, damage clarity), and overall polish.
• Expanded Steam integration: additional achievements, stats, and leaderboard improvements, plus broader settings and quality-of-life upgrades.

We will update these plans over time based on community feedback and what testing shows is most important.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The Early Access version is playable today and includes the core experience of Starship Fighter:
• 2D top-down space shooter gameplay with waves of enemies and boss encounters.
• Ship building and customization: build your ship using unlocked parts, then take it into battle.
• Progression and unlocks: earn points/credits from runs to unlock new parts (weapons, hulls, boosters, cockpits, utilities) via the in-game shop.
• Difficulty options and checkpoints to support different player skill levels and allow continued progression.
• Multiple enemy types with distinct behaviors.
• Steam features available during Early Access: achievements, stats, and leaderboards.

Early Access means some areas are still being actively refined. Players should expect:
• Ongoing balancing changes (weapons, parts, difficulty, progression pacing).
• UI/UX improvements, especially around the ship builder and stats clarity.
• Additional content and tuning over time.”

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

“We’re not planning to change the base price when we leave Early Access. The Early Access price and the full 1.0 release price are expected to be the same. If anything changes, we’ll communicate it in advance.”

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

“Community feedback is a core reason we’re using Early Access. We’ll actively use player input to improve balance, usability, and content direction.

Planned ways to involve players:
• Steam Discussions for bug reports, balance feedback, and feature suggestions.
• Patch notes and regular update posts so players can clearly see what changed and why.
• Structured feedback prompts (for example: ship builder usability, weapon balance, difficulty curve, progression pacing).
• Discord and Reddit for playtesting feedback, and direct discussion.
• Public roadmap/priorities (lightweight and flexible) so players know what we’re working on next, without locking into unrealistic promises.

We’ll prioritize changes that improve the core loop (building + fighting), address major bugs, and respond to repeated community feedback themes.”