Why Early Access?

“Cozy Burg already plays as a complete, relaxing builder — but its heart is a real traffic simulation, and a simulation only gets truly good when thousands of players build towns I'd never think of. Early Access lets me harden the sim against the wild layouts you'll create, tune the cozy/flow balance with real feedback, and choose what to build next with the community rather than guessing. I'd rather grow this in the open with you than ship it once and walk away.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Around 1 to 6 months. I'm a small team and I'd rather hit the bar than hit a date — if the community wants more time to get a feature right, we'll take it. Updates land regularly throughout, not all at the end. (The public transit layer, for instance, went from planned to shipped during development — that's the cadence I'm aiming for.)”

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

“The Early Access loop is whole and satisfying; the 1.0 version is wider and deeper. Planned additions include weather (rain and snow), rail and other new transit types, more landmark rewards and terrain biomes, a broader campaign with new objective types, a fuller set of achievements, more life in the streets, and a balance pass shaped by Early Access play. See the roadmap for the current plan — it will evolve based on your feedback.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Fully playable and stable, not a demo. Right now you can:

Build a town tile by tile from a hand of three — a terrain, a zone and a road — so there's always a choice and never a menu.
Shape the land: grassland, forest, mountain and water, raised through several levels of elevation.
Zone residential, commercial, industrial, retail, parks and farms — none of which thrive until you connect them by road.
Watch a genuine traffic simulation. Every car is given a real origin and destination, follows the car in front, yields at junctions, queues when the lane ahead is full, and re-routes mid-trip when it finds a better way. Flip on the traffic lens and every road tints green, amber or red by how loaded it is.
Draw bus lines by dragging stop to stop, colour them, assign buses from your pool, and watch riders who'd otherwise be cars climb aboard.
Run ferries that navigate the real shape of the water and carry cars across it.
Earn landmarks — a lighthouse, a ski resort with a working chairlift, a stadium that fills with fans on match day, a castle, an airport, a cathedral — as milestone picks and chest rewards.
Play it three ways: Casual, where a stage you run out of tiles for is a stage you've lost; Simulation, where homes only fill if the people in them can reach work and the street is somewhere worth living; and Creative, unlocked end to end from the first click.
Or take the Journey — a guided ladder of hand-built towns, each about a single idea, opening with a five-minute tutorial and a scripted camera fly over each new problem.
Chase quests, open reward chests, claim milestones as your town grows from a camp to a capital, and raise your Cozy / Flow / Bliss score across a long progression curve.
Earn terrain styles across grass, forest, water and mountain, and apply them to a single tile or a whole section.
Enjoy a hand-painted world with farms that grow and get harvested, shoppers, dog-walkers, horses, birds, fish, sailboats — and footpaths that wear into the grass where people actually walk.
Save to any of six slots plus an autosave, shown as a shelf of postcards, with resolution, fullscreen, audio and quality settings.
Listen to a soundtrack the game generates live. Nothing sampled, nothing licensed, no loop you'll recognise.

What's not in yet: weather, rail and further transit types, more biomes and landmarks, a fuller achievement set, and final balance tuning — those are the Early Access journey. There will be rough edges; please report them and they'll get fixed fast.”

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

“Yes — we plan to raise the price modestly at 1.0, as the game grows through Early Access. Anyone who buys during Early Access keeps the game forever at no extra cost; there is no upgrade fee. There are no microtransactions, no energy timers, and no ads, ever. Buy it once; it's yours.”

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

“The roadmap lives in the Steam community hub, and the order of everything past "Next up" is genuinely up to you — vote and discuss it there. Bug reports go straight to the top of the list; the traffic sim especially gets better the more unusual layouts I see. I read everything, and I'll post what's changing each update.”