Why Early Access?

“The Dreamthief is being developed by a small, passionate indie team, and Early Access gives us the opportunity to involve players while the game is still taking shape.

Our goal is to build a story-driven isometric action-adventure with strong atmosphere, meaningful exploration, and a world shaped by dreams, nightmares, and childhood fears. Because the game relies heavily on game feel, pacing, exploration, combat, and emotional tone, player feedback is especially valuable to us.

Early Access allows us to test the core experience with real players, gather feedback on combat, navigation, puzzle readability, difficulty, UI, performance, and overall flow, and use that feedback to improve the game as development continues.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“It is difficult for us to give a reliable full release date at this stage.

The Dreamthief is currently being developed by a volunteer-based team. We are committed to bringing the game as close to its full potential as possible, but our development speed depends on team availability, funding, feedback, and the realities of working on an ambitious indie project with limited resources.

Because of this, we do not want to promise a fixed Early Access duration that may later prove unrealistic. Our current expectation is that the game will remain in Early Access for an extended development period while we continue building out content, systems, polish, and feedback-driven improvements.

However, we aim to take the game out of early access roughly by 01.07.2028”

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

“We plan for the full version of The Dreamthief to offer a more complete version of Bjørn’s journey through the dreamworld and the Nightmare Realm.

During Early Access, the game will focus on establishing and refining the core experience: exploration, combat, rift mechanics, progression, UI, atmosphere, and the emotional tone of the story. Over time, we plan to expand the game with more areas, more enemies, more bosses, additional upgrades and abilities, more polished visuals and audio, improved balancing, and a more complete narrative structure.

Our intention is for the full version to include the complete main progression of the game, with all major zones, childhood fear themes, key encounters, upgrades, secrets, and story moments represented. However, the exact scope and order of additions may change based on player feedback, development progress, and available resources.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The Early Access version of The Dreamthief is a playable but unfinished version of the game.

It includes the core foundation of the experience: player movement, combat, exploration, early rift mechanics, UI/HUD functionality, controller support, and playable content from the opening part of the game. Players can begin exploring Bjørn’s journey, encounter nightmare creatures, interact with the dream/nightmare rift systems, and experience the early tone and direction of the world. In practicality, this means that the player will be able to create a save profile, load it into the game, and play through the first zone of the game. This is the introductory zone and represents roughly 15% av the game's total playthrough. From a gameplay perspective, the player gets to experience everything they need to, to be able to finish the first zone. However, there is still some polishing and balancing left, so players should expect the game to be hard.

Further, the game is still in active development. Not all zones, enemies, bosses, abilities, upgrades, story content, audio, visual polish, balancing, performance optimization, accessibility options, and quality-of-life features are final. Players should expect missing content, placeholder elements, bugs, balance changes, and systems that may change significantly during development.

We recommend Early Access for players who are excited to follow development, give feedback, and experience the game as it grows.”

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

“We may adjust the price as the game grows in scope, content, and polish.

Our current plan is to keep the Early Access price reflective of the amount of content available at the time. As we add more areas, systems, story content, polish, and overall value, the price may increase up to MSRP at the full release. However, players who buy the Early Access will get the full released game at no additional cost to them.

Any pricing changes will be communicated clearly in advance whenever possible.”

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

“We plan to involve the community through feedback, playtesting, development updates, and open communication.

Player feedback will be especially important for combat feel, difficulty, navigation, puzzle clarity, UI/UX, controller support, performance, pacing, and the overall emotional experience of the game. We want to understand where players feel curious, lost, frustrated, surprised, or emotionally engaged.

We plan to gather feedback through Steam discussions, community channels, playtest forms, bug reports, and direct player observations when possible. Feedback will help us prioritize improvements, identify issues, and make informed decisions as we continue developing the game.

Our goal is not only to fix bugs, but to build a better game together with the players who believe in the project.”