Why Early Access?

“I am one developer. NodeFeat is playable today as a complete single-player game, and Early Access is how I take it to version 1.0 with players instead of alone.

What you get today: a tower defense where the base is a tree. Every turret is a node: move one and its branch follows, grow one and new turrets sprout. The enemy is a swarm simulated body by body, and it moves like a fluid: it flows around your base, piles up where it is blocked, climbs where it is squeezed. That is in the game now, with no placeholder.

My goals for Early Access, in order:

1. Balancing: the incremental and roguelite side of the game, seeds, node tiers, enchantments, economy, difficulty modes. Every run comes from a seed, so a player who posts a seed hands me the exact siege they fought.

2. Performance, on as many machines as possible. I can only measure it on mine.

3. Multiplayer: the three additions that make the full game (mobile units, countermeasures, asymmetric co-op), tested on a public beta branch first. Solo play does not wait on it.

4. Version 1.0, when the rules stop changing. Target: first half of 2028.

What I commit to: regular updates with a changelog that says what players reported and what changed. Answers in the Steam discussions. Nothing already in the game removed or moved behind a paywall. If something needs more time, I say so on this page. NodeFeat is the only game I am building until 1.0.

Buy it for what it is today.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“About a year. Early Access opens on 23 March 2027 and I am aiming for version 1.0 in the first half of 2028.

The three additions ship in this order: mobile units, then countermeasures, then co-op. Version 1.0 is when the rules stop changing. If co-op needs longer, I will say so on this page rather than ship it thin.
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How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“

Mobile units. Today the site defends itself: the tree grows, turns, digs in and holds. The full version adds units that leave it, on the ground, on the water and in the air. What you send out is no longer defending you.

Countermeasures. The swarm does not only bite. It leaves things behind in your branches, and the full version gives you the tools to answer that.

Asymmetric co-op. One player commands the site from above. The others are down there in bodies. Nobody picks a role in a lobby: select nothing and you command, select one unit and you are in it.

Alongside those: balance driven by what players report. Nothing in the Early Access build gets removed for the full version, and nothing already in it moves behind a paywall.
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What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Playable and complete as a single-player game. No vertical slice, no placeholder: what is in is in whole, what is out is absent.

In the build: the site of Node 52 and its nine sectors, laid out from your run seed, so no two runs are the same site. The tree, grown one node at a time, with three weapon lines of ten tiers each and six enchantments on top. Four kinds of enemy bodies, mixed into every contact, every one of them simulated individually. Seven attack vectors, announced before they hit. Real-time terraforming, and a swarm that reads the ground like a fluid. Seventeen environment mutations that stack between contacts. Four difficulty modes that change how long the site remembers, not how hard it hits. Two views: full HD, and a monochrome tactical screen at full parity. A soundtrack generated live. Interface in English, French, German, Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Not in the build: multiplayer. It is absent, not disabled, and nothing in the single-player game waits on it.
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Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Yes. The Early Access price is the lowest price NodeFeat will have. It goes up once, when the game reaches version 1.0, and not on every update in between. Buying during Early Access is how you get that discount, and everyone who does gets version 1.0 at no extra cost.
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How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Every run comes from a seed, and the seed is part of the game. A player who posts a seed in the Steam discussions hands me the exact site they played: same layout, same disasters, same fight. A report becomes something I reproduce in a minute. That is why the discussions are the bug tracker and the balance tracker for this game.

I read them and answer there. Every update ships with a changelog that says what a player reported and what changed because of it. Difficulty and cost curves get tuned from what players actually do. Performance reports, with your hardware and settings, are the other thing I will ask for.

Co-op goes to a public beta branch, open to anyone who owns the game, before it goes to everybody. It lives or dies on what it feels like between two people, and I will not find that out alone.

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