Why Early Access?

“Dropzone has been in development for two years and in closed-beta for the past 6 months. We see our launch on Steam Early Access as simply the next stage in the game’s development, widening the number of players (and increasing the number of games to play!) who will be able to play and suggest improvements/additions to the game to make Dropzone the game you’d like to play. In the past 6 months we’ve honed and polished the core gameplay, and established a close relationship with our existing beta players. We look forward to continued iteration while building more ties across the spectrum of our community.

Early Access is the perfect option for us at this point. Our production team loves to iterate, in fact our whole development process is designed for it; for example, we patched every week during CBT, which equated to roughly 25 patches in total. Early Access will be the best way for us to learn how to further improve our game and address the needs and desires of a larger community.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We anticipate that we will be in Early Access for several months as we add and adjust features based on feedback from the community.”

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

“Aside from additional content (pilots, gear, maps, and so forth), much of our focus in Early Access will be spent building out additional PvE and competitive play elements of the game based on player feedback at all skill levels (casual, amateur and pro gamers). Ranked Play will be an early addition. While the heart of Dropzone is a competitive 1v1 game, we all want to be able to play with our friends and to explore modes of play that go beyond purely 1v1 competitive play (some of which you will see in the upcoming release). As we learn what players most like, we intend to double down on those areas.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“We spent a good amount of time in Closed Beta making sure we could start with a polished core experience. We built a custom engine for Dropzone , the Sparkle Engine (the 3rd game engine this team has built over the years), and we believe the “feel” of the game is excellent. Performance is generally good when settings are adjusted properly for older computers but we need to do a better and more intuitive job of adjusting those settings, including dynamically. There are some areas, such as Crafting and Daily Tournaments, which are functional, but haven’t received what we would consider a final polish pass. We currently have 4 of the 5 planned Classes available with 3 Pilots each, 2 1v1 maps, 1 2v2 map, and 120 types of Gear representing the abilities players can configure. During Early Access, a 5th class will be added to the game, along with more pilots, more gear, Ranked Play, pilot skins and other vanity items that will allow you to customize the look of your game. You can also expect to see features and items suggested by you, our community.”

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

“Dropzone was Build to be a Free to Play game and as such we plan to keep it Free to Play beyond Early Access.
We might explore the option of offering specific bundles or additional content via DLCs in the future.”

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

“At Sparkypants, we have a special way of developing a game with Dropzone’s scope. When we started development on the game, we had a prototype running within a few weeks. The entire studio would play the game together each morning, a process we creatively call the “Daily Game.” From that play session, we would make a list of things to add, change, remove, and we’d try to get as many of them done for the next day’s Daily Game. This process drove development, kept us seeing the game as players rather than only as developers and encouraged us to create a new “release” every day.

Fast forward to today and we still do a Daily Game and, during Closed Beta, we typically have a new significant release every week. Our existing Closed Beta community has been invaluable in providing feedback and helping us focus development and balance the game. And now it’s time to extend this idea to a larger community of players. We have a saying at Sparky, “It doesn’t mean **** unless it’s in the Daily Game.” Once we’re in Early Access that will be, “It doesn’t mean **** until it’s in the hands of the community.” To make that happen, we may start with occasionally live-streaming the Daily Games (DGs) of select features, pilots, maps, or whatever when they are close to completion, and then build from there.”