Why Early Access?

“We believe that our game would benefit greatly if its final stages are developed together with the people playing and enjoying it; and that the end result would be a much more enjoyable indie experience. As we kept developing The Chemist, we realized that it could grow into much more than the simple game we had originally envisioned - we want to make use of early access as a means of adding more content to the game as per your feedback before marking it as released. The first phase in The Chemist is complete, it has all the core elements we've thought of. Early access is the second phase for us, we want to see what The Chemist can grow to be when further developed together with the community.

You can say that, being a bunch of not-so-normal people ourselves, we started thinking of The Chemist as our child and so our child has to get out and learn more of life before we kick her out of the house.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Minimum of 3, maximum of 8 months depending on what features we decide to add to the game together with your feedback.”

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

“It'll be richer in content and mechanics, and we also believe that it'll be more re-playable. In no specific order, here is a list of things that we'll consider implementing during the early access period (the actual order of working on these, or adding/removing stuff to/from the list will all depend on your feedback)

• More contracts to try and finish and more resources to allow for a bigger pool of possible mixture combinations
  
• More events! We're planning on the final release to have 1000 events to always keep you surprised (that is ~400 more than what is in the game right now)
  
• VR support
  
• Adding up more theme-specific workspaces such as The Basement. These will have characteristic visuals and mechanics. A couple of themes on top of our head are a Sci-Fi room with production lines and robots and such & a medieval themed alchemy room. These will have characteristic content as well including new contracts, resources, events, traits etc.
  
• A market system where you can purchase new equipment and vanity items that allows you to customize your workspace. This will also depend on how we choose to proceed with the above point of theme-specific rooms; maybe we can make it so that you can unlock and purchase theme-specific items one by one and turn your room into anything you wish.
  
• Chemical reaction effects. Wouldn't it be cool to see your flasks blowing up?
  
• Mod/Workshop support
  
• More non-essential minors such as the write-able board we currently have at the living room
  
• Different outer scenery
  
• Co-op - now this is a tough one. There really are many ways we can go about constructing a coop mechanic for the game and it'd also take up a lot of our limited resources to make it happen. We'd need lots of feedback towards this to make it happen.
  
• Multiplayer - this would be a match-based system where you compete with other chemists with various tools at your disposal to disrupt their operations. This is another far fetched idea same as coop but with enough resources and feedback it can happen!

Quite honestly, early access is a completely new excitement for us as well and we'd like to make the decision of "what to do next" together with you.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“In terms of playability, there are bugs present but nothing game breaking. No core mechanics are missing either. Content-wise, of the 4 total theme-specific workplaces we're planning to have; 2 of it is in the game (the default starting living room and the basement). There are ~150 contracts to choose from, ~75 resources to mix, ~600 events and 20 character levels.”

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

“The price will be increased only if we add stuff that makes the game richer in content and more replayable; there will be no change in the price otherwise.”

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

“Quite literally, by personally listening to you in every way possible. It's the reason why we're further developing the game through early access and not simply packing it up for release! The plan is making use of the Steam discussions to listen to your opinions mostly, but we'll do our best to haunt every major platform where you can leave a review. We'll also be running polls every now and then prior to setting the goal of an upcoming patch.

If things start becoming too hectic for us to keep track of, we'd seek help from community managers willing to help us out in refining your feedback and relaying it to us.”