Craftopia is released for the Early Access today, September 4th, Friday, 21:00 JST.

Honestly, we couldn't make a decision on when to release Craftopia over a couple of months. It might be better to release once we developed the perfect game. We've noticed that a lot of players expect much on Craftopia. In the worst-case scenario, due to the lack of playable content, bad reviews would be posted to Steam; therefore, we would not be able to continue developing the game. But at the same time, we realized that we are just a small company and it's impossible to develop the perfect game on our own. It's totally different from those big companies which develop fantastic video games. A brand name, budget, and members, everything is not enough.

However, when it comes to our team's scale, there are styles of game development:
- 1) Receive the feedback from the players and immediately improve the game to reflect them;
- 2) Develop and put the aspect of trendy games into our game;
- 3) Focus on 'fun' gameplay more than world view and consistency.

These are the things a small company like us can do better than big companies. Sophisticated graphics, smooth motions, fancy animations, we haven't focused on them. We've messed with the favorite genres of the great video games of all time. We've been dreaming of what would happen if we combine them all together.

Chop trees and mine stones as in Sandbox,
Explore the world as in Open-world,
Fight the hunger as in Survival,
Cultivate and harvest as in Farming,
Collect loots in dungeons as in Hack-and-slash,
Automate activities as in Factory management,
Hunt monsters and creatures as in Hunting action,
Cast magical spells as in Fantasy RPG.

What will the utopia look like where you can do everything ever you've dreamt?
Craftopia is the brand new game; we've passionately developed. We believe that no other companies are trying to create a game like this.

Even we don't know the potential of this game yet. To release the game like this, probably it's better to release now for the Early Access even though it, unfortunately, contains the bugs and is an imperfect game. We want to improve Craftopia by receiving feedback from you and make it better together. It still has bugs. It's not fulfilled with content. UI might not give you a proper explanation to you. The game has only simple dungeons. We developed the fundamental features of the game first, such as:

- Basic Hack'n'Slash with various Enchantment,
- Basic Crafting System,
- Agricultural Cycle,
- Automation Cycle,
- Skill System,
- Mission System.

We strongly believed that Craftopia would be one of the best games by polishing it over time. Today, we released the game for the Early Access, and this is just the beginning of the journey. We'll keep listening to the community to make it better and better.

We promise that we'll keep updating the game from today. We would much appreciate your support, including a good review on Steam.

Pocketpair, Inc. CEO, urokuta

Hello!
Craftopia is currently in closed alpha!

Thank you for all of your applications. Also, thank you to all alpha testers for helping to test the game and submit bug reports!
It has been really fun to be able to create a game with all the alpha testers and everyone in the community, and I am grateful for the opportunity.
We have been sincerely listening to your comments and striving to improve as much as possible, and the team is full of determination and enthusiasm to make Craftopia a better game.

Now, during this testing period, we had to make a crucial decision. To be honest, it was a really painful decision to make, but when considering the future of the game and our wish to make the best game possible, I think that it is a decision we need to make now.

Craftopia's early access release will be postponed from its original schedule.

Please let me explain.
From the beginning, it was stated that "If there is a problem that seriously interferes with play, the game will be delayed",
From our closed alpha we have determined that the following problems have seriously interfered with play:
1. Multiplayer stability
2. Length of server sync process after loading in multiplayer
3. Building data may be lost when moving islands, both in singleplayer and multiplayer.
4. Save data may be damaged or lost suddenly

On Twitter and Discord, we received many kind and excited messages such as "I want you to release it even if it is full of bugs" and "I want you to release it and I will debug", and to answer that feeling, we wanted to somehow release the game early, but the development team has concluded that we need to take some time to make the game better because we want to make a game that everyone will enjoy and be happy with.

Even if everyone understands that the product is still incomplete with Early Access, "Play normally, data will be corrupted normally" "Play normally, load + synchronization is extremely long" we think that it is not desirable that you will often face problems.

From the above, the following improvement measures will be implemented:
1. Multiplayer stability
=> We will continue to devote more resources to improve multiplayer so that it will be stable.
2. Length of server sync process after loading in multiplayer
=> We will radically review the processing and greatly improve it.
3. Building data may be lost when moving islands, both single and multi.
=> We plan to make a radical revision.
4. Save data may be damaged suddenly
=> We are planning to introduce a system that allows users to restore data from backup.

Through this alpha test, we received a lot of feedback from everyone, and we were able to find many issues and make a list of everything that we need to change and improve, so this has been a very meaningful time.
To solve the above problems, we will take some time from now on, and carefully solve these problems.
Therefore, we are planning to finish the closed alpha test on 8/3 at 12:00. After that, the game will be unavailable to closed alpha testers so we appreciate your understanding.
(Please note that the special key for media will continue to be valid)
In addition to the above, we have received many bug reports, and we plan to go through them one by one and fix and improve them.
We are grateful to the community for their cooperation in this regard.

If there are no further problems we are planning to release it into early access on 9/4 (Friday).

This is a rough schedule, and if the development team decides it can be done ahead of schedule, it may be released in late August.
Details of this schedule will be announced at a later date.
(Because the purpose of announcing the schedule with plenty of time is not to put too much pressure on the development team, it will be a little late schedule, but I would appreciate your understanding. )

That's it. We will continue to add content and adjust the balance, and for the start of early access, we will add a lot more content that we couldn't have ready for the closed alpha, so we hope you look forward to it!
The team will continue to work diligently, so please continue looking forward to Craftopia.

Today we want to introduce the building and the brand new enchantment system!
When you put Iron Sword into Campfire, it becomes 'Flaming' Iron Sword! You can cook 'Rotten' Fried Egg with 'Rotten' Egg! Whole new exciting crafting experience awaits you!

Hello, everyone! Thank you all for being excited about Craftopia.
We want to announce the current development status, as the release date seems to be expected on July 1st amongst the community.

We had initially planned to release Craftopia in Early Access in June; however, we changed the release date to July for the following reasons: 1) we started working remotely on this project due to COVID-19; 2) we received way more responses than we expected. Unfortunately, working from home has drastically affected the development schedule and caused the delay, although it's expected that we will have the Closed Alpha Test in July.

On the other hand, we haven't decided when to start Early Access. Early Access is generally for the games to receive feedback from players before all features get implemented. But our game Craftopia is the game where you can do everything you have ever imagined. To meet players' expectations, we would like to develop and prepare as many features as we can before Early Access kicks off.
We are feeling bad about having you all wait for the release of Craftopia without any information. We will do our best to inform you about the development status in July.


The starting date of the Closed Alpha Test is planned to be on Monday, July 27th, at the moment. If we don't experience any terrifying bugs during the Closed Alpha Test, we will release Craftopia in Early Access by the end of July. In case we detect fatal bugs or errors, the release date might be postponed a bit more. Thank you all in advance for your sincere understanding.


We realized that it's better to have some more people participate in the Closed Alpha Test; therefore, we are considering retaking applications. We will announce it on Discord and Twitter soon.

Last, today's next announcement will be about the introduction of the building and the game system. We hope you will like it!