Hello to all of our backers and newsletter readers!
Progress on PFTG has been going great! PAX West feels like it happened ages ago, but I think it's essential to let you know that it went very well for us. We expected a couple of people to show up to the booth, maybe 100 people max, but were shocked to find that our booth was PACKED.
It was terrific to meet face-to-face with our backers and show them the game they made possible with their pledges. It was also excellent to introduce the game to people who had never heard of it. Coming back from PAX, we were incredibly pumped up to dive back into development and get Closed Beta out to our backers.
Yup, you heard me. Closed Beta is OUT;)
All images © 2018 - No Matter Studios, LLC
Seriously, Closed Beta is out!?
Yes! We've been in Closed Beta for about a month, so those who have backed us at "Legion Edition" or higher have had their Closed Beta keys sent out. Contact us if you backed those tiers but haven't seen your key arrive.
Awesome! How's it going?
Closed Beta is going very well, with overwhelmingly positive feedback. Of course, there have been critiques and suggestions, too, with many of them aligning with our to-do list. We're also fixing several bugs and making positive gains with performance as we lead up to our initial PC launch.
To better manage feedback, we broke the Closed Beta into 2 phases. We are calling them CB1 and CB2. Each consists of a subset of content that will lead up to our initial PC launch, containing all the digital content we set out to do during our Kickstarter. We're currently in CB1 and will be in CB2 before the year's end.
All images © 2018 - No Matter Studios, LLC
What have we been up to?
A lot. We’ve been heads down iterating on the feedback we received from PAX and our Alpha backers in preparation for Closed Beta. These are just a handful of our many updates since our PAX demo.
+improved jump animations
+improved walk animation
+improved feeling of sprinting and sprint animation
+improved getup animations
+improved boss shake animation
+improved character grab/attach animation
+improved character swinging movement
+finished overlord/elite/wolf/raven outfits
+added fallen heroes
+added prompts during initial playing area
+improved shake/tap visibility
+reworked puzzles around the temple
+added new puzzles around the open world
+added more wall paintings
+tuning on the balance of bosses
+tuned balance on upgrading outfits
+raven pet added
+overlord pet added
+elite grappling hook
+added surfacing to HUD when outfits can be upgraded
+tons of polish on cutscenes
+new/updated sounds
+rework towers into a full boss
+steam key tech setup for outfits/pets
+additional difficulty settings
+improved controller UI in inventory + load/save screen
+added performance, optimization, and upgrade fur shader
+narrowed playable area for the first part of Closed Beta to get more feedback specific to that area
Whew! Not to mention all the bug fixing too!
All images © 2018 - No Matter Studios, LLC
Is the game coming out Dec 2018 still?
Short answer? No.
We looked at our schedule, and while we could kill ourselves to get it out by year's end, it made more sense to stay in Closed Beta longer to ensure the game is solid and ready for our backers. That may disappoint some, but the good news is the in-game Kickstarter content is finished. We only have a few things left that we want to tweak before launch, but there's still a lot more stuff we hope to work on post-launch.
Yes, we want to add MORE content.
Remember those stretch goals we had? There were a couple of goals we could not hit in our Kickstarter campaign, and we still really want to do those. Also, we created some new content, like Champions, and puzzles, during development which we want to expand on. We went back and forth on how exactly to do this, considered a number of options, and the one that made the most sense to us as a small team was going to Early Access to add the extra content while we worked on consoles.
Before you roll your eyes, we'd like to explain our reasoning.
All images © 2018 - No Matter Studios, LLC
Initial PC Release
We plan to release into Early Access all the game content we achieved in our Kickstarter campaign. This means the five bosses are done and fully playable, along with cutscenes, open-world exploration, minions, puzzles, and all the additional Kickstarter Backer Content. It's a fully playable game that is exactly what you backed us for when we started this journey. However, we love working on this game, and our engine and tools have come leaps and bounds since we started development. This allows us to develop faster and better, and it feels silly to stop growth on the game when we've just hit our stride. While Chien is working on getting the game further optimized and certified for PS4/Xbox One, Tim and I will add what additional stretch goal content we can before a final console launch. We found this to be a win/win for both PC backers and console backers as PC backers will get the game and additional content over time, and console backers will have some fresh content and a somewhat spoiler-free conclusion to the game.
What additional stretch goal content would we be planning?
To be clear, additional content would depend on the sales we get when we launch on PC. However, we'd like at least one more boss, flesh out crafting, add more puzzles, have a perma-death mode as an option, and a more significant conclusion to the game. Honestly, I like to think of it as an epilogue at the end of a book.
We want to reiterate the stuff you backed will be available at launch. We're initially releasing into Early Access to see if we can add more content before we launch on consoles. Yes, we could do a big ol' super duper day one launch but let's be honest, we're three people, and that kind of stuff terrifies us. We'd instead release newer content in waves, continue to expand our community, and listen to your feedback along the way. We felt Early Access fits this approach, and we watched our friends on Grim Dawn, and Subnautica create fantastic games using this development method. We like the consistent development we've been doing since Closed Alpha, and going this route feels like the proper next step.
All images © 2018 - No Matter Studios, LLC
OK, soooo when?
We want to give a firm date, and based on our recent feedback from Closed Beta and Closed Beta 2, we're hoping for mid/end of January. However, looking at our track record, let's stick with Q1 2019 to be safe.
Q&A for the Gods
The questions this time around were great. Even with working around the clock, we managed to find some time to sit down and answer a bunch of great questions from the fans that hang out in our Discord. You can read the most recent Q&A for the Gods by clicking the link below. Special thanks to our mods on the Discord server for curating the questions this time. As always, you can also ask more questions in the #qa_for_the_gods channel in our Discord channel.
https://www.discord.gg/praeyforthegods
Until our next update, here’s an exclusive desktop background for our backers and newsletter readers / All images © 2018 - No Matter Studios, LLC
Get in touch
Do you have some PftG fan art you want to share? Or maybe you want your questions answered in the following “Q&A for the Gods”? Or want to chat with the devs.
If so, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook and join our Discord channel!