Early Access Info

Hi!

I decided to share some information about the upcoming early access, timelines and how the development is progressing towards this launch.

I will cover as much detail as possible in this post, so it might be a long read but hopefully this provides some transparency and answers for questions that you might have.

This info is divided into 3 main topics: Development, Trailer and Launch

Development

For the past few months, I have been fully focused on creating the necessary early access maps and this process has gone really well. At this point, I'm basically only missing 2 maps from what I consider "minimum viable product" for the early access, so the bulk of the early access content is already done.

Making these last 2 maps will take me around a month, I have quite clear plans how to implement them and assets for these are also mostly ready, so consider this fairly achievable task development wise.

On top of map making, I have done a lot of gameplay playtesting since there's now features like multi-shelter support, dynamic elements and much greater traveling distancing present in this early access build.

This playtesting has mostly focused on getting "the dangerous journey" feeling from the game and figuring out "onboarding" for the new players which enforces the idea and need to travel towards east, experiencing interesting events, new shelters and POI's along the way.

My conclusion from this initial playtesting is that the current early access build exceeds the final demo by a big margin and that "the dangerous journey" feeling is already present with these current traveling distances.

I especially like the new game modes (Darkness / Ironman) that bring a nice twist and challenge for playing the game and the multi-shelter and key system for unlocking these shelters is working really well.

The main issue that I recognize is the loot variety and lack of really unique quests / tasks but some of these issues are still possible to tackle before the early access.

Early Access Trailer

In terms of the trailer, I'm about 75% done with the editing, most gameplay content is already recorded and there's also really cool custom OST-track composed specifically for this trailer.

I originally planned to release trailer this at the end of this year (December) however this plan turned out to be a bit more complex than I originally though. Complexity in this case means doing all kinds of press releases, networking and company stuff in the middle of holiday season and sending out emails with really long response times.

One especially time consuming process that I have to manage this month is a Steam backend company form change, since I originally created the Steam Partner account as an individual (sole proprietorship) but now before the release it needs to be updated (along with all tax forms and app transfers) to a limited company (Ltd), meaning going from individual to company entity even though I'm still a solo developer.

This being said, I'm not comfortable of releasing the trailer and announcing the specific release date with that trailer until I have all this "backend stuff" sorted out and I have full control over the timelines related to launch.

I would assume most of this stuff will get sorted out fairly soon, I will get bunch of necessary responses / emails after the holidays, so the logical time to release that early early access trailer would then be at some point January.

Launch Window

Even though I mentioned that I'm not comfortable of announcing the specific release date yet with trailer, I can still give some rough estimates related to which launch window I'm targeting.

As an indie developer, there's basically 3 main things that you must avoid when choosing a launch window:
- Major game releases (like GTA6)
- Major game reveals (like Game Awards)
- Major storefront changes (like Steam Winter Sale)
- Other IRL events

Obviously every indie developer tries to navigate under this same mindset, so you don't never get a perfect launch window just for you but when it comes to Road to Vostok and I think there's quite good and potential launch windows coming fairly soon still.

The main launch window that I'm considering and which could be aligned with the current development progression is roughly somewhere between February and March next year.

This launch window however requires a bit of luck since there's quite small margins for "unwanted surprises" for a solo developer like me getting sick or something unexpected that would suddenly reduce my work output.

However since the game is already at pretty solid state, there were a lot of demo testing in the Steam Next (Final Demo), this February and March launch window is still quite realistic since most core features are already tested and proven to work somewhat reliably.

TLDR Summary
Development: Going great!
Trailer: Releases January
Launch Window: Hopefully February / March.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

-Antti (Developer)