Early Early Access?
Wow - so a lot has gone on in the last couple of weeks! For those who haven't seen, the game now has a healthy collection of “Let’s Play” videos on YouTube, a number of Streamers and Content creators have taken to the game positively, which is amazing to see, and still blows me away!
With that success has come an increased demand in people wanting to get their hands on the game! The Beta Key program was completely cleaned out within minutes of the first video going live, and then after a key restock, those were gone in a matter of hours as well! It’s been a lot of reactive play from my end here, as I try to adjust to the massive influx and interest in Vault of the Void. Our humble little Discord server grew from around 150 members to 1000+ literally overnight!
This led me to look towards making a few decisions. I spoke with a number of players privately and asked “Is this game in a state where it feels worthy of an Early Access release?”, and secondly “Is it worth the $14.99 price tag?”. My personal answer to both those questions, I’ve learnt, will always be no - I think it's a case of a creator always undervaluing their work (something I really need to work on!).
Thankfully, out of the 10+ I asked, it was a unanimous “Very much yes to both”.
So, armed with that information and full serve of fear and anxiety, I have decided to release Vault of the Void into Early Access on Nov 20 (a full 3 weeks early!). Yup, that's about 24 hours away. (I actually made that decision and announcement on Discord about a week ago but have fallen behind in updating Steam posts - I’m so sorry!)
[h3]What does this mean? [/h3]
I’m... actually not sure? I’ve never released a game before. I’ve actually never made one before either.
2 years ago, I didn’t even know how to code a simple line of text to appear on the screen. The idea of a Concept Artist just “taking a shot at making a game” seems like a distant memory now, and filled with the vision I had, and mixing that with the support and ideas from the community, coupled with a great amount of testing, Vault is what it is today. There's still a lot more to go (new class hype? Impossible+?), but I do think it's important to release things into the wild. It will never be “ready” in my eyes - there's always something I’d love to fix, or a new feature I’d love to add. But eventually, you have to set things free!
[h3]An Important Note[/h3]
One very important note I want to put out there, as I’m seeing this come up a fair bit now. There's been a number of comments along the lines of “Oh my, he stole artwork from XYZ game!?” or “Yikes, looks like some stolen icons right there!”.
That is 100% incorrect - whilst I’ve tried to get as much of the artwork in Vault to be custom done by myself or other art friends (trust me, there's a lot!), something did have to give. Namely, the artwork for players cards, and also some spells/ability icons.
However, all that artwork was purchased legally from royalty free game dev packs (in fact, you can even grab them for yourself right now, and I encourage you to do so! It’s great for giving your game idea the jump start needed). It just so happens that those other games did the same thing! Monster Slayers, The Last Hex to name a few - all great games who had the same need as I did.
I will mention however, I do, and am in the process of, getting all that repainted with custom artwork over the coming months. It’s my goal by January to have all 200+ player cards all fully painted! I’ll be bringing in some art help to assist with this (on that note, if you’re an artist, feel free to drop me your portfolio!).
[h3]In Closing[/h3]
I’ll have more to say about this all post launch - but please do keep in mind I’ll be learning on the fly a bit! Thankfully I’ve had some great community help step up and assist with the workload where possible, and with keeping things like the Discord running silky smooth.
I’ll close by saying a massive thank you to everyone who has left personal messages of support, emails about their love for the game, comments about how much enjoyment they’ve been getting out of it, etc etc. It truly does blow me away. When I started doing this, there was a lot of advice flying around along the lines of “Your first project won’t make it to market, let alone be a success, so keep working on new ideas and games constantly”. EIther through stubbornness or stupidness (maybe both!), I really wanted to prove the first point wrong at least.
As of tomorrow, I can finally say I did.
- Josh
With that success has come an increased demand in people wanting to get their hands on the game! The Beta Key program was completely cleaned out within minutes of the first video going live, and then after a key restock, those were gone in a matter of hours as well! It’s been a lot of reactive play from my end here, as I try to adjust to the massive influx and interest in Vault of the Void. Our humble little Discord server grew from around 150 members to 1000+ literally overnight!
This led me to look towards making a few decisions. I spoke with a number of players privately and asked “Is this game in a state where it feels worthy of an Early Access release?”, and secondly “Is it worth the $14.99 price tag?”. My personal answer to both those questions, I’ve learnt, will always be no - I think it's a case of a creator always undervaluing their work (something I really need to work on!).
Thankfully, out of the 10+ I asked, it was a unanimous “Very much yes to both”.
So, armed with that information and full serve of fear and anxiety, I have decided to release Vault of the Void into Early Access on Nov 20 (a full 3 weeks early!). Yup, that's about 24 hours away. (I actually made that decision and announcement on Discord about a week ago but have fallen behind in updating Steam posts - I’m so sorry!)
[h3]What does this mean? [/h3]
I’m... actually not sure? I’ve never released a game before. I’ve actually never made one before either.
2 years ago, I didn’t even know how to code a simple line of text to appear on the screen. The idea of a Concept Artist just “taking a shot at making a game” seems like a distant memory now, and filled with the vision I had, and mixing that with the support and ideas from the community, coupled with a great amount of testing, Vault is what it is today. There's still a lot more to go (new class hype? Impossible+?), but I do think it's important to release things into the wild. It will never be “ready” in my eyes - there's always something I’d love to fix, or a new feature I’d love to add. But eventually, you have to set things free!
[h3]An Important Note[/h3]
One very important note I want to put out there, as I’m seeing this come up a fair bit now. There's been a number of comments along the lines of “Oh my, he stole artwork from XYZ game!?” or “Yikes, looks like some stolen icons right there!”.
That is 100% incorrect - whilst I’ve tried to get as much of the artwork in Vault to be custom done by myself or other art friends (trust me, there's a lot!), something did have to give. Namely, the artwork for players cards, and also some spells/ability icons.
However, all that artwork was purchased legally from royalty free game dev packs (in fact, you can even grab them for yourself right now, and I encourage you to do so! It’s great for giving your game idea the jump start needed). It just so happens that those other games did the same thing! Monster Slayers, The Last Hex to name a few - all great games who had the same need as I did.
I will mention however, I do, and am in the process of, getting all that repainted with custom artwork over the coming months. It’s my goal by January to have all 200+ player cards all fully painted! I’ll be bringing in some art help to assist with this (on that note, if you’re an artist, feel free to drop me your portfolio!).
[h3]In Closing[/h3]
I’ll have more to say about this all post launch - but please do keep in mind I’ll be learning on the fly a bit! Thankfully I’ve had some great community help step up and assist with the workload where possible, and with keeping things like the Discord running silky smooth.
I’ll close by saying a massive thank you to everyone who has left personal messages of support, emails about their love for the game, comments about how much enjoyment they’ve been getting out of it, etc etc. It truly does blow me away. When I started doing this, there was a lot of advice flying around along the lines of “Your first project won’t make it to market, let alone be a success, so keep working on new ideas and games constantly”. EIther through stubbornness or stupidness (maybe both!), I really wanted to prove the first point wrong at least.
As of tomorrow, I can finally say I did.
- Josh