Steam Dev Diary # 6 - Roadmap Update 2022
Dear Fermi Paradox Community,
The Early Access version of our game has been live for a year and we are very happy with how far we've come. We want to thank everybody who supported us with the development of The Fermi Paradox and provided us with a lot of honest critique and crucial feedback. We could not make this kind of game without you.
We have added 6 major updates since our Early Access release in (named Mercury, Venus, Deimos, Mars, Luna and Farside) and now have roughly 70% of the game's features and content implemented.
Looking back over the last 12 months it has become much clearer for us how long we need for updates and which parts of the development take more time than we anticipated. Our estimation is that we will stay in Early Access until Spring 2023.
To bring The Fermi Paradox to a good state that we are happy with, we want to implement the following topic bundles.
Jupiter Update (First Contact Rework): Contact between a spaceship and an alien civilization or colony is still quite underwhelming in the current version. We would like to explore in more depth the consequences of two alien societies interacting with each other and we’ll look at themes of coexistence, occupation and infiltration. Note that this will not include full permanent multi species planets/systems.
Ganymede Update (Synthetic Species): Biological species of an advanced techlevel might create artificial lifeforms. There is a chance that these synthetic creations will rise up against their creators and build a civilization of their own.
Callisto Update (Galactic Imperialism): Space travel and interstellar communication in our game is relatively slow (even after breaking the lightspeed barrier) so it will be hard to create a galactic federation or empire. But a sufficient number of colonies of the same species can use decentralized approaches to coordinate their dominance over the galaxy.
Saturn Update (The Nano Age): With this technological level a species will be able to modify matter on the atomic level, create tiny nanotechnology machines and directly modify their bodies on a cellular level.
Titania Update (Full Utopia / Dystopia): Achieve 100% Utopia to let your aliens sink into blissful happiness or be driven to uplift other lifeforms… But your galaxy can also turn into a dark forest where full dystopian species try to wipe out every sign of life in the galaxy.
Uranus Update (The Warp Age): When matter can be transformed into energy, the ways to personal teleportation and object replicators are open. The laws of space-time will be bent as access to other dimensions or even timelines might be possible.
Neptune Update (Meta Gameplay): Difficulty levels, achievements, unlockable species and a storyteller mode will make replaying the game more interesting.
Pluto Update (Transspecies): When a technologically advanced society learns enough about other aliens in the galaxy, they can use this knowledge to evolve into a complete new lifeform that can integrate every other species into their fold.
Gaia Update (Godlike Age): When technology is indistinguishable from magic, a single civilization might become capable of transcending to another plane of existence or harnessing the energy of the entire galaxy.
In each update we are also working on the following aspects::
Fixing bugs (big thanks to our Discord community for patiently reporting issues to us)
User Interface improvements (for better overview and explanation of the game features)
More story events (to add more variety or when our community has cool ideas)
Balancing of already implemented features
Accessibility features
Keyboard and controller support
We don't want to drag the Early Access phase forever, so we decided to tackle the following aspects after we finish the main game, either as free updates or as a part of an expansion.
Multi Species Planets : We want to make the species to species interaction more meaningful. But having a permanent population of many different species in the same star system is quite complex and we are still not sure if we will add this feature to the game.
Dynamic Planet Appearance : With evolving technology, the appearance of a planet could also change. For now we only describe these changes in our texts and are not sure if we should also change the visual appearance of our planets.
Custom Campaigns and Special Game Modes : We have a lot of ideas for campaigns ( like we had in our demo version ) or game modes with very different starting conditions. These features will take a lot of balancing work so we may do them later.
Psionic Abilities and other Fantastic Elements : Even if mental powers are a staple of many science fiction stories, we think that these elements don't fit well into the stories that we want to tell in The Fermi Paradox. But it might fit into a separate game mode or add on.
Languages : It only makes sense for us to finish the English text of the main game and then decide if we will translate “The Fermi Paradox” into other languages. We are always happy to hear what languages the community would like us to support, but we can't make promises right now if the game will be translated into those.
Platforms : We will focus on making the PC version great and then decide if we create a version for platforms like Switch, Mac, Linux, Mobile, Xbox or Playstation after we finish Early Access.
Modding : Since we will add and change features constantly during Early Access it does not make sense to add a modding system before we finish the Early Access version.
Also, there are some things that are out of our scope for a small indie team or don't fit with the vision that we have for our game:
Multiplayer ( cooperative or competitive )
Very detailed customization of characters
Classic strategy game elements like moveable units or base building.
Detailed grand strategy elements with the micromanagement of a lot of resources / values.
We hope this gave you a good overview on what we still have planned for the rest of the Early Access development and what you can expect in the next months.
Keep in mind that game development is far from an accurate science, so the order and content of things that we planned can always change. We are interacting constantly with our players to understand what is important for you and what you find really interesting about our game and plan accordingly.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to all the people supporting the Early Access version, writing reviews and feedback, providing us with ideas and suggestions on our Discord, the Steam Forums or other social media and sharing and streaming our game. That really helps a lot.
Thank you and see you up in the stars, voyager.
Jörg from Anomaly Games
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/n5bDJ7pRVM
Follow us on Twitter: @FermiGame
The Early Access version of our game has been live for a year and we are very happy with how far we've come. We want to thank everybody who supported us with the development of The Fermi Paradox and provided us with a lot of honest critique and crucial feedback. We could not make this kind of game without you.
We have added 6 major updates since our Early Access release in (named Mercury, Venus, Deimos, Mars, Luna and Farside) and now have roughly 70% of the game's features and content implemented.
Looking back over the last 12 months it has become much clearer for us how long we need for updates and which parts of the development take more time than we anticipated. Our estimation is that we will stay in Early Access until Spring 2023.
To bring The Fermi Paradox to a good state that we are happy with, we want to implement the following topic bundles.
Jupiter Update (First Contact Rework): Contact between a spaceship and an alien civilization or colony is still quite underwhelming in the current version. We would like to explore in more depth the consequences of two alien societies interacting with each other and we’ll look at themes of coexistence, occupation and infiltration. Note that this will not include full permanent multi species planets/systems.
Ganymede Update (Synthetic Species): Biological species of an advanced techlevel might create artificial lifeforms. There is a chance that these synthetic creations will rise up against their creators and build a civilization of their own.
Callisto Update (Galactic Imperialism): Space travel and interstellar communication in our game is relatively slow (even after breaking the lightspeed barrier) so it will be hard to create a galactic federation or empire. But a sufficient number of colonies of the same species can use decentralized approaches to coordinate their dominance over the galaxy.
Saturn Update (The Nano Age): With this technological level a species will be able to modify matter on the atomic level, create tiny nanotechnology machines and directly modify their bodies on a cellular level.
Titania Update (Full Utopia / Dystopia): Achieve 100% Utopia to let your aliens sink into blissful happiness or be driven to uplift other lifeforms… But your galaxy can also turn into a dark forest where full dystopian species try to wipe out every sign of life in the galaxy.
Uranus Update (The Warp Age): When matter can be transformed into energy, the ways to personal teleportation and object replicators are open. The laws of space-time will be bent as access to other dimensions or even timelines might be possible.
Neptune Update (Meta Gameplay): Difficulty levels, achievements, unlockable species and a storyteller mode will make replaying the game more interesting.
Pluto Update (Transspecies): When a technologically advanced society learns enough about other aliens in the galaxy, they can use this knowledge to evolve into a complete new lifeform that can integrate every other species into their fold.
Gaia Update (Godlike Age): When technology is indistinguishable from magic, a single civilization might become capable of transcending to another plane of existence or harnessing the energy of the entire galaxy.
In each update we are also working on the following aspects::
Fixing bugs (big thanks to our Discord community for patiently reporting issues to us)
User Interface improvements (for better overview and explanation of the game features)
More story events (to add more variety or when our community has cool ideas)
Balancing of already implemented features
Accessibility features
Keyboard and controller support
We don't want to drag the Early Access phase forever, so we decided to tackle the following aspects after we finish the main game, either as free updates or as a part of an expansion.
Multi Species Planets : We want to make the species to species interaction more meaningful. But having a permanent population of many different species in the same star system is quite complex and we are still not sure if we will add this feature to the game.
Dynamic Planet Appearance : With evolving technology, the appearance of a planet could also change. For now we only describe these changes in our texts and are not sure if we should also change the visual appearance of our planets.
Custom Campaigns and Special Game Modes : We have a lot of ideas for campaigns ( like we had in our demo version ) or game modes with very different starting conditions. These features will take a lot of balancing work so we may do them later.
Psionic Abilities and other Fantastic Elements : Even if mental powers are a staple of many science fiction stories, we think that these elements don't fit well into the stories that we want to tell in The Fermi Paradox. But it might fit into a separate game mode or add on.
Languages : It only makes sense for us to finish the English text of the main game and then decide if we will translate “The Fermi Paradox” into other languages. We are always happy to hear what languages the community would like us to support, but we can't make promises right now if the game will be translated into those.
Platforms : We will focus on making the PC version great and then decide if we create a version for platforms like Switch, Mac, Linux, Mobile, Xbox or Playstation after we finish Early Access.
Modding : Since we will add and change features constantly during Early Access it does not make sense to add a modding system before we finish the Early Access version.
Also, there are some things that are out of our scope for a small indie team or don't fit with the vision that we have for our game:
Multiplayer ( cooperative or competitive )
Very detailed customization of characters
Classic strategy game elements like moveable units or base building.
Detailed grand strategy elements with the micromanagement of a lot of resources / values.
We hope this gave you a good overview on what we still have planned for the rest of the Early Access development and what you can expect in the next months.
Keep in mind that game development is far from an accurate science, so the order and content of things that we planned can always change. We are interacting constantly with our players to understand what is important for you and what you find really interesting about our game and plan accordingly.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to all the people supporting the Early Access version, writing reviews and feedback, providing us with ideas and suggestions on our Discord, the Steam Forums or other social media and sharing and streaming our game. That really helps a lot.
Thank you and see you up in the stars, voyager.
Jörg from Anomaly Games
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/n5bDJ7pRVM
Follow us on Twitter: @FermiGame