Not Unfinished Development Hell And A Story About Apples And Oranges

I noticed a review from a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to talk about but first...

...its story time with Winterflood, people!

The village of Pipville loved their apples, you wouldn’t believe how much they loved apples, in fact they considered themselves to be the experts on apples, apple connoisseurs. Then one day a man moved into town, for the sake of this story and to protect his identity we shall call him Mr W, and set up a shop selling oranges. He offered people a free orange with the possibility of then buying a Delightfully Lovely Container of more Oranges if they liked the free one. Now the Pipvillian saw these oranges and thought “hey, that is a round fruit, and I love round fruit” and several thousand oranges were given away for free by Mr W, and some even brought his DLC orange pack.

But quickly after opening his store some of the Apple connoisseurs voiced their opinions of these oranges. They told everyone they were experts on apples, they were connoisseurs after all, and these oranges were not right. They were much more complex than apples, much harder to understand with all this peel and lack of pips, and despite being free they had to warn people of the complex danger of this new round fruit and its clear apple inferiority. Now Mr W was confused he had never advertised the orange as a being an apple, sure he had said it was a round fruit, but these expert reviews seem to be looking for something else. So Mr W continued to improve his oranges as they were lacking with proper instructions on how to peel them and enjoy the fruit within, but the connoisseurs still wanted apples and until the day the orange became an apple they were not going to be happy.

Mr W continued for years to develop his oranges when he had time, adding more content, improving the flavour, and making them easier to peel, with little reward. Always in his mind was the thought that maybe he should just shut his store and go do something more rewarding as these people only wanted apples, but there were the few who did get that these were not apples and they enjoyed the complexity of the oranges, and some even told their fellow Pipvillians they enjoyed this new round fruit. And Mr W continued to improve the orange as he believed in it and that it wasn’t an apple, and he didn’t want it to be just another apple, as Pipville had plenty of them already.

Then one day Mr W came along with something new, he pulled out a banana and that just blew their pip minds completely away.

And the moral of this story is?



Now on to this review I just noticed from the 10th July. This was obviously another negative review by someone who does a lot of negative reviews, and yes I read the explanatory essay on their profile for why they do a lot of negative reviews. They seem to have spent more time writing the review than playing the game, and obviously they wanted a shiny apple and not an orange.

So the review is not aimed at me but the players, to tell them how bad my game is. As I am the only person working on this game any feedback is always going to be felt to be directed at me, I am not hired by a big company and can think “well I get paid by them to do this and it is just a job, and any negatives are aimed at my boss or whoever was in charge of developing this.” This is something I have worked on for several years so will always feel the negatives. And Steam has a refund policy where you can try it yourself with no risk, so can make your own mind up.

But back to the review and some of the things it says which will impact the potential player.

“It's deceptively out of Early Access despite being unfinished. The game is getting updates but it's firmly in development hell with no clear indications it will ever be finished.”

It was never in Early Access and it was finished on the day of launch, but with feedback I have updated the game and added content to improve the experience. I don’t believe I ever made claims on the store page about features that were not in the game and have always been open about what is going on with the game and things I want to add. The game is not in development hell and it was finished. I am adding 3 new missions as I changed it from free to paid but the full game is in there and anything else that is being added is extra.

“there's a lengthy English translated tutorial, and I mean, a serious investment of time just to try to learn how to play the game. It's very hard to make the argument that it's worth it.”

Not sure what “English translated tutorial” means but translated means it wasn’t originally in English, and I only speak English. The store page clearly shows what the game is with a video from the original release and the description so it should be obvious what you are getting before having to invest time or money.

“Resolution is locked and can't be changed, and there's no graphics tweaks, but given the simple 2D interface there's not much to impress PC gamers anyway.”
There are SD and HD resolutions but they seem to want 4K 3D graphics looking at their profile and feel there is no place for the type of graphics here. There are also several tweaks you can make to how things are displayed.
“There's a lot of confusion about the pricing of the game, originally I think this was a paid game, now it's got DLC you're expected to buy to unlock the full game... all this despite the game not even being finished. I don't think that in this case it's a deliberate attempt to mislead or scam gamers as many Early Access games do, rather it's just unclear marketing for this unfinished game.”

Originally it was free and had DLC at launch so players could see what the game was like but that didn’t seem to work and was changed recently also from player feedback. There is no confusion on pricing and no scam. The base game has training missions that give several hours of finished game play and the 3 missions I am adding are to add to that value and I am clear about these. So still it has never been early access and the game is not unfinished as it offers the full gameplay I would expect for the price.

If you got this far then well done, you could have learnt the game in less time. So why did I write this response to a review and not just ignore it as another negative to the pile? There were a lot of things said that I highlighted above that were not accurate of what I have done, and previously I would just take the punches and get on with it, but isn’t that saying you don’t care about what you are doing. As I am the only one working on this, and don’t have a legion of fans, I am the only one who is going to defend my work and they may say they are not aiming the review at me but of course it is aimed at me, and therefore I am going to defend my self and my work.

Winterflood