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Before I come off as a jerk, I just want to go on record by saying I am just concerned about what I put my time and money into. This game just seems like it'll get kind of stale after the second map. I play planet base, Cities: Skyline, all sorts of resource and city building games, so each one of them manage to keep me interested in them. (Rock polishing or game where you can keep getting more efficient at them I enjoy.) I guess where I'm going is will there be enough excitement uniqueness to keep me engaged? I've been watching Biffas' playthrough, so I've noticed that some of the weather events can't be prevented. Namely speaking the lightning on map one. Something else that seems unnatural is it lightning will it's cold on the planet. Does this happen on earth and I just don't know it? This is just a question, but can you run out of resources on a map? I don't know, maybe I'm just thinking too much about this, but your using a store I've never had dealings with, and not sure if there is a return policy if I don't like what I got.  So you can see my overall concern with this.  

Hi I generally tell people this for any Early Access/beta/whatever you want to call it

If you have reservations about it, that's totally absolutely your prerogative.  You are totally free to wait until much later or after release to see if the game will be something you enjoy. Early Access and its variants are for those who wish to be involved in the process. This process by its nature involves risk on your part. If you do not wish to incur such risk, you would be better served waiting until release. And that's super ok.

The devs will obviously appreciate any feedback you can give, even if its in comparison to other games or what you would or would not like to see in the game even if its just viewing other people's playthroughs. Whether they implement any of those suggestions may of course be dependent on various factors.

Yes, lightning does sometimes happen on Earth when it's cold out -- see "thundersnow."

We have art for a lightning tower that's not in the game yet but should hopefully make it in by late September; it will essentially act as a big lightning rod that protects your colony from lightning and also refills your energy batteries when it gets hit (that's the current plan, anyway).

(On that note, we also have art nearly finished for a defensive turret, which also won't be in the initial public beta but hopefully will be placeable by sometime in late September.)

If you're at all concerned about our use of itch.io instead of Steam, or that there may not be enough to keep you entertained during the beta, then by all means, I'd urge you to wait until the full release, which will also be on Steam.  The beta is very much an opportunity for us to work with our audience to make the game better before we launch, and quite honestly, we're much more concerned about making Aven Colony the best it can be than trying to make money in the short term.

So if you wait for the full launch on Steam, you'll get the benefit of being able to evaluate the game when it has more features implemented, is more polished, and is on your platform of choice.

We also are considering a number of additional late-game features, and want to work with our audience to decide which of those are the most important going forward, and that should help us ensure that Aven Colony is the best game possible and reduce the risk of it ever becoming dull or tedious.

Thank you both for the very pleasant responses. I was just looking for a piece of mind really. The ideas that you spoke of about the lightning rod and defensive turrent sound very promising.  Not sure if you can say or not, but will there be a skirmish mode kind of like Command and Conquer? Like as in you can either pick a map or have one generated, then you just keep building your base/colony til you get tired or have like a certain goal met? To be quite frank, I really wouldn't mind helping with the beta test. I've done one for City of Heroes back in the day and have been looking to partake in another. Oh and the whole thundersnow thing is quite fascinating. 😀     

Posted by: VK_Chimera

 

Thank you both for the very pleasant responses. I was just looking for a piece of mind really. The ideas that you spoke of about the lightning rod and defensive turrent sound very promising.  Not sure if you can say or not, but will there be a skirmish mode kind of like Command and Conquer? Like as in you can either pick a map or have one generated, then you just keep building your base/colony til you get tired or have like a certain goal met? To be quite frank, I really wouldn't mind helping with the beta test. I've done one for City of Heroes back in the day and have been looking to partake in another. Oh and the whole thundersnow thing is quite fascinating. 😀     

   

Yes, that's Sandbox mode.  Take a look at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjPtK06NLys -- he shows off some of the options at around 02:17.  I've also seen a couple of YouTube previews where people do try out the maps in sandbox mode.

We have a ton of options you can customize, and may be adding more during the beta.  We don't support random maps but all of the maps will have a different configuration in sandbox mode from their configuration in the campaign version.

Sounds real good, I'll check out the video in a bit. 😀