SQUIDS FROM SPACE is officially LIVE!! Everyone can join us in playing version 0.1, the first Early Access release build! A huge thanks to our community and to everyone else who has helped us get this far!
At the time of this writing, it’s day one of Early Access. Here’s what’s in the game right now:
Main Street is our launch map. It uses Capture the Flag rules, and features humans and Squids in teams of 8 players each as they battle in the commercial district streets of a small town. Tons of objects around the map can be picked up and collected by each side, from oil barrels to jewelry. Large parts of the map are destructible as well, including the entire gas station!
Over 25 Weapons and Powers: Humans and Squids both have access to a ton of different weapons, with both sides having their own unique arsenals. In addition to primary weapons like the HMG or the Antimatterizer, humans have secondary weapons like grenades and auto-turrets, while Squids can activate special Powers like Shield Overcharge or Wormhole.
Vehicles: The Harvester and the Crawler Tank are the two vehicles in the game right now, both of them on the Squid side. The Harvester can quickly gather up metals, fuel, and other materials that the Squids desire, while the Crawler Tank is an armored war machine that can batter down even a sturdy human defense. As fans are enjoying the Squid vehicles, we are now investigating some potential Human vehicles to test in the near future.
Pretty Dang Fun To Play: We’ve had an incredible amount of fun developing and playing SQUIDS FROM SPACE, and we’re thrilled so far at the positive feedback we’ve received from our pre-release players. We’re just getting started and looking forward to growing our community and hoping to get everyone’s feedback on how we can make the game even better!
The above feature list represents about 20% of the content we’d like to have in for our full launch next year. We want to add more maps, more weapons, a deeper progression system, as well as figure out the best ways to stay plugged into our community, so we can make sure that we’re taking SQUIDS FROM SPACE in the direction that everyone wants to see it go!
Our Goals and Roadmap
But that’s just where we are. The more interesting question is: what’s next?
Let’s get the biggest question out of the way first:
When will SQUIDS FROM SPACE be done with Early Access?
We’re probably going to be in Early Access for about a year, maybe more, maybe less. Like we said, the content that’s currently in the game is only around 20% of what we want to include for initial launch! We’re in Early Access right now because we want to test ideas, hear feedback and grow our community around a solid and fun experience. Frankly, we also need to sell copies of the game in order to be able to continue working on the project for as long as possible, something we are optimistic about, but we need people to enjoy what we're making to continue forward past the 9-12 month mark. Depending on the games reception will also give us more clarity on how long we continue to polish and add features beyond our initial schedule.
Then, the next biggest question:
What are you going to add to SQUIDS FROM SPACE during Early Access?
We’re planning on adding more maps, more weapons, more vehicles, a special event system, character customization, a special streamer mode, clans, tournaments… lots and lots of stuff!
Okay, but, when are those things going to be added?
Good question! You might have noticed the “PHASE ONE” at the top of this post. We’re splitting our Early Access into different Phases, with each Phase being about two months long. At the end of each Phase, we release a bunch of new stuff! Basically -- you can expect major updates to SQUIDS FROM SPACE every two months while we’re in Early Access. We’ll also be releasing smaller updates during each phase -- things like balance changes, quality of life updates, and more streamlined systems.
What’s going to be released for Phase One?
We have three major features planned for Phase One:
New Prototype Map: Main Street is great, but what about… a Moonbase? Moonbase is a secret military mining base that humans have built on the Moon, full of advanced tech that’s years ahead of its time! We’re also going to be trying out something new with Moonbase, though -- we want to involve the community in building it! For Phase One, we’ll be releasing a prototype “greybox” version of Moonbase. It will be very obviously unfinished, and our goal is to get feedback from our players about whether it’s fun and what they’d like to change about it as we continue to develop it.
Character Customization: We want players to be able to customize their in-game character and make a look that’s unique to them. The foundation for this system will be going in for Phase One, and we plan on continuing to release options for it for the duration of Early Access!
Special Events: As fun as the core game of SQUIDS FROM SPACE is, sometimes you just want to mix things up a bit. Special Events are alternate rulesets that you can play instead of the normal ruleset. Things like “all maps are littered with respawning explosive barrels”, or “civilians are constantly para-dropped randomly onto the map”. Each Special Event will be available only for a limited amount of time, but we’ll be listening to the community to determine which ones people like or don’t like.
What about later Phases? What’s going to be in those?
We have a lot of ideas for what we want to add, but as a small team, we need to make sure we’re working on the right things. We don’t want to add something only to find out afterwards that our community didn’t even want it in the first place! Basically, we want to gather data first on what our community wants us to add before we promise anything for post-Phase One.
So, while we don’t have any concrete answer for what is going to be released post-Phase One, we can talk about our overarching goals for Early Access. These goals are a bit more abstract; they aren’t so much specific features, but more like guideposts that we are using to help us determine what specific features we want to focus on.
Gather data on what our community wants. We only want to develop features that we think our community will actually engage with. As a small team, if we make something that our players don’t want, that is an enormous amount of wasted time.
Provide new ways to play the game. This covers things like new maps, weapons, or vehicles, as well as the Special Events system. We don’t want SQUIDS FROM SPACE to feel static. We want the gameplay and strategies to change and evolve over time!
Add depth to progression. The more you play, the more stuff you can unlock for your character! This also covers things like customization options received for participating in certain Special Events, or unique titles for completing certain achievements.
Give our community tools to grow. Multiplayer games live and die on the strength of their community of players. We want to help our players connect with each other, share strategies, form rivalries, and collaborate to create all sorts of memorable moments. Things like clans and special streamer modes fall under this goal. We may also look into supporting the mod community, but that will happen after we free up some team members to support that initiative after we are a little more than 50% thru Early Access development.
This concludes our Phase One roadmap discussion! We hope we’ve given you an idea of where we are, where we hope to be soon, and the overarching goals we’re using to figure out where we want to be by the end of Early Access. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here, or you can connect with us on social media or on Discord!
With love and death rays,
-The Fun Bits Dev Team