Next Fest Feedback Roundup

As Steam Next Fest draws to a close, I wanted to reflect on some of the great feedback you’ve given so far, and provide an update on next steps.

Main Feedback

This is a summary of the main points of feedback submitted by the community, via Discord and the Steam Forums (in no particular order):

• People wanted to warm up the freezing robot, and were sad to leave it to freeze

• Some areas were too dark and that caused confusion

• Many people noted the game runs well on their hardware

• Some people tried smashing the “whale glass” because of the signposting

• There were a few physics bugs, sometimes impact effects looped

• Some people reported confusing dead-ends, particularly at the end

• A minor bug, but Escape didn’t close the menu (that is now addressed)

Developer Notes

It's always hard to predict what feedback you might receive when you put your work out into the world. I have been working "in the dark" as it were for many years at this point, and working on such a large project without it seeing the light of day for so long is liberating, but also not rewarding.

The response has been very positive, and a lot of the feedback has been really useful and will be important in shaping the game going forwards. It was especially nice that the robots were so well received, and that the game runs well on a wide range of hardware (something I have been focusing on).

Next Steps

I'll work through the feedback for the existing content, and work on finishing up the levels which I didn't include in the demo, towards an Early Access release when there is enough content.

The demo will remain live until April, so I'll continue to gather feedback via the Steam Forums and discord.gg/estranged.

As ever, thank you for playing Estranged!

Alan