As we've had a slow launch into Early Access, we naturally have low player population. This was expected for the most part, we've been holding weekly play sessions for months using Steam Playtest and have thankfully maintained a small player base from dedicated players, some even from 2019.

So where does that leave us as new players buy the game and the servers are empty?
We are trying our best to rectify the situation, just the same as any other game that relies on players to fill up their servers, and we've got a few ideas. We're heavily focused on marketing and gaining organic growth, in the mean time we'll be shifting our representation of MORTARMEN. Your participation into our weekly events will help us build a foundation towards a daily playerbase.

For years we've been building a large scale multiplayer shooter with Arakousa (our nearly 3km island) at the helm, it took many (mortar)man hours to create and fill up with interesting enough points of interest with over 20 sectors and 2 routes. However we've realized the gameplay potential is most realized during smaller engagements, where the movement shines it's brightest and even revealed its weaknesses. We've noticed this during our times on the playtest playground level, but we were still clinging onto Arakousa for dear life.

Check out Chet's channel where he covers aspects of the gaming industry, below he goes over MORTARMEN's launch and compares to his own title, The Anacrusis.

Levels and gamemodes made for 5v5 to 10v10 player counts, paving the way towards more competitive territory and more engaging gameplay.

We've made the first step with a new CQB level with one terminal sector in a confined mining cave, we'll be experimenting with more ideas for this level to refine our gameplay even further. Come check it out with us during our Play Session events usually every Sunday at 4pm EST, give us your thoughts, as always we'll be in Discord[dsc.gg].

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Lastly, check out our last Play Session from last Sunday, it was a blast, thanks all for coming.

[dsc.gg]

In these five years of development we've had plenty fun developing MM, seeing it grow from a barebones shooter with flailing ragdolls (primarily used to get over fences and through windows) to a game with a more precise vision of what we're trying to achieve. From starting with visual scripting for weapons, sliding, and mortars, then restarting from scratch, eventually building the gamemode and.. an entire island, among everything else, we believe we've honed in what matters the most to us. Making a fun game that we can enjoy with our friends, and hopefully your friends too. We learned and continue to learn more about the direction, and with your help we'll get even closer!

Be sure to look at our roadmap[trello.com] to see what's in store, we'll be taking a major shift towards cooperative gameplay in the near future with additional PvP gamemodes and more levels to accommodate them.

We'll be launching with a couple servers in each region worldwide for both levels: Arakousa (large scale) and Quarry Island (small scale), of which we have Blue Fang Solutions[www.bluefangsolutions.com] to thank! We'll be working closely with them to provide community hosted servers where admins can moderate and configure gamemode/gameplay settings for a more unique experience. If you're a community manager and you're looking to expand, get in touch via Discord[dsc.gg].

Last but not least, MORTARMEN is very much an early access title, with bugs and crashes, potential major changes to mechanics, and a lack of content is to be expected. We'll get to where we need to by your help, reporting crashes (using the crash reporter, send description!), submitting bugs in our Discord, as well as features, balance changes etc, all will be reviewed.

See you on the mortarfield.