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(Althought I'd say they have a very supportive and dedicated fanbase that will make up for that at this point, at least in Sun Haven. I think it's just not showing on Sun Down because the genre is not as popular for thei audience they have)
As of today, all the posts I'm mentioning on this (The never on EA and the "the game is almost finished") are gone from kickstarter. I managed to scroll down enough to get an answer on comments from one of the devs stating the game was being fully released. But all mentions to that mess is pretty much covered.
I supported the game because it was supposed to never be on EA. And it was close to be "done" when I found the project. The release date was end of May. I backed it up did the survey chose switch. (At this point you could still get any key, and this was, as I say 1-2 months before release)
May comes... They delay the original date of release of Sun Haven a few weeks, because the game is "almost done" but needs polishing. No mentions of EA. No mentions of not being able to release on switch.
June comes, with a sudden EA announcement, right after the kickstarter date for getting your money back is over, and of course the switch will have to wait.
They did offer to change keys from switch to pc if you wanted to play it (which luckily I did) The game was almost done, so only a period of 6 months of EA was mentioned. To "polish"
Polishing in the game ended up being there was no storyline, no anything. Not even a map in. So well, everyone knew this wasn't going to be 6 months because the game was plainly not done. It was a demo at its best.
And here we are, almost 2 years later, the game still have a few unfixed bugs, some of the concerns of the players are not met (crafting from storage, elves without wings, better controller support, better balancing because the game is too hard when you start a new save, no switch) And they're still calling it "complete" with "patches" that will come after because they still want to work on it!
As of today, also people that chose almost two years ago switch, can't change it anymore. Even tho they are still to give a date for release on switch. It's "too much burocracy for the team" from what I got from an answer on discord from a girl that asked because after almost 2 years she doesn't have a switch anymore. But paid for the game in full in kickstarter. And even tho it's their fault for giving the option when they knew they had nothing confirmed... well.
So this is the mess. This is why Sun Down got so much backlash. They said this new game was developed by a new team that couldn't really help with Sun Haven etc, but if you have a game on EA for almost 2 years when it was supposed to be 6 months, plus if you're a backer and knows about this, you wouldn't really like that, no matter if the game is smaller, if it's different. It's resources put on it, when you weren't finished with the one people paid for, to support you and your new studio.
Sorry about the full TED talk 😂
And this eternally repeated line by developers everywhere is a bunch of nonsense. Pretty much says it all for me, combined with your story.
I will keep an eye on things but I suppose it's a good thing I'm being cautious in this case.
I mean, I guess you wouldn't put a new artist on the project because there could be noticeable changes, but I don't think they just hired artists for Sun Down? What about programmers? Why couldn't those people help code / fix bugs in Sun Haven as well, since you were so behind in those areas -still are, as full release is out-
Business-like they took a lot of bad choices. Made empty promises, broke them, acted on "what's fun" (that's what they said on discord, they are just human and wanted to work also on things that made them happy!) and people will call you entitled if you feel they should've only worked on those "things" after they delivered what people that helped them build their studio paid for. So, yeah. This studio/game is a mess in general.
I'm a developer, and take it from me: this happens, a lot, even when it's not publicly announced. Pre-production on future titles often begins when the first title is only halfway complete, because the development process takes a *long* time from start to finish and you don't want to have 5-6 years between your games, if you would like to continue to eat food and sleep in a house in the meanwhile. You have to multi-task.
And the vagaries of development planning means you can't just slap on more people to whatever task you're working on and call it a day. You can't say, "Oh, there are ten programmers, so let's have all ten work on programming." Development takes infrastructure and project management. You might only have the planning and testing bandwidth for five. What to do with the other ones? Fire them? No, you start them on useful work.
So there's that. What I do care about - the real question to me - is whether the 1.0 version of Sun Haven represents an instance of slapping the "released" sticker on an unfinished product and abandoning it because they got tired of development. I've seen accusations of this, and since I don't know the developers from Adam, I have no idea how accurate this is.
By "unfinished product" I'm not talking about bugs or whatever. Every game has bugs, even the really good ones. (The number and severity of bugs in, say, the world-renowned early Final Fantasy titles would horrify you.) What *exactly* is unfinished about this that would generate complaints? Are there missing UI elements? Do storylines just end? Is there specific gameplay functionality that was promised, or mentioned in-game, that does not yet function?
Give me details about the game, not insinuations about the business practices.
They also stated they had a much larger team to help develop the game months before sun down was even announced and they were pushing updates faster than ever.
So what you're saying is that all that is ok just because "it happens". People bet on you and you make empty promises, don't deliver and it's fine because it happens?
Not really, these kind of things makes less and less people support new projects from new teams.
Pre-plan all you want, it's normal and cool to wanna grow and do it when you get the funding for it to help yourself in the long run. Just don't tell the investors of your studio that paid so you could fully dedicate yourself to this particular game and open your studio that you're releasing -not working on- releasing a full new game while you're still on EA, then rush the 1.0 so it doesn't look "that bad".
Let's leave bugs aside, even when there are more than "your usual" ones.
You can't hide the quest bar in cutscenes and it cover character portraits. That's not even a bug that's something you just ignore while testing the game and slaps the "good enough" tag on it. Who cares?
My own experience, there's a snacoon at a spot in the city. Getting a date on that same spot, snacoon is there in between the characters hidding the pixel sprite. More "good enough" details that are ignored and rest quality from the game.
Content = adding more and more grinding without improving quality or balancing the game. Starting a new save right now is tedious because you have limited slot chests, with a big number of crafting stations PER FARM.
They took all quality fish from game, but a lot of the skill perks are still related to quality.
They just ignored it. "Good enough" to full release.
No sprinklers on a game that ask you to manage 3 farms with different currencies that mainly can be obtained by farming local crops. You caaan get a totem for that if you grind enough. 1 totem = 500 seasonal tokens. Unless you grind all the time you won't get more than 1 per season, and it only cover a limited amount of tiles.
A story that's just basic, cliche and short (great storyline original and all promised when I paid for the kickstarter, story ended up being oh chosen one, fight or appease this dragon to end the darkness in the world! With a dragon in between that teachs you perspective in life or something. There's nothing more than that, mostly filler quests to make you feel you're doing something. And even with this, you rush so much that the epilogue (because as for now you "win" and that's it) is planned for an AFTER patch!
You can see people still complaining about the controller support being unstable as of 1.0. After complains for months.
Could keep on but this is already just too long for something that was "almost done" 2 years ago, and had a 2 years EA.
With this said, is it a bad game? Nope. There is effort behind, and I can get enjoyment from it anyway even if it gets tedious at times. There are a lot of pros to it too (art, some of the mechanics are great, etc.). But the "if it's good enough you should just not complain" mentality is something I don't agree with.
Edit: Also, as of today, my negative review is even changed to positive because they DID listen to people about a turn off button for most of the problematic things. I would recommend the game to people that likes the genre as it is even after all what I said.
After reading what your experience has been with the game I don't even want to support these devs. I'm sure they have their own side of the story, but what bothers me the most looking through comments is that I have never seen them reply to anyone about anything. I get it, some people will complain about anything, but making a post on here acknowledging some of the problems and at least letting people know they are being addressed is in my view a bare minimum that should be done. I was disappointed in kynseeds 1.0 release, but at least they have people in the forums that acknowledge and explain things to their customers.
I feel the same way. Not that i'd eat up their explanations and/or excuses but at least it'd give context and I could form a less biased, possibly more positive opinion.
Honestly the fact that they are only active on discord where everyone basically just think they are gods in earth for creating a farming game that's "better than stardew valley period".
There are a lot of good things on the game, and great ideas, but since bad experience was met with more bad experiences I'm sure I won't be supporting the studio in the future. Because it didn't seem that they learnt anything in two years, and at the end this was released with a good enough tag as I said.
For example the romance bugs that they know are there, are fixed with two in-game potions to refresh the relationship, making the player waste more gifts and re-do all the dialogue. That's a big red flag to me.
But aside from that, it's really a good game, and it's really a pity that it won't be bigger because aside of their stablished fanbase, this won't reach further with all the problems it has, and they already lost a chunk of target audience in the process.
If it counts, they seem to be trying to fix things, so now that it's not as punishing, and since you wouldn't be biased by years of listening to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'd say if you're interested, to get it on sale and give it a try (after they actually finish and add an epilogue and all because as for now the end is just finishing the quest and nothing more, very...anticlimatic) I mean you have the time to refund if it ends up being bad to you.
I ended up getting some enjoyement out of it anyway, from the good things it have, just that all the bad things kept piling for me, and I got very disappointed very fast. I thing after all that, this wasn't enough to go through the bad experience.
It's PC. And a lot of games release "unfinished". Ever heard of games with DLC? Clearly unfinished if they want DLC, huh? It's a lot easier to update games for PC because you can actively download them and the issues are easier to troubleshoot and fix. For console, it's more expected to release a "full game" because it's hard to diagnose problems if you don't.