DEAD GAME

[normal lintel]

Game is dead, only 792 player during launch at the same time is mental...

Game has died, deal with it, slow updates, high price, not listening to community, it ruined every potential for this game

No content, no modding support, no scripting

[warm finch]

😢

[silver osprey]

thanks for the helpful feedback

[neon solar]

Early Access.

[normal lintel]

It's still the truth

Early Access doesn't mean it should be dead

[silver osprey]

This is far less informative and revelatory than you think it is. This is not feedback. This is just complaining. Have an idea of how to make the game less dead? Go ahead, share with the world. Or go back to stating the obvious, beat the dead horse into an even greyer pulp. It's fine.

You are just saying that the sky is blue. Great, now what?

[neon solar]

It also doesn't mean it should be alive. Many games take a lot of time in Early Access before a denser population arrives. This small team is doing this part time after a full-time job with no funding from special interests. I'd love to hear actual feedback though. Not every game is destined to explode the moment it releases, especially a more niche game like Brickadia.

[strange vine]

I think people are just unhappy with the lack of news about modding, scripting, destructibility, and terrain tool, which the developers talked about in their blog.

[normal lintel]

Exactly, and the fact, that the prefab system has the exact same problems since the Demo, from March, and it's nearly December

The lack of proper marketing, (they should have just spam their older posts on tiktok, for free) the awful pricing for a community driven game

30 EUR, meanwhile GMOD is 10, Roblox is free, Valheim and lot of other Sandbox, building games are usually about 20, but those actually giving you a goal. Then why would you choose Brickadia over those, if they are cheaper and give you more content

There was a Huge hype during alpha 4 and 5, with thousands of players, and during the trailers release, in around 2022, they should have capitalized on that hype, start selling the game from there, and they might had higher profits, which could have been invested into the development of the game.

[normal lintel]

But they let the hype die off, with all those deadlines

Having only 2 programmers is really hurting this game, and the fact they all live in different parts of the world, some in Europe, most of them in the US, but in different states

[strange vine]

Think about GMOD – it evolved over many years, and we also received little content when it first came out. But to be fair, GMOD came out many years ago and was the FIRST full-fledged sandbox modding game, which gave it popularity at the start because there were no comparable games.

ROBLOX is already a full-fledged UGC platform with its own ecosystem, while Brickadia is more like GMOD. I don't see the point in comparing it to ROBLOX.

Valheim is a survival game first and a sandbox game second.

Regarding the price, it's a 50/50 split. On the one hand, you're right that it's too expensive for a game like this in its current state (EA1/2), but on the other hand, the developers have to somehow pay salaries and licenses, considering they don't have a Kickstarter or a publisher.

[strange vine]

This isn't a problem if everyone knows what needs to be done. I've seen many indie studios working in different parts of the world, and they work harmoniously because they know what needs to be done.

As for the rush, I don't know. You need to take your time when developing a game like this. Something made them delay the release and release it later. It's fine if you're an indie company of 5-6 people working on a project after work/in their free time.

[normal lintel]

I don't care about the past, I care about the present, and in the present, Brickadia's rivals are huge, you should present a viable alternative to those, so new players would buy your game

[strange vine]

What competitors could they possibly have? And let's talk about NEW games, not GMOD and ROBLOX...

and S&BOX

[normal lintel]

I gave valheim as an example, that it's only 20EUR, also Early Access, and it gives you more thing to do instantly

It has justification for its price

[strange vine]

Don't forget that the game has its own style, similar to LEGO, I haven't seen any new sandboxes that could be similar to this one.

[normal lintel]

I mean, all of the existing sandbox games which give you creative freedom?

[normal lintel]

That's a good thing, but a good style is still won't solve the lack of content, slow development and the pricing

[strange vine]

Let's be honest:

Valheim - a team of 15-20 people
Valheim - has a publisher (Coffee Stain Publishing)
Valheim - survival, simulator, crafting, sandbox.

Brickadia - a team of 5-6 people
Brickadia - has no publisher
Brickadia - sandbox game.

[strange vine]

Again, they don't have a publisher, and they have a small team that works on the game in their free time, they don't work on the game for 12 hours (probably).

The price is not entirely justified, I agree, but it seems like this is the only option for development to continue for now.

Well, or they can find a publisher...

idk

[strange vine]

If that's the case, then every genre, every new game in a similar genre, has 100 competitors, but new games are still coming out and trying to grab their share.

Minecraft, Hytale, Vintage Story are the first ones I can think of.

The Sims, Inzoi, Paralives.

And also, these days it's hard to find the right investor.

In fact, I'd advise developers to go to Kickstarter.

[limpid ledge]

Iirc they have said they pitched multiple publishers on it but they all saw a game that looks like Roblox and wanted it to make Roblox kinds of money with mtx and shit. And that’s not the kind of game they want to make

I would rather a slowly developed game with low player count during EA than quickly developed, stuffed full of mtx, and full of of bugs

[azure flare]

^^

Game's development progress it slow, & player count is low

but both of those aren't what really matters for an indie early access game

what matters is a community who love the game, are playing the game, and sharing it from a point of passion

and they've built a very strong community, it's just a matter of time & updates and the game will reach [Insert Arbitrary Measure Of Success Here]

Minecraft grew the exact same way, barely any marketing, 3 developers at most for a while, but a fiercely passionate community that ended up getting the game noticed by people with larger followings, granted Minecraft was unique being a rare indie game before those were really popular, and riding the wave of gaming content on youtube. But the same seeds are here

[neon solar]

Couldn't agree more with this. I'd be more concerned about the game if it was a total ghost-town, but we have plenty of people playing regularly and people watching on the sidelines for more. That + budding content creators dedicated to the game, people conceptualizing game modes, ect. Are the seeds that take a while to help the game grow slowly.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. I prefer this over streamer-bait indie games that die as fast as they get popular

[shut hemlock]

This^^^

I have no problem being patient and waiting for more content. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy doing what I can with what we have.

and frankly, "Only" 700+ players at start for an indie game seems like a pretty respectable number.

its not thousands of course, but its more than enough to build a passionate fanbase of people who want to help the game grow.

[azure flare]

most indie games struggle to get over the 100 mark for more than a month

this games retention is relatively high for an indie game, though again retention isn't a great measurement since a LOT of us are waiting for EA2 on stable

[neon solar]

Yeah I think the comparisons being used don't make sense too. We all got numb to games releasing and getting insane numbers out the gate. 700 - 900 is insane for what this game actually was on release. Gmod and Minecraft were not immediately popular. They are super old now though. If they came out today the price would totally be higher, but they're old and proven titles that already made their millions. Valheim is backed by publishers, but also a studio making tons of money in other ways than just valheim so they can afford to make it cheaper. It also has a different scope and mission as a game.

The other games mentioned had literal years, if not decades to simmer in the market. Brickadia has only been made truly 'public' 4 months ago. It's doing fine.

[tawdry spoke]

So many games are out on steam, tens of thousands, and a majority of them flop hard or never take off in the first place. We get used to the games that hit it off and do well because those are the ones we hear about, we don't hear about the games that stay quiet.

Right now Brickadia ranks 4291 for 24 hour peak playercount out of 29610 games on SteamDB, it's doing better than 85% of the games on steam, and that ranking will get better once players that are waiting for EA2 to hit stable come back to the game.

[tepid lantern]

also the game being small means less chances for community drama

[ornate tendon]

debbie downer over here