Starcrawlers Interview

We had the chance to talk again with Elena Consacro of Juggernaut Games to get an update on the development of Starcrawlers that just released on Early Access.

Couchpotato: Welcome back to RPGWatch I believe it has been about six months since our last interview from lasy year. So how how have you guys been?

Elena: Thanks for talking with us again! We've been doing great, development is on track and we're really happy with the progress we're making so far.

Couchpotato:  One change that I do want to talk about about is from your October 2014 Update where you announced the game would be going episodic. Can you talk about the reason why you decided to change how you would release the game, and how did backers react to the news?

Elena: Our beta will be releasing in episodic chapters - once the 1.0 version of the game comes out, it will contain the full story. The main reason for that decision was that we realized that we were really going to need to leverage our beta community to adequately test and balance the game's systems. With a team of five, you just can't do enough QA or get enough feedback to balance a game that is as mechanically complex as StarCrawlers. Team members get tunnel vision - they tend to fall back on the same abilities or characters and to complete tasks in repetitive ways without even realizing it. That makes it really hard to find and address every issue, even when you’re testing repeatedly.

Coupled with the fact that this is a story-driven RPG, we felt we needed to do some hard thinking about how and when the main story missions would come out. We want to avoid having players complete the campaign in a less-than-polished fashion. The campaign should be the highlight of the game and we want to control how all players experience it - even in early access. If the core mechanics aren’t totally solid while you’re playing the campaign, you risk ruining the player’s enjoyment and pulling them completely out of the story. Unlike open-ended games like Minecraft or Don’t Starve, you can’t really “get back” that feeling of discovery that’s part of playing an RPG campaign for the first time, so making sure the first time goes well is crucial.

I think most of our backers understood what we were trying to do and could appreciate it. There’s always going to be some disappointment whenever plans change, and we can relate to that. Our main focus is to make sure we deliver a really polished and worthwhile experience at the end of the day. If we can do that, I think most backers and Early Access supporters will ultimately be happy with their decision to support the game.


Couchpotato:  StarCrawlers is now available on Steam Early Access. I was wondering if you could talk about what has changed since the Alpha, and Early Beta versions. Also what content is playable for gamers to who buy the Early Access version on Steam this month?

Elena: The game has evolved quite a bit since the first playable we released to backers. We’ve greatly increased the number and type of missions that are available, implemented randomness in map layout and fleshed out the character abilities quite a bit. Right now we have the prologue of the main campaign, plus endless procedurally generated side missions. There are 8 playable characters, each with 3 skill trees fleshed out and the first 60% of each skill tree unlocked (for a total of 12 abilites per character, out of an eventual total of 21). Characters can be leveled up to 100 and during the beta can be respecced for free so you can try out different builds. There are also 100 levels of weapons, although only a limited number of weapon upgrades are available at this time.

We plan to roll out new content pretty regularly, as well as tweaks to balancing and bug fixes. Next week, players can expect to see new weapon and armor manufacturers, new item upgrades, another brand new story mission, and a large number of other changes besides.

Couchpotato: I see you are charging $19.99 for StarCrawlers which is fair. So how did you decide to sell for that price, and will the price go up further?

Elena: We looked at the scope of the plans for the main story mission and the game as a whole and tried to set a reasonable price based on the pricing of similar titles. There is a possibility that it could go up in the future, but I can’t say for certain right now. It definitely won’t go down.

Couchpotato:  Has any game content been cut, or changed since the game was first pitched on kickstarter last year? I know various thing can happen during development to force changes.

Elena: No, we’ve tried to stay as faithful as possible to our original vision for the Kickstarter. We’re probably not going to be able to achieve all the extra stretch goals that we didn’t reach during the kickstarter, at least not before 1.0, but we’re going to deliver on what we promised to our backers.

Couchpotato:  A recent announcement was the release of Unity 5. Do you have any plans to update the game engine to take advantage on the new changes?

Elena: The release of Unity 5.0 is exciting but won’t have an impact on StarCrawlers. We ran some initial tests to figure out how we could benefit from porting to 4.6 to 5.0, but ultimately decided the benefits didn’t stack up to the time delay costs of reworking entire systems to get them 5.0 compliant. We’re past the point in development where we’re building the core systems and an engine upgrade won’t improve your story, core mechanics or balance. That said, we’re looking forward to working with Unity 5 in the future.

Couchpotato:  Another question I'm interested about is how has feedback been from backers who played the Alpha, and Early Beta versions?

Elena: We tell everyone supporting us that we want to hear all the details, what they like, what they hate, what confuses them. The feedback has been very positive, even when players are telling us they dislike something they follow up with why and how they’d like to see it improved. That kind of feedback is invaluable to improving the game. It’s been very reassuring to get that constructive feedback and to know we’re on the right track with the people who were excited to have the game made. At the end of the day, if we make something that really appeals to our backers and core audience, we’re happy.

Couchpotato:  Now for my last question and it's about your funding status.  So I'll get straight to the point, and ask you do you have enough funds to continue development?

Elena: We have enough funding right now to complete development. We’ve been very careful about spending our Kickstarter funding and we also took on some side contract work in our free time to reinforce our budget. If we get extra funding through early access, we plan to use it to add additional content, but any additions would have to provide serious benefit to outweigh their time cost. We might also use some for external expenses, such as additional marketing. It’s tough to market as an independent developer.

Couchpotato:  That's all for now so thank you once again for answering my questions. Do you have anything you would like to add before we finish?

Elena: Just that we appreciate the opportunity to speak with you again! We hope those of you at RPGwatch who originally backed the game are enjoying playing the beta and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts, both here and on our forums.

Lets give a big thank you to Elenea for taking the time to answers the questions, and you can now buy her game on Steam Early Access to help fund development.

We will also be holding a new contest today for the chance to win a Beta Key.