Update: I’m pushing the early access date to Tuesday 26th - I’ve not been that well the last few days and as a result I’ve not managed to clear off some important tasks (things like the Steam store page, final play testing). Sorry about that.
I’m aiming to launch Annhexation into early access in the next few days - on Friday 22nd May to be precise. What a journey. Who’d have thought developing a 4x historical strategy game as a solo developer could be so much work…
In anticipation of that I’ve published the Annhexopedia to this website - this describes how to play the game, the units, the tech tree etc. and hopefully has a little historical flavour. I’ll do some more work on this in the coming weeks - I’d like to get some images in their.
In terms of the early access release here’s what to expect:
- The AI is playing an ok game now - its got foibles for sure but its giving me entertaining moments. I’m pretty sure when other people play its going to get thrown some curveballs, but thats the point of early access.
- A few bugs and glitches. Inevitably.
- The late game is looser than the early game.
- Diplomacy isn’t really implemented yet - at the momeny you can declare war, the AI can declare war. But thats it. The diplomacy system will be simple, but not this simple!
- Single player online only for now (i.e. play in your browser).
- No scoreboards yet - I’ll just be throwing them away with every balance change during early access.
- During early access all the games features will be available. I’m going to restrict some features to the Steam / App Store versions when the game leaves early access - details below. The first 100 players to complete a game during early access will get a free copy when it does release on Steam.
- Built in feedback mechanism - if something weird happens you can choose an option in the in-game menu to send me feedback along with a snapshot of the game and AI state, then I can take a look.
- I aim to update fairly regularly and will do my best not to break any games in progress - the game already “migrates” file versions so that I haven’t had to keep restarting games.
Ok. So above I mentioned restricting some features. I’m trying to walk the line between letting people play and enjoy it for free and having people purchase the game, probably for around $10. So that being the case the limitations on the online single player game are:
- Only small and medium map sizes
- Can only play with 4 empires in a game
- No custom map / custom game option
- No multi-player
- Rather obvious but its online only - needs an Internet connection
- If I release it (big if, its built but not finished) no scenario editor
I may tweak and change this but I think thats the core of it. And as I said above the first 100 players to complete a game will get a free copy on Steam. And in early access none of this will be restricted - the full game will be available. I’ll overlap the Steam release with the online play being fully featured so their is no sudden gap in play. Plus you can already export a game from online so you’ll be able to continue in the Steam release (I may see if I can make this automatic).
For those who managed to read all this… some new screenshots below.
