Space is cold, hard and brutal - it wants to kill you. Spacebase DF-9 offers us the chance to try it out anyway, and will be leaving Early Access next month announces Double Fine.
Unfortunately it marks the end of any new content for the ‘town builder’ sim, with the team only focusing on bugs from then on. Instead they’re releasing the lua code to the community.
Sure, giving the modders access to a game’s source code is quite dandy - thank you very much - but calling it quits on new official content? It’s leaving a sour taste.
It’s especially saddening to hear when you browse over the extensive ‘development plan page’ the Spacebase DF-9 website had only a few months ago, which is now missing, and presumably shoved out an airlock. By comparison the game is going to be a rather barebones hulk of metal in the black abyss.
Double Fine have posted a ‘Road to 1.0’ graphic to show how far Spacebase DF-9 has come since arriving on Steam Early Access. NeoGAF managed to find the original dev roadmap for it.
In space, no one can hear you scream its lack of content, but at least it’s an open source frontier?
”As for what will be added between now and the 1.0 build, new features will be aimed at providing the complete experience you’d expect of a non-Early Access game: a Tutorial mode to smooth out the early game a bit and help new players learn the basics, and a Goal system that lets you work towards concrete objectives. That as well as over a month’s worth of pure bug-fixing work and final polish,” announced Double Fine on Steam.
”We’re also pleased to announce we’ll be releasing the game’s full Lua source code a short time after 1.0, which will allow the community to create potentially far-ranging mods that add content, new features, and change some fundamental game behaviors. We’ll of course be sticking around a bit for bug fixing and support, but any new content for the game will now be in your hands. We’re eager to see what people do with this game!”
The community is having a mixed response to this, but it’s clear a portion feel ‘cheated’ by Double Fine, who they say are ‘giving up’ before it realised its potential. Still, there’s always RimWorld (get your mind out of the gutter right now).
