There are links all over the site that let you Pre-Order a copy of Xenonauts. I imagine quite a few people of you will be wondering why you’d want to do that – this page is here to explain that!
The quick answer:
1) Pre-ordering the game will make the final product substantially better.
2) Pre-ordering gives you access to the latest development build, so you can play the game out immediately.
WHY DOES PRE-ORDERING THE GAME IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THE FINAL PRODUCT?
Goldhawk Interactive is an independent studio. Video games are usually developed by studios backed by publishers, with the publishers paying the development costs, but in this case I initially funded the game from my own life savings. This gave us enough money to produce a generic X-Com clone with average artwork and playability. However, we’ve also been seeking community funding, to help us improve the quality of the game. If we get $10,000 in during development, that’s $10,000 we can spend on better artists or more programmers. The idea is simple - if you like this sort of game, if you buy it now you know that the money will be spent on development rather than just going into our pockets afterwards. You’ll be getting a better game for your money.
We’ve had a decent amount of funding from the community, and it’s already substantially improved the quality of the game. For example, all the tiles in the game were previously pre-rendered 3D, but now they are all being painted over by a 2D artist (substantially improving the appearence of the game). We’ve also been able to pay for good explosion and fire animations, and we’ll be investing more in some of the weapon effects too. It’s also given us more programmer time to get the basic systems just right, to keep iterating them with our community until we find a polished combat model that is fun and easy to use. In short, it’s letting us realise our vision for the game properly. If you like what we’re doing, please consider pre-ordering, as it’ll benefit everyone in the long run.
PUBLIC DEVELOPMENT BUILDS & PRE-ORDER:
In return for the pre-order, you will be given access to our public development builds and then our beta test. At present we’re releasing a new development build every couple of months, which contains the new features we’ve implemented in the interim. This can be discussed on the forum, where we listen to and respond to community feedback about how the game plays. If you have suggestions for how we can balance the game better or make it more intuitive to play, we’d love to hear them. Similarly, if you encounter a bug in the game, report it up in the forum and we’ll get it fixed.
The development builds of the game have all of the end-game content stripped out, so they only contain a few hours of gameplay. Once the game is mechanically complete (hopefully not long), we’ll be starting a prolonged beta test. This will involve giving pre-orderers the full game, perhaps minus the final mission and some of the artwork, and we’ll be working intently with the community to make sure the game is perfectly balanced and stable for when it comes out. A lot of games are released full of bugs and with horrible problems in them – we want to make sure that doesn’t happen to us. We know lots of people want to play the game and give us their thoughts, and we want to listen to you. We know our community is a our biggest asset – it’s the only advantage we have over the big studios and publishers, and we want to work with you as best we can.
So, that’s why we want your pre-order money. If those reasons make sense, you can pre-order the game on the next page >>
