Secrets of Grindea: Early Access or Episodic Content?

[Own]

When Gold Charges are added into the game, and perhaps when more talents are added, the game seems like it will be more or less mechanically complete. The only thing that will be coming after that are new story dungeons, new monsters, new NPCs and new loot.

Early Access games on Steam are heavily mechanically incomplete, you're buying the potential for a game. All of the groundwork hasn't been laid, all there is is a vision for what's to come.

By the way I see it, though, SoG appears to have episodic or chapter-based content along the lines of TellTale's many games - which are never listed as Early Access on the Steam store despite the full game not being finished in advance, just episodic content.

You have Chapter 1: Making The Grade. Chapter 2: Cloudy Investigation. Chapter 3: Seasoned Adventurer.

With two more dungeons and a final area left, that's a total of 6 chapters of content assuming no diversions get in the way of artifact hunting. The game is about 50% complete, isn't it? Or 40%, if Pillar Mountains -> Gigaslime aren't big enough to be a chapter.

I'm wondering what would be best to describe SoG as, once those Gold Charges are in. An episodic game you return to every once in a while for the next chapter like TellTale games, or an Early Access game?

And depending on which it is... why isn't it the other, and why aren't TellTale games EA?

 

[Teddy]

Interesting topic!

For Grindea, while a case for calling it episodic could definitely be made, I still think labeling it as Early Access is the correct thing to do. For one, there are still some fleshing out of systems, like new talents and more breadth to the Arcade Mode etc.

Mostly, though, I think releasing it as an episodic title sends a message that the players might as well jump on board now - there will be no real difference. To me, though, feature complete or not there is quite a difference in that a first time player of the final product won't suddenly hit a brick wall, prompting him to go farming cards like a madman, reaching level 19 and then having his character completely broken for the next story segment...

I think it also signals some kind of regularity to story updates, which we could never provide.

Speaking broadly about episodic content vs. EA... that's also an interesting topic!

The only reason I can see why it's not labeled Early Access is that there's a precedent of episodic shows on TV? And to their "credit", the earlier episodes aren't (to my knowledge) polished up much after the game is done. So it's like watching a show on TV, except the episodes come months apart... and you have to buy the entire Bluray collection to be allowed to watch the thing as the content unlocks

It's a bit brilliant because story wise, it's very easy to build up an interesting plot if you don't need to worry about the ending (Lost style), so for a story based game I guess it's great to build hype on the promise of a great resolution, which may or may not come. I thought Walking Dead had a great ending. Wolf Among Us? A great mystery with a, to me, very sudden and unsatisfactory resolution.

Secrets of Grindea will of course have a great ending, with every character getting a fully fleshed out personal journey, and a climax that neatly ties up every string, except for the few we expertly leave untied to allow for a healthy dose of individual interpretation and discussion regarding the game's deeper themes and how they relate to the human condition!

 

[Own]

Oh, that's true. They never go back to their earlier chapters, except to fix bugs. I guess there's still a fair amount of spots in the early areas of SoG that aren't finished off.

There's Trick and Treat's shack in Pumpkin Woods (is that where Jumpkin King is going to be, or is he Arcade Exclusive?), that path north of Candy's house (unless that's going to lead to a new area), several houses in Evergrind, several NPCs in Evergrind, the Winter Goddess Statue (unless that's just for show), the east path in Season Temple and the cave near Muffin.

It would be kind of weird if those were patched in with new stuff when Temple 4 got unlocked as an 'episodic' game, I agree.

Secrets of Grindea will of course have a great ending, with every character getting a fully fleshed out personal journey

So long as I can unravel the tragic romance in Pidgy/Joe's past and eat Morgan's hair of delicious meatballs during the credits I will be satisfied.

But I'll settle with learning Window Washer's many secrets.

 

[Tylerthedragon]

I think for an RPG-like game for this, I think it's best to stay in early access. I think people like to play RPG's start to finish with no interuptions of episodic content, people who buy a full game but are adruptly stopped playing when the game says it's "finished" will just make more people angry. I think the devs will continue to add to the content they've created as they said, but I think telltale get away with it because they are doing it in a TV format, and the game isn't truly that interactive, so it's more like buying a TV show than an actual game.

 

[The G-Meister]

and eat Morgan's hair of delicious meatballs during the credits

I'm sure if they were actual meatballs, Bikke would've eaten them by now