Why Early Access?

“Since the beginning of the development of Maze Slaughter, we are eager to show the game and its progress to the people. And after three years of development we can proudly hand you a version that we want to iterate on with YOUR input and feedback!

Early access would enable us to push the game where the player wants it to be. We'd get the opportunity to flesh out main gameplay systems like the Corpse-Piling, the player progression and our gunplay but also work with the community on new crazy ideas.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We believe it will remain in Early Access for approximately 2 years.
We have our task and project plan in place and the GDD has all systems and assets covered so we are confident that we can hold this estimation. However, since we go into early access, the community feedback could easily lead to changes in scope or features, ultimately leading to a change of development time.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version of Maze Slaughter should incorporate finished versions of the Corpse Piling system, the player progression system within the game shop, the player tools like the Piling Beacon 3000 and the Lazer Lash as well as the full blown campaign with all new level objectives and 2 Bosses to defeat.
All secondary fire options for the weapons will also be implemented as also a new tool which is a drone and tool upgrades that can pimp your tool behaviors to also become weapons.

A mod kit and a 4 player Coop with character creator should be implemented in the final version after 2 years of development.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“By the time of Early Access release we have a fully playable rogue lite campaign with 10 levels but without bosses.
We will start the early access with a working but not finished player progression system, which will consist of a bank account and permanent player stats saved with each run in the Steam Cloud.
Items that are being bought in the game (with ingame money that you collect inside of the game, no micro transactions) are being stored in the armory and are available with each new run.
Corpse-Piling will be fully implemented and a set of 4 weapons with our own unique meshes is integrated.
The player gets two additional tools, the Piling Beacon 3000, which can teleport corpses to the location of the beacon to make body piles and the Lazer Lash, which essentially is a grappling hook allowing for additional traversal mechanics.
Player progression incorporates Steam save games, an in-game credit account (no real money involved), plus a shop where the player can buy in-game items with the ingame collected money.
4 of the 6 available enemies will be integrated, but no bosses, a tutorial and a comment system where the show host of our game comments on the actions of our heroes.

3 of 4 available heroes with different beginning stats are already implemented

The game will be considered 35% finished but playable and ready to iterate on.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“The price will be around a third of the final release price, where we plan to gradually raise the price as we ship new content and features.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We try to centre all community interaction around our already existent Discord server and the Steam page itself, since not all users might join the Discord.
We will process feature requests, host discussions around features, offer play testing rounds and will stream new feature presentations and bug hunts.
Bug discussions can be held, and there will be discussions around balancing and other game play systems.”