"We’re implementing a new pollution-centric feature called The Wasteland."
Kia ora folks! We’ve had a really exciting and busy time since I last updated our blog. Lots to talk about, so I’ll try to make this brief.
Before We Leave news
Our Xbox & Game Pass launch is coming soon!
Before We Leave is coming to Xbox and Game Pass on the 23rd November - just a little under one week away! I wrote a small blog post about it here with more information and an FAQ too.
Our coming update
I revised our 2021 roadmap a couple of weeks ago to reflect our next content update. The core idea around it is improving features that have gotten a lot of feedback on
our Steam forums and reviews. We have two rather big new features planned for the update; let me take you through them!
We’re implementing a new pollution-centric feature called The Wasteland. The idea is that, if your planets are badly polluted for an extended period of time, there’s a consequence - a Wasteland spawning - that makes your Peeps unable to work in an area. Ideally, this spurs you into action, by providing the Peeps with new buildings and hopefully cleaning things up! Gotta love recycling.
We’re hoping the addition of this new pollution effect and subsequent buildings will reduce the detachment some players feel with our current mid-game. Another way we’re trying to reduce player frustration is by adding a new mode for shipping that acts in a more automatic way than our current system. Sam goes into detail about this new shipping mode and the other features of the update in our latest news video (linked below). If you want more details, I’d recommend watching!
Sam and Isaac will be updating our Beta Branch over on Steam in the coming weeks too, so if you’re keen to be involved with giving us feedback on all the new features; keep an eye on our Steam community for new updates and announcements!
Studio News
Our YouTube channel
Recently, I've been trying to get more people to subscribe to our YouTube channel so I can unlock Community Posting! We recently reached 400 subscribers!! Thank you to everyone who subscribed and pushed us over that milestone. If you’re not subscribed, please consider helping us reach our next milestone - 500! We’re already quite close at 419 subscribers! Woo!
Hiring New People!
We’ve reached the end of our hiring process, and wow it’s been intense. If you’re one of the people who applied for a role with us - thank you! We received so many amazing applications and it was genuinely difficult to figure out who - and how - we say “no” to all the wonderful folks who sent applications through. We’ll be announcing our new staff members by the end of the year.
Trialing a 4-day work week
For around a month now, we’ve been trialing a four day working week! Some of you might be familiar with the research coming out worldwide regarding the benefits of a shorter work week, and we've decided to give it a go. This means we aren’t around on Mondays (or for many of you, Sunday) so if you’ve noticed us taking a little bit longer to reply to messages and queries, this will be why.
It’s been an interesting adjustment - while the extra day off to recuperate from our busy weeks is fantastic, it’s forced us to re-evaluate what productivity looks like for us and how we can tighten our processes to get as much out of our weeks as possible.
Since 2022 is only 7 weeks (!!!) away, this is a penultimate blog post - I will write one more to say “goodbye!” to 2021 in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading everyone!
