A rogue-like sci-fi strategy survival game with base building, tactical combat, crew management and emergent storytelling.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Post-Launch Report and Upcoming Update: Officers Unleashed!
almost 10 years ago
– Wed, May 11, 2016 at 12:53:26 AM
Hello backers and Early Access players!
It's been an exciting few weeks since PAX East and our Early Access launch! How did the launch go? Well read on, fair backers, read on!
Launch Report
Launch is always a nerve wrecking experience. The whole team was distracted for a couple of days watching the sales reports on Steam, reading the early reviews and watching charts, like Steamspy, religiously.
We were lucky to be standing in the sales charts with some much bigger games:
In good company!
And here's how the sales chart looked for the past few weeks:
Launch spike and the long tail
All launches have this initial sales spike and the long tail afterwards. Average Early Access titles sell about 8000 copies total in the first 14 months (according to this Steamspy post) and we've already hit more that amount in less than 3 weeks.
We are so grateful to you backers for believing in us last year and your support has helped give us the time to create as good of a game as possible for our Early Access launch and the proof is in the VERY POSITIVE 95% rating on the Steam store.
Thanks for your reviews!
Despite the initial sales, our daily sales now are much lower than we expected. It's tough to get people to trust in an Early Access game so we have a ton of people who put us on their Wishlist but have yet to purchase. That's why your reviews are so important!
Also, be sure to support Twitch and Youtube streamers that are making Halcyon 6 videos.. the more Likes and comments they get, the more likely they will continue making their Halcyon 6 Let’s Play videos and the more that helps us get more people learning about our game! We were lucky to get some big streamers like Angry Joe on board!
Those of you who were able to take your time to give us a review were extremely helpful in our early days, thank you!
If you haven't yet, please take 2 minutes and write us a review here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/371200 (It'll be a HUGE help because Steam uses reviews for its recommendations. If only even 10% of our backers would write reviews, we'd have 630+ already but we're still only at 260)
Next Steps and Road to Full Release
What's our strategy to maximize our sales and maintain our team? Well, we are not resting on our laurels that's for sure. We're going to keep pushing towards the Final Release of the game as soon as possible!
There will be TWO major updates to the game, the first is Officers Unleashed and the second will contain Acts 2 and 3 together. In between these major updates, we'll be pushing smaller updates to fix bugs, UI issues, polish and 'quality of life' tweaks to make the game better.
Once the two major updates are out, we'll launch the Full Release version of the game. After the Full Release, we'll work on immediate stuff like Linux version and the stretch goals (as promised!).
Some backer customization rewards will be incorporated before Full Release but some of the other ones will be dependant on the completion of some stretch goals. The physical backer rewards like the Artbook and soundtrack will be finished once the Full Release is stabilized and final content is fully complete. We want the best version of these rewards as possible and we can focus on that much better once the game is complete.
So, onto the next major update...
Officers Unleashed!
From the beginning, officers were always an integral part of our game design. We're adding to what we launched in our Early Access build to give players more customization and more control over their officers.
First up is levelling up an officer. In Officers Unleashed, you'll be earning skill points as you gain levels and you can go to this screen to spend those skill points however you like. Be it upgrading an existing power or training in a brand new one, the choice is yours.
We're also revamping our Tech Tree and moving some upgrades to trainable upgrades that may not need as much resources but simply an officer and time to unlock in the new Officer Academy room:
Also in the Officers Unleashed update, we'll be adding Away Missions on planetary surfaces and enemy strongholds.
You won't be doing much suntanning here..
Of course this means more stuff for your officers to do.. we'll be adding more officers into the earlier portions of the game to balance it out.
And of course there will be lots of tweaks and balancing as well. We're aiming to get Officers Unleashed out for late May/early June timeframe and yes this is a huge change to the major areas of the game so old saves will not work.
As with any major update, we'll be needing you to help us playtest and provide us that valuable feedback that you've been giving during our Alpha, Beta and Early Access phase.
Thanks again for supporting us in this journey, we're so proud that we were able to deliver a good experience in Early Access to both our backers and our new players from Steam and we can't wait to get Officers Unleashed, then Acts 2 and 3 into your hands.
- Halcyon 6 Team
Two days til Halcyon 6 Early Access Launch!
almost 10 years ago
– Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 10:36:49 PM
First off, THANK YOU backers! We wouldn't be here without you!
Early Access Releases and Your Steam Keys
For those of you who backed at ENSIGN level or above, you should have your Steam Keys already because of your involvement in the ALPHA and BETA. Those keys will continue to work when we launch Early Access so you don't need to do anything.
For those backers who backed at Crewman (and any purchasers of Additional Copies), those Steam Keys will be sent out tomorrow. You can activate them on Steam but you'll have to wait until 12am EST on April 21st before you can download and play the game.
How can you help with our launch?
Please, pretty please, leave us a review on STEAM after you've played the game. These reviews will help us immensely!
We continue to work on Halcyon 6... notably the features and content needed for Act 2 and 3.
Also, we haven't forgotten the stretch goals. I've got a design session scheduled for going over the stretch goals AFTER our Early Access launch.
After our design/production session, I'll be posting our tentative production schedule which will address which stretch goals will be in before the 'Final' release and which ones will be after. For example, Space Pirates Mini-Campaign is definitely AFTER the 'Final' release (and we've said so in our previous Kickstarter updates).
We'll be at IndieMegaBooth at PAX East!
Come visit me (Ken), Peter and Felicity at the IndieMegaBooth Minibooth section and grab some buttons and stickers!
Thanks again everyone, we'll post another quick update on launch day!
BETA Keys have been sent out!
almost 10 years ago
– Sat, Apr 09, 2016 at 12:50:53 AM
Welcome to the Halcyon 6 BETA!
Hey backers!
Good news! We just shipped out Halcyon 6 BETA Keys to everybody who pledged at the Ensign, Lieutenant 1st Class and Lieutenant tiers (and all the Pre-Order peeps). That's 2535 of you! :)
For those backers who have been enjoying the ALPHA, your key will still work for BETA. Be sure to check Steam for the latest update which is the BETA build.. and it includes Ground Combat! Well at least the first iteration of it. There's more work to be done!
So what should you expect in the HALCYON 6 BETA?
Game: It’s Act I and it’s BETA. It's mostly feature complete but there will still be bugs and balance issues. There are a lot of systems in this game so it'll take a bit of time to fine-tune it.
UI: it’s still a work in progress. Please leave us feedback (with screenshots) if you have any suggestions or pain points with the current UI.
Story: Act I is mostly complete but we still tweak and add some story stuff here and there before Early Access launch.
Art: combat animations are continuously refined as we edge towards Early Access launch. The ship combat art is mostly done but ground combat still needs more work.
One of our forum users “mrxak” put a great post on how to report bugs: http://forums.pleasestaycalm.com/index.php?topic=14824.0 All bugs and suggestions should using the above guidelines be posted to the Testers Lounge in our forums.
As always, report bugs to our forums but if you have any issues with your Steam key, let us know at [email protected]
Thanks again everyone for your continued support as we enter the final stages in our push towards Early Access launch on April 21st!
- Halcyon 6 Team
Ground Combat PRE-ALPHA Video!
about 10 years ago
– Mon, Apr 04, 2016 at 12:27:34 AM
Hello backers!
Without further ado, here's a quick preview of the working (Pre-Alpha) ground combat:
It's still rough but we've been making very rapid progress on the tweaks, polish and content for this feature.
Those of you with ALPHA or BETA access will get to try it very soon!
Halycon 6 in IndieMEGABOOTH at PAX East
As the header states, yours truly (Ken), along with Felicity and Peter will be at PAX East in Boston showing off the latest Halcyon 6 build! Drop by and say, and grab a few of these sweet, sweet H6 buttons:
So many to choose from...
That's it for this update! I'll post concretes news on the Early Access release date in the next update!
Cheers,
Ken and the Halcyon 6 Team
Super quick update.. two words: Ground Combat
about 10 years ago
– Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 04:04:44 PM
Hey esteemed Halcyon 6 Backers!
We're all hunkered down working on the last big feature of Halcyon 6...
GROUND COMBAT!!
work-in-progress shot
For those of you in the PRE-ALPHA, we're holding off on Steam updates until we ship a version of ground combat to that is ready for playtesting by you guys.
Rest assured, it won't be too long as we're still trying to stick to our schedule.. basically aiming for end of month (crossed fingers!!)
In the meanwhile, we're doing terrible things in the combat animation dept.. like this:
Ewww
and this...
Yuck...
Reminder on Backer Rewards
Some of you have been asking about Backer Rewards.. as we've noted in the Kickstarter and earlier updates. we won't be able to work on a the majority of them until the game is further along into Early Access. There's a lot of custom work that can't be done until we figure out the specifications for the in-game stuff and that won't be done before Early Access launch.
Our focus is getting the game out in Early Access, work on the balance and polish of the game as well as the stretch goals that we achieved. Once we're at certain milestones with those stretch goals, we can start looking at all the custom stuff for the Backer Rewards and ramp up on that as we get close to "Final Release".
Thanks all of you for the support as we get into the final stretch before Early Access!
