Rewind 99

The game came out in a broken, unoptimized state, and sadly, five months later, the game is still in the same condition. The developers have been pushing out updates with mini game additions. For a game that doesn't work properly, and is to this date, impossible to complete, as customers get stuck behind walls, and at 99% without ever reaching 100%. Support request tickets are fully ignored in both the Steam threads and Discord, no matter how much information you add on them. The team is supposedly working on optimization as well, I will believe it until I see it. The game still runs horribly on my PC by the way, feel free to look at my specs to determine on your own if this makes sense to you or not.

The game left early access with an update that disabled several core game features, because they were still too broken for release. Do not buy it yet if you want a feature-complete, functional game. It is still practically in early access until they restore the old functionality, they just removed the label. The whole point of early access is to communicate clearly to your customers that the game is a work in progress, but hey, you can still try it out! Leaving early access communicates - even if development will continue - that the game is functionally finished and ready for the masses. In my opinion, the responsible thing to do if you know that your game is too broken to release, is to delay the release. This saves inattentive customers from buying a game that doesn't work at launch, and it saves the developer from ruining their own reputation by selling a "complete" game in an incomplete state. You could have delayed it. That's the decent thing to do. Game development is hard, and your fans will understand that, even if they grumble a bit at not being able to play the full release right away. The devs have been clear about the fact that they were planning to release a possibly-broken build when they left early access, so I'm not saying they're being malevolently deceptive. But I do feel that it's still misleading to potential customers who haven't kept a close eye on pre-release patch notes. Someone who's been looking forward to the game leaving early access might buy it, expecting a polished, ready game to play with their friends, only to be left with a broken, incomplete product. Those players do not care that the hotfixes will roll out within the next couple of weeks. They just paid you money, and received a product that doesn't do what it's supposed to. Leaving early access is a statement that the game is ready now. Today. And currently, this game is not ready, by the developer's own admission. Even if the decision to release an unfinished build was not intentionally deceptive, it's still just plain stupid. I can only assume that it was a decision rooted in some kind of unrealistic tunnel vision where they picked a release date and decided the game absolutely MUST release on that date, no matter what. Don't do that.