Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls

Started out really promising, nearly ten years ago. Was a pretty cool little sandbox, but buggy as hell. That was ten years ago. Now, this guy sits in his discord talking about how his game is gonna get updates again, but never publishes them to steam. The last update was August 2024. How do we get steam to do that thing where they put the warning in the early access section about how long it's been since update?

WTF at it's core it's basically a top down 2d playfield 3d graphics ship combat game that aspired to have ship building systems and the ability to walk around within every ship and station and do... things, like building and modifying your own ships. They also wanted to have space slog jobs like mining and transportation, and some kind of major quest system that just never panned out. In practice, only the combat was interesting. Everything else is clunky, unfinished or just plain broken. I was a kickstarter backer of this in 2014, so this has been in development for 11 years. The developer productivity is minimal. The response to feedback is quite toxic/unhelpful, and ultimately it just doesn't feel like substantial progress has been made in those eleven years. If you compare this game to Starsector which started development in 2011 and helped inspire this game, this thing has made zero progress by comparison. Basically once a year Starsector drops big patches, and the game is so mature after years and years of bug fixing and QOL changes that the mod scene has flourished. Starsector had a very narrow scope to begin with (ship combat simulator) and then once the combat and ai was rock solid, then they started adding metagame layers. This game just tried doing everything all at once. The patches here just don't make an impact. If you look at patchnotes they typically fix a couple of bugs every several months. There is just nearly no new content. The game is still an early alpha in terms of bugs, placeholders and overall design after 11 years. A year ago they released a 'major' overhaul patch where they were scrapping a bunch of systems and re-doing it all over. The patch notes literally have a line where the dev gripes that they should have just made an incremental game instead of trying to have quests because he hates dealing with bugs with said quests. They also said the overhaul was why they didn't just slap a 1.0 on it.. again, this game is like an early alpha. The concept is great, but concepts aren't a game. The whole project feels like the devs bit off more than they could chew, and they stayed paralyzed rather than taking a step back and working on their project iteratively while avoiding scope creep. Stuff like walking around inside of ships sounds great on paper, but actually playing it while having space combat playing out in real time is not practical, and at the same time walking around in stations is an exercise in patience because it's just a couple of stores with no real purpose to actually walk around beyond things that could just fit into a menu to focus on the actual fun part of the game: ship to ship combat. IMO at this point they should just rip the bandaid off and acknowledge they're never finishing the game. But don't take my word for it, check out the other reviews!

This game is no better now than when I bought it. Can't remember when that was but it has been many years. Still in early access and still no real progress. Edit: I looked it up. Purchased Sep 15, 2016.

Beware: Unfinished. Abandonware

Has the bones of the best 2D space sim ever but the level of jank gets worse with every update. I started loving it and ended up hating it.

Couldn't figure out how to actually pick up the passenger i was supposed to transport. Gave up. My time is worth more to me than trying to decipher how this game expects me to do basic actions.

Could potentially be one of the best space sandboxes to ever exist, if anyone ever actually paid it any attention (dev included). One of the more unique shipbuilding experiences in theory, crew management that was originally going to be real characters, a cool take on battles where you have to manage inside AND out in real time- so many interesting concepts, but only on the surface. This game has been in developement for a decade and is still somehow, despite numerous "overhauls", almost exactly the same insofar as being a buggy, barely playable mess. When I saw that progress was being posted again, I gave it another shot, only to discover that half the new stuff was AGAIN half-baked and incomplete. Most egregious of all, the focus has shifted to MULTIPLAYER of all things, and so rings the death knell for my interest in what WTF: Zero Falls could become. To the dev: Solo game-dev is hard, I understand, but you need to be honest with yourself and your players- if you are no longer interested in finishing your product, stop selling it. Multiplayer becoming the focus at this point, with the history here, sounds like nothing more than choosing a pointless, difficult task simple so you can say "see? too hard/not enough interest/no sales." Finish it and sell it, or don't and don't- I warn any and all buyers against hoping for new life here regardless of the few surges of activity, as even the discord channel is mostly dead, including the devs being dismissive towards the tiny population simply trying to show interest. If you can't even engage with your most diehard fans who stuck around, despite the abuse, then just stop.

An excellent example of a development ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Низкий поклон разрабу за титаническую работу) В одиночку сделать такое! Ещё и полностью перерабатывает мир и его генерацию... Снимаю шляпу, ты мега Крут :)

The shipbuilding alone in this game is inspired. Updates come in very slowly, but that's to be expected from a one man passion project. I fully believe once it's ready it's going to be an amazing game. It's already a blast to mess around with.