Hi everyone. Youll probably have noticed its Steam Awards season again! And that means you all get to decide which games deserve a bit of spotlight. Now the Falconeer is eligible for the Labor of Love category, and that strangely pulls at me. And in today's marketplace every opportunity can be vital, and for instance just getting nominated will shine a big spotlight on The Falconeer. So Ive got to try and ask you for your nomination. So! Let me make my case that The Falconeer is deserving and hopefully that will convince you to make the Falconeer your selection for Labor of Love. And if its nominated or not, at the very least it's a good opportunity for a retrospective look at a year of Falconeer updates!! So here goes!
It has been just over a year now since launch (already?!) and whilst many would think that getting a game developed over the incredibly challenging state of things that 2020 left us, the hard work that came AFTER has been just as intensive and thankfully, rewarding. Over the course of development we had an eager (Flock? Squadron? Flurry?) of Falconeers in Discord that had been eagerly following development news, and from the moment an early Beta build was made available for them to try, I was overwhelmed with both the volume and the passion shown by the community with regards to changes, fixes, suggestions and wishes that were put forward by the early bird players - and whilst many suggestions did find themselves into the version of the game that launched, several things were put on a list ready to tackle post launch and develop into bigger things.
Balancing this feedback from the community that by now also included everyone who bought and played the game on Steam and talked with me in the forums (thank you!) as well as some of the critiques from reviews and of course my own personal visions and plans for The Falconeer became an intensive task that has not stopped since launch, with the aim of continuing to build upon the foundations I laid a year ago, and to make The Great Ursee a world that continues to provide mysteries to explore, lore to ponder upon, and most importantly entice you all to saddle up and take to the skies over and over again. The Falconeer has received literally many dozens of updates over the last year. This includes bug fixes and improvements. The improvements included (just to name a few of many) three separate M+KB modes, difficulty rebalancing, gamma sliders, mouse sensitivity sliders,new ships, enemies and sea monsters, visual improvements such as floodlights on turrets and best of all guided rockets that changed up the core combat. The patch notes in total would run many many pages long.
But I also always envisioned a game that would have a lot more to do than what was available at launch (besides the 10 hour campaign). And so there were free content updates that added completely new mechanics, missions and stories to the game. The biggest two of these free updates were The Kraken and Atuns Folly. The Kraken added wreck diving and exploration missions to the game through several new locations and Atuns Folley released earlier this year added pirate/criminal gameplay mechanics and a mini pirate campaign, as well as introducing legendary aces and their unique mounts to the game. Both of those updates fleshed out the core gameplay with more diversity and things to do, and completed it to the level I always imagined it should have. Once the core improvements for the game were released I had time to add two pieces of DLC, the first the hunter was a small addition of flyable drakes in the shape of the Mongres Hunter class, a fairly small DLC intended as a testbed for the bigger DLC Edge of The World which was released a few months ago in august. This added multiple new classes/creatures, new weapons, new locations and best of all 3 end-boss/set piece focused mini campaigns that fleshed out some of the more esoteric lore in the game.
All in all the game that you find on Steam now is an entirely different beast than the one that launched roughly a year ago, and the continued work that Ive put into it has been in no small part to the love, passion and support from both the Steam and Discord communities who also fell in love with The Great Ursee, and whose feedback and desire helped to fuel this constant development and iteration on the game - for this you all have my thanks! Ive been elated by the response so far to the game, and love it or hate it The Falconeer has blazed a trail for new Indie air combat games, something that fills me with a lot of joy. So in closing, Im really proud of the work Ive been able to do to improve and expand the game, and Ive loved reading peoples reactions here on Steam, good or bad. Ive learned from them and improved the game based on your responses. And Id love to have your nomination for the Steam Award for labor of love Enjoy the Steam sale, go take a chance on some other indie games and VOTE and REVIEW for games youve played and enjoyed, trust me it makes a world of difference to developers! Thank you!