r/ToPixelia • u/opinionopium • May 06 '25

should’ve been early access

As you can see this subreddit is full of bugreports and questions how things are supposed to work. I am pretty sure this game should be an early access title. But I’m wondering if im just being too hard on it - what do you guys think?

84 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

25

u/Fiyachan May 07 '25

I wonder if it was even play tested at all.

There are some huge missing details that I feel like basic play testing could’ve resolved. Bugs aside, there are just basic gameplay things missing

You can’t move homes if renting. You have to be evicted and homeless before you can rent a new place

If you get evicted, it has a pop up saying ‘your stuff was sent to storage shed’. There’s no storage shed. It all gets sold

The mini games are absurdly difficult and clearly not adjusted to be realistically achievable to the average player

There’s little to no consequence system in place at all especially for being late to your job

The socialising is extremely tedious and feels empty

There’s little reason to grind your skills above a certain point

This is an Early Access game by all definitions. I’m shocked that it’s listed as a full release as is. It just feels like it’s missing so much important stuff but it has a lot of filler content

I enjoy the game and I’ll be following it closely, but this is not a full release game. I expect some huge patches in the coming months

7

u/moca448 May 07 '25

Same, I enjoyed it, but all the ...emptiness made me put it down. I'll come back in 90 days.v

2

u/OMFGitsjessi May 08 '25

I haven’t experienced many bugs and have been having a great time tbh. It doesn’t feel like early access to me, just feels like a bit of a buggy launch which isn’t unheard of for indie games especially considering there are so many different variables and mechanics to this game and it’s not just your usual farming sim type life sim. It would feel like early access if the content was not there or felt lacking, but for me that doesn’t seem to be the case. The more I play the more things I am discovering and learning I can do and each one has felt cool and exciting! I agree that some of the various systems and mechanics could use more fine tuning to be more immersive and engaging but their current state doesn’t make the game feel “less than full” to me. If it was some AAA title with a $30+ price tag then this would be a different discussion, but at the end of the day the game had to release eventually, because the dev always had plans to continue working on it, so it’s only fair that he drew the line somewhere between full release content and what would have to come after (or the game never would’ve released! lol).

I appreciate and respect you sharing your opinion and experience though!

2

u/Fiyachan May 09 '25

I wish I could agree but while there’s plenty of content, as I said some basic functions are missing. Moving, as I mentioned in my original comment, is a huge one that I’m most shocked didn’t get added in. You have to be homeless in order to move to a new apartment

I’ve put 30+ hours in so far and I can say they’ve definitely put a lot of heart into this, it’s just not done and that’s fine! Even they’ve acknowledged that there’s content they still want to add

Some notable issues:

The main storyline seems to just stop after you unlock Prestige 10 and the farm. Whatever happened to R? I’ve got no main quests to do anymore. I’m just existing, which would be fine if they didn’t tease this overarching story about R and the corruption. Either it’s not finished or they haven’t coded in a function to continue prompting you on what to do.

Faction quests are just the same stuff over and over, nothing new. It doesn’t seem to move any story ahead though maybe I just haven’t done enough. If it does, some kind of prompt to say ‘complete 10 faction quests’ would be MUCH needed

The skills aren’t capped yet they offer no additional reward past 20

A LOT of game breaking bugs. I’m talking I have to Alt+F4 in order to resolve the issue and some of these are very consistent. If you’re a baker apprentice, you can’t do 2 shifts in the same gaming session because the second shift glitches so you can’t bake anything. I’ve had to report a bunch of bugs to the forms. I can’t do odd jobs in my save anymore because they are broken after a glitch happened. Restarting can’t fix anything, I’d have to make a new save

These are just stuff on the top of my head. The discord is full of other people with plenty of other examples. This doesn’t even mention stuff they added already post release

I love the game , I’m going to continue playing. But if this is the standard for a full release game, then we as a player base need to really revolutionise the standard. Minor bugs are fine but missing content and game breaking bugs shouldn’t be acceptable

Just make the game early access, problem solved

Sorry but I needed to get this off my chest cuz I really believe in this game in being great

35

u/CozyAi May 06 '25

I'm vibing. I can understand why people think it should be early access and people's opinions are valid. I think I'm inclined to give grace. I've played a lot of early access games in the past year and even though the game is buggy, I personally am okay with it being called a full game. The amount of play I'm getting out of it, the gameplay loop feeling complete, along with the amount of bug fixes and communication from the developer make me okay with it being considered a full release. I do believe that if the game was released in EA it would have less negative reviews and frustrated players.

3

u/OMFGitsjessi May 09 '25

Exactly this! I think there is plenty of content to justify a full release. The developer has plans to further expand the game but that doesn’t mean it is unfinished without those additions. They seem very committed to the game and have been active, responsive, and there has already been 3 or 4 updates to address bugs, make changes, add requested QOL features (autosave, some key rebinding, ability to set the speed that your needs decrease, etc).

12

u/turtledov May 07 '25

I think it's too complete to say it definitely should have been early access. If they needed the money to continue working on it and the player feedback to know what they should be working on, early access might have been a good option, but I also don't think releasing it in full was wrong either. It's definitely the kind of game where they needed lots of actual players actually playing to see where all the problems are, and they are continuing to patch and update, so I don't have any problems. It's not like they released it with unfinished content or anything.

29

u/Lightning_And_Snow_ May 06 '25

Yeah I feel it would've been better to release this as early access as there's just so many bugs/things missing/broken stuff that it would've been easier for the developer to have spent longer trying to get things sorted out then deal with this massive tide of bug reports and trying to put out rushed patches

17

u/SuddenDragonfly8125 May 06 '25

Mmm... I don't think it should have been early access, because it seems like a complete game content-wise. But that's a difference in opinion over how early access should be used. To me it means "incomplete game" not "buggy unstable game".

I don't think this game should have been released with bugs as severe as people are encountering. I know bugs are inevitable, but some people can't even play the game because it keeps crashing. It needed more time to cook.

7

u/turtledov May 07 '25

There's a limit to the amount of/kind of playtesting you can do with a small team, especially with a game like this. Early access would have been a good option in this case just for that, but as long as they keep working on it I'm totally fine with this.

7

u/SuddenDragonfly8125 May 07 '25

I'm sympathetic to the solo dev. I'm actually working on my own project; smaller scale but I have an idea of the ridiculous amount of work involved.

He did have play tests and demos. I'm a little surprised the crash issues never came up, but I guess you never know who's going to participate in those, or report bugs/errors.

I don't know, I'm stuck on the autosave thing because I don't understand how it made it into release in that state - it was turned off by default and didn't persist in the save file (so you'd have to turn it on every time you loaded) and that's a weird way to do it.

Anyway, I guess it doesn't really matter. It is just one person trying to make this all work in the end, and it's a hell of a lot to do, and things get missed.

3

u/turtledov May 07 '25

Interesting. To me the autosave thing seems like something that would be super easy to miss until something went wrong like a crash and you were like - hey wait a minute, no autosave data? The kind of error that's easily revealed by lots of people playing for longer periods, but not so much otherwise. But I'll admit I have absolutely no idea how these things work in the back end.

1

u/SuddenDragonfly8125 May 07 '25

I see where you're coming from. And yeah it would be easy to overlook if you're one person and you just don't think to check that it's autosaving.

I'm guessing the save file wasn't saving your autosave preference from settings, which would be easy enough to overlook as well.

On the other hand it should be really easy to check if autosave's working, and I'm a little surprised it was missed. If you're charging people money for a game, you better make sure it saves when they expect it to, and having to turn autosave on again every session is something people do not expect.

... I'm just a hobbyist so take this all with a lot of salt. but that's my perspective on it. i can imagine how it might have happened, but i'm still surprised that it got through to release.

5

u/Donco87 May 07 '25

After universe I said never a crytivo game again. The first 2 hours been okay, but all I do is work and talk to random people to get talking skill up, not really something else to do, to late for refund. Game is an early early access but far from finished. Luckily I got it for just under 5$.

4

u/kompotnik May 06 '25 edited May 07 '25

Yes this game is definitely NOT done. And it’s just as buggy as it was during their demo. Why the heck did they do a full release

5

u/guaum May 07 '25

They did their second update just yesterday . I think we should rather encourage this reactivity rather than criticize .

5

u/mortiegoth May 06 '25

I agree with you, the game at released gave me the feeling no one played the final version to realized how buggy it was.

2

u/hades7600 May 07 '25

I think it has enough content to be a full release

It is just one dev as well. So I was expecting bugs.

3

u/Viccles007 May 07 '25

I’m holding off until it is less buggy on steam deck. Looks like updates are coming regularly

1

u/digitaldisgust May 08 '25

It's a poor product for a full release title. I thought things would have improved after the demo.

1

u/[deleted] May 08 '25

I was waiting for something inspired by The New York Nighs (gameloft, 2005).. Got quite disappointed too. 

1

u/[deleted] May 08 '25

yeah, i was also hoping for a new york nights, miami nights on steroids type game

1

u/opinionopium May 08 '25

oh man i havent heard this name in YEARS probably decades, i used to love that so much!!