Our journey started some time ago, in August 2021, the first prototype of Good Heavens! was in production. We have been working on this for more than 5 years now. So today feels good! The journey doesn't end here, today you guys are joining in and we will keep travelling together from now on. Some people, players, other devs, kept asking why is taking this long. Well, good games take time. Almost all the games we are fond of as our studio, took a lot of time to develop. If you don't use AI, if you start wondering about the background stories, history of this world, the rules, the system there's a lot to consider. Also we didn't do this on pen an paper. We iterated the gameplay a million of times.
The evolution of Good Heavens in years
The background simulation and mating behaviors was one of the first things we worked on.
The Early UI felt a bit weird. But it felt good back then.
We've worked on stealth mecanics for night-time, later on we dropped the idea.
The evolution of the UI is visible. But a bit too detailed maybe. What about the characters?
I personally liked this inventory page quite a lot. It's a bummer it was impossible to scale it for different resolutions so we had to remove it.
Combat in earlier versions. First experiments with status effects.
That water shader felt good when we first made it. Right now we want to iterate on this again too.
Early Dungeon variations
The first iteration of the map
Ant Queen was actually the first boss we've worked on.
How it went?
The vision for the game remained the same. We wanted to make a game in which you can do several things together. It's up to the player to pick his fighting style and his professions (ways to craft and earn money). Also it's up to the player to commit to the combat or not. There's some mandatory action but the rest is only for those who are seeking for an extra challenge. In the end, we created a game where you can play co-op with other people while doing the thing you enjoy the most. What we have here is definitely fun in solo play. We've tested multiple times and it makes you discover the world, character builds and the story. After you pick one path, you would also like to restart the game to pick a different path and everytime you will encounter different cities and challenges in the game. Where the game truly shines though, is co-op with real friends, partners and family. In our tests we saw that couples had a magnificient time while playing Good Heavens! The reason is simple, there is no other game out there where you can do your own thing while growing together as a team. There are easy, chill tasks to do but there are challenging parts as well. It's all up to the players. Sometimes you can team up for the difficult parts or you can split the work. Some sandbox games allow this type of gameplay to an extend but there is also a story to follow and you unlock that story together with your combined work. People felt good about it, so do we.
What to expect from this Early Access?
We are trying to build a community around Good Heavens! We have tons of ideas but we would like to discuss them with you, get your ideas and build the rest of the game together. Should there be more base building? More character builds? More side stores? What about a procedural dungeon system? Rare drops, legendary drops? A survival game mode maybe with permanent death? We also believe in the power of the community. Good Heavens! has a style and it doesn't fit everyone. It will be a place to gather for like minded people. We don't know how long the Early Access journey will last. It depends on you mostly. We are ready and full of passion about it. If you guys share our passion, this can go a long way. At some point, maybe after 3 months, maybe after 2 years we will put an end to Early Access and release the full version. The full version doesn't mean we will stop the updates. There will be free updates after the full version but we want to support the game with big DLC packs if the game can cultivate a large enough player base. There will be a price increase too along with the full release. So joining early makes even more sense. Don't leave us alone, come join our discord and share your ideas and feedback with other players and with the devs. We will listen, promise!
