published on December 13, 2018 in news
Today is the day: After more than three years of development Prosperous Universe is finally open to the general public. All you need to do to get started is to create an account and become a First Access Licensee!
What is First Access?
You might be familiar with the term Early Access: Games launch in an unfinished state so that developers can generate some revenue during development and gain valuable feedback from early adopters.
First Access is pretty much the same thing but with a tiny difference: The game is even less done! If you become a First Access Licensee you need to be aware of the fact that the game is still very rough around the edges. In the particular case of Prosperous Universe this means that some important high-level features are still missing, the balancing is still off and the game world will be reset several times over the course of the First and Early Access phases.
Why should I become a First Access Licensee?
By becoming a licensee at this stage of the project you can support us in continuing to realize our vision of a unique economic sandbox simulation game. We are completely self-financed. We do not have any investors or publishers backing the project. While this means we are truly independent and have no one telling us to implement pay-2-win features or other shady free-2-play practices, it means that we have to live off of our cash reserves and contract work. Naturally, after three years of continuous development, we need your help to stay afloat!
What's in it for me?
Besides the warm feeling you get when you help out your friendly neighborhood indie dev, all our First Access tiers come with a wide range of perks, from mentions in the credits via physical goodies like shirts and art prints to visual in-game gimmicks like exclusive two- and single-letter company codes. You can find all the tiers here.
But will you follow through?
We've been at this for more than three years and our existing game AirlineSim has been around for a whooping 16. Needless to say we're in it for the long game. Unless something desastrous happens, like utter financial failure of the company or an asteroid hitting Germany, we'll be toiling away on Prosperous Universe for many, many years to come.