Less than a month on Steam Early Access and the multiplayer ship combat FPS, Blackwake has already amassed a huge following. It’s not surprising really. Over 4,000 backers helped raise AU$ 171,422 during the 2015 Kickstarter campaign. The game is already riding high on Steam’s weekly top sellers list. Developer, Mastfire Studios, is making steady improvements under the wave of new players.
Along with the usual early access bug fixes, players have also experienced a few more troubling problems. Mastfire has noted that a small subset of users are unable to connect to the game’s servers. Occasionally, these users also experience a loss of connection during matches. So far this has been the biggest issue for Mastfire’s 2 man dev team.
In a recent Steam update, Mastfire told players they were aware of the server issues and had enlisted the help of a Unity developer to address them. In the meantime, the devs have recommended that players join servers through the Steam server list if they are able.
Working With The Community
Despite the stress to get the servers and game running as smoothly as possible, Mastfire remains practical. Rather than over-promising and alienating new-users they have been communicating issues and patching things as they are able. They’ve also encouraged anyone who wasn’t enjoying Blackwake, due to the current issues, to refund the game and try it again later.
Fortunately, most players seem to already love the game, bugs and all. Blackwake has a mostly positive review rating on Steam. With such a solid foundation the game’s only going to get better from here on out.
Blackwake is available now on Steam Early Access for $19.99.
Great to see a followup piece like this!