After two and a half years on Steam’s Early Access, Planet Explorers version 1.0 is finally ready to release. Pathea Games raised $137,765 on Kickstarter back in April of 2013 to develop their alien world sandbox RPG. Despite having finally reached this milestone, Pathea says development on the game will continue, at least for now.
The Next Steps On The Journey
In addition to the usual bug fixes and gameplay tweaks, the developers hope to add features that didn’t make it into the final build. These include additional side stories for adventure and story mode and possibly animal riding. Pathea posted an update on Kickstarter where they say they plan to continue working on Planet Explorers for at least another half year. After that, “it will depend on sales.”
In the meantime a new anti-cheating mechanism was quickly added due to some players manipulating the game code. This allowed them to one-hit kill other players in the multiplayer mode. Now when cheating is detected the software will kick the offending player from the game. After 3 strikes the player will be banned from participating in multiplayer and reported to Steam.
Pathea admits that this solution was “hastily put together.” They have asked for community feedback regarding the update. Backer comments have been mostly supportive, at least in multiplayer games. Players who self-host or utilize the single player mode have already asked about the possibility to opt-out during those games.
In the meantime, new players have an upcoming demo to look forward to and returning players will be able to purchase an OST for the game in the coming days. The OST is available on Steam as DLC for $3.99 and the full version of Planet Explorers is available for $24.99.
