We released Academia in Early Access on September 2017. We were ecstatic as the game was getting positive reviews and the game turned out to be a sleeper hit that saved our fledgling game studio. But by mid 2018, we started getting negative reviews. Our overall review turned from Very Positive to Mixed. It’s scary. It’s common knowledge that having a Mixed review puts the game in a precarious position. It’s one of the greatest fears. Sales will only go down from here.

Admittedly, our game still lacks essential features and the gameplay is still shallow. Having a game with Mixed review is backbreaking. It’s believed to be a downward snowball to failure. Players would be hesitant to buy the game even when there would be constant updates. Well, we’re not entirely sure if this is true. I mean it’s our first time to be in this situation. There’s really no other choice other than to trudge along and just continue to finish the game.

Month after month, we released updates. Little by little, the game keeps getting better. Looking back to my blog posts this year, it feels like I did nothing but constant optimization to the game. Unity released a preview to their Data Oriented Tech Stack (DOTS) and it’s enough to be useful. We exploited the tech in our game from rendering to path finding even though it’s not yet production ready. It’s risky but the reward is worth it. Our game runs smooth even with more agents.

By first quarter of 2019, our reviews are still Mixed. Surprisingly, our sales didn’t decrease as much as we have imagined. There was no snowball to failure at all. We still earn enough to keep us afloat. Months of updates later, we started getting multiple positive reviews. There was a month where Steam started some kind of program where they nudge players to review games. That helped us a lot. (Thanks Steam!) We do have a lot of players but are just not leaving reviews. Once they did, we found out that a lot of them do like our game.

In this last quarter, our reviews finally turned blue. Our recent reviews is now Very Positive. Overall review is Mostly Positive. What a relief! I didn’t think that our reviews would turn blue again. I thought that when you’ve reached that orange line, there’s no coming back. That’s how much I fear the dreaded Mixed review.

Back to blue!

Having a Mixed review is not so bad. It’s not the end of a released game. I think we did whatever we can. Released frequent updates, optimized the game, listening/talking to players, and fixed bugs. We did everything to make the game better, even little things. I’m glad it paid off.

I hope this has been a good read for you. I’ll end it with a “Happy Holidays!”