Dev Diary #295 Ylands' Project Lead about Upcoming Plans

[rihapat 236]

Ahoy Ylanders!

Ales, the Ylands Project Lead here. Today I would like to talk with you about the current state of the game, our plans for it and react to some of the feedback we've seen based on our Dev Diaries.

Let's start with the current status of the game. We've managed to improve the game a lot in the last couple of years, moving from around 40% average rating on Steam to around 80% (82% when writing this). Improving the game this much was not an easy task and it took us quite long, but it was absolute necessity for us to stay alive.

We would definitely like to move past the "fixing" stage to "hey, let's look at the amazingly cool feature we've added" stage or "hey, here's a ton of new content for those of you who already seen and experienced everything the game had to offer". You bet that it's what we all would love to do. But we're not there yet.

The biggest issue we have is player retention and we are dedicated to fix it - in other words, we want you to have fun as long as possible and having players returning to Ylands is our main focus now. Like that everyone can get the grasp of how complex the game is and experience all it has to offer.

Here are some reasons for it:

• We fail to present to players what the later gameplay is like early in the game and what cool stuff you can find or do. As the ratings go up, we get more and more of "hey, this game is so cool - why aren't there more people playing it" - but it mostly comes from people who get past the "you are on stranded yland so go and grab X sticks and Y of grass, just like you've done a million times in dozens of other games".
• Even though we fixed dozens of things that were annoying, unintuitive or didn't work as they should, enough of those still remain. Often tiny annoyances that add up and eventually lead to a rage quit.
• Playing with friends needs to be easier - especially on mobile devices.

These changes will definitely improve the experience for everyone, both new and long-time players (actually many things in the planned update 2.2 come to mind), but indeed, there will be no "endgame" content added in the next six months, namely updates 2.2 and 2.3. If everything goes as intended 2.4 (Q2 2024) may finally see some major new world content.

As for release dates - update 2.2 will be released in January or February 2024 but given how many improvements and features it has, we plan to give players access to the experimental branch already before the end of this year.

What you can also expect is more Dev Diaries like this one to give you regular updates about what we're doing to make the game better and more popular among players.

We've come a long way in the last few years. We've turned the wheel away from the "Roblox-like" path, put Adventure back together, and will keep doing that. So, big thanks to everyone who stayed with us even through our failings.

 

Stay classy!

[handofthesly 214]

Looking forward to the next experimental release as always! Keep up the great work team, I can't imagine life without Ylands now 😅

[Miguel Preguisa 443]

I'm more of an occasional player right now, but I'm still rooting for Ylands! The work that has been done is very much seen 🤍

[Grubs-59e8a68b24e4cfe4 0]

I am only playing the single player but have done so for so many years now and i just find it relaxing i am so happy with the progress Ylands has taken it could have just been forgotten about like so many games but with the Devs doing great work it still here and the more players the better it will be. 

[Deadeye_Rob 908]

Still here! Still having fun since 2016!

[JonathanHunt 46]

I've been inactive for awhile, but yland is awsome, i wouldn't have the game made any other way.

I've got it on smartphone and it already made me smile from the times that i played it on the computer.