Darewise Entertainment, developers of the survival sandbox title Life Beyond, brought on the company’s Chief of Staff Nathan Martin to answer a few questions posed by players and share the answers in a Q&A video. Martin pulled three questions about the studio’s development ethos, the game’s open development, and some broad strokes future update plans.
According to Martin, a game like Life Beyond is being made with the intention of helping players form lasting connections with one another through shared gameplay and cooperation. Readers will recall that this interest in fostering good vibes was previously talked about by Darewise’s co-founder and CEO.
Open development, according to Martin, has been very advantageous for the team, as the devs can put forth a minimum viable product to users as soon as possible, take in feedback, and iterate. Martin calls out Discord as a particularly useful tool in communication.
Finally, Martin discusses update plans for the title, which will play out in three different phases: Phase one will be about polishing the gameplay experience through the rest of this year in order to get Life Beyond ready for open beta; phase two will be open beta, which is projected to start sometime in 2022 and will focus on platform development and adding new content; and phase three is launch sometime in 2023, emphasizing social features like non-gaming integration, open API, and the hosting of events.
