Athena Crisis Dev Reflects On Community-Centric Game’s Early Access

Athena Crisis Dev Reflects On Community-Centric Game's Early Access

As a seasoned gamer with decades of experience under my belt, I must say that Athena Crisis has been a breath of fresh air in the strategy game genre. The game’s homage to the classic Advanced Wars franchise is both nostalgic and innovative, offering a unique blend of turn-based combat and tactical depth.


Athena Crisis

Prior to its recent exit from early access, Game Rant held a conversation with Christoph Nakazawa, the founder of Nakazawa Tech, discussing the game’s early access phase and how the community played a crucial role in enhancing it. Nakazawa highlighted his experience of building a game entirely from scratch within Athena Crisis’ early access, emphasizing the beneficial feedback provided by its community during this period. This approach, focused on community involvement, is something the team aims to maintain moving forward as well.

Athena Crisis’ Early Access Period: Building A Game From The Ground Up With a Community

During the early access phase of the Athena Crisis, when asked about the major hurdles and valuable insights gained, Nakazawa highlighted that the team had to create everything anew, such as the game engine, gamepad compatibility, AI, design framework, animations, and back-end. Although Nakazawa admitted it wasn’t impossible or excessively difficult, he emphasized that piecing it all together to make it enjoyable was a “remarkably fulfilling journey.

Nakazawa pointed out that one major achievement was allowing community members to contribute code to the project (since it’s a game using JavaScript, React, and CSS), which helped speed up the development of specific features and provided valuable feedback through community engagement.

In this project, numerous individuals played crucial roles, many of whom are acknowledged in the credits. Their contributions ranged from creating fresh unit artwork, submitting meticulous bug reports, designing hundreds of maps, and developing eight exceptional community campaigns. One individual even revamped naval combat substantially to make it more contemporary and engaging. We benefited greatly from a continuous flow of feedback on Discord, which allowed us to enhance the game considerably during its Early Access phase. Prior to the 1.0 release, we unveiled both the story and campaign maps early, enabling us to refine the narrative and design for each map.

Furthermore, Nakazawa expressed appreciation towards the Athena Crisis community for their patience in grasping the developers’ objectives and for offering suggestions on balance modifications, while still focusing on maintaining the fun aspect. It appears that this is a collaborative approach where the developers intend to keep involving the community, by frequently showcasing user-generated content such as the weekly community map and more, suggesting a vibrant and engaging online community to participate in.

The Athena Crisis team shares a similar focus on community engagement as our own strategic plans for multiplayer maps, resulting in an expansive strategy game that goes beyond mere gameplay by fostering a vibrant community. In Nakazawa’s words:

In our approach, we consistently strove to develop a game in this genre that encourages input from players – be it feedback, critique, suggestions, or even code improvements. The continuous dialogue with the community during the development of Athena Crisis was not just rewarding, but also significantly beneficial for the progression of the project. We’re truly amazed by our community’s contributions and support.

Athena Crisis is available to play on PC.

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2024-10-02 15:06