Support us on Patreon
PayPalDaedalic Entertainment announced their in-development real-time strategy game A Year Of Rain is now officially on hold.
Currently in Early Access on Steam and only becoming available there back in November 2019, it was due to come to Linux a little later but that's likely not happening now. Yesterday, Daedalic announced on Steam they mentioned that the "low player base" had caused some major issues for them with it only hitting a little more "than 5000 players worldwide" this week. Looking at the Steam stats for it, they only managed an all-time peak of 244 players and then it just continued to drop, which for a co-op RTS isn't sustainable for an "independent studio with limited resources". Due to this they "decided to put the active development of A Year Of Rain on hold".
As a big fan of such traditional real-time strategy games and always hoping for a resurgence, it does make me sad to see another failed attempt.
It seems it suffered some big technical issues, with a lot of people mentioning the Pathfinding was pretty awful which is one of the most basic systems an RTS really needs right from the earliest release. Sounds like it was promising in a few ways though but needed a big rework in others. That's what you should expect from an Early Access game though; rough but in-development and that is the point of it. In this case, it seems Daedalic Entertainment expected it to do a lot better.
This has already pushed some users to add negative reviews on Steam, so it doesn't have a very good rating overall.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
BeedrillSwarm Feb 5, 2020
i was a big fan of sc2 and a bit of w3, i always had a sc2 pro-gamer stream on bg while working, and saw one of the popular sc2 commentators, Wardi, playing year of rain on stream. we discussed linux build with developers in chat, i just didn't expect them to give up this early. so sad about it.
0 Likes
Quoting: TheSHEEEPA game that is mostly finished, but just needs some more months in the oven for bugfixes, balancing and "polish", would be done right.These days, isn't that the point where most studios do the official release?
As would be a game like RimWorld or Rise To Ruins, where even the unfinished state is actually very polished and fun already and just grows from there.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: tuubiQuoting: Nezchanan almost inherently multiplayer genre like RTSI think I stopped playing RTS games when multiplayer became the focus. Warcraft 2 was probably my last one.
Oh i wish these work with Proton but you missed out on so much buddy :(
Warcraft 3 had a great story
as did Starcraft 2
Age of Mythology had a nice story as well
Red alert 2 was silly(as in humor) but still a very fun game
Tiberium Wars was also a pretty decent story , and possibly the last decent C&C game
Lord of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth - awesome story (though campaing was repetitive)
0 Likes
Quoting: NezchanQuoting: eldakingQuoting: TheSHEEEPRTS games were the multiplayer hotness once, a long time ago, which probably won't happen again. But the genre goes a lot beyond competitive multiplayer, and there could be a lot (more) of amazing single-player RTS if people stopped focusing all their efforts in online skirmishes (which they do to the detriment of the single-player, of course).
It's amusing to contrast the call for single player with the hue and cry when Ravenfield definitely stated that no, there would not be multiplayer even though that style of game was almost always done with multi in mind. As it happens, Ravenfield did very well at crafting a good single player experience, so they made the right decision. But wow, were there a lot of people giving up on the game at the time for that reason.
Not that I disagree. More well crafted single player experiences would be more than welcome. Heck, doing that with an almost inherently multiplayer genre like RTS would set them apart, I think. But they'll be a hard sell for sure.
Yeah, I very much think the fault of focusing on multiplayer isn't just with developers/publishers but in big part with a group of players. They unrealistically expect every indie RTS to be Starcraft 2, and get mad when it isn't.
"Only the multiplayer is worth it because the AI is trash. [no and no] But servers are desert so it is hard to find a match. [uh, of course] Developers put more effort into the campaign and new game modes that no one plays [false] than into balance [aka, minor issues] for 1v1 that is the official competitive mode ["competitive"]. It has been months and they haven't fixed this faction/unit that is broken. [wow, months! Unthinkable!] They should focus more on the hardcore players that keep the community alive [haha, just no] and make big official tournaments with cash prizes to recruit new players. [that's not how it works]"
Of course, trying to please this "gamer" crowd is a fool's errand... but they are a large part of the audience (perhaps because for so long RTS games were laser-focused in doing exactly that, pushing out everyone else that might be interested).
1 Likes, Who?
This discussion is reminding me that I never finished playing Nightside, even though I was quite enjoying it.
0 Likes
Quoting: razing32Maybe, maybe not. I was never a big fan of the genre.Quoting: tuubiQuoting: Nezchanan almost inherently multiplayer genre like RTSI think I stopped playing RTS games when multiplayer became the focus. Warcraft 2 was probably my last one.
Oh i wish these work with Proton but you missed out on so much buddy :(
0 Likes
Quoting: TheSHEEEPAt some point, maybe, developers will realize that classic RTS development with a multiplayer focus just doesn't make sense.How do you rank Northgard? When you say multiplayer, do you only mean competitive?
For single player, sure, more than enough successful enough single-player RTS titles out there.
But multiplayer-classic-RTS is a dead genre, with a handful of (old) titles holding the players that are left captive. And those old titles are so well polished by now that any new challenger can only fail. Especially if it is in such a rough state as this one was on early access release.
0 Likes
Quoting: razing32Lord of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth - awesome story (though campaing was repetitive)
I forgot about that one! I don't recall if I played the campaign, but I played cooperatively with my friends many a time. I loved it!I had no care for RTS campaigns back in the teenage days. The idea was strange to me. I loved comp stomps though.
0 Likes
Quoting: 14Quoting: TheSHEEEPAt some point, maybe, developers will realize that classic RTS development with a multiplayer focus just doesn't make sense.How do you rank Northgard? When you say multiplayer, do you only mean competitive?
For single player, sure, more than enough successful enough single-player RTS titles out there.
But multiplayer-classic-RTS is a dead genre, with a handful of (old) titles holding the players that are left captive. And those old titles are so well polished by now that any new challenger can only fail. Especially if it is in such a rough state as this one was on early access release.
Northgard was quite fun, and I'm sure I'll return to it at some point.
And it does have quite a lot of single player content.
And I know a few people who play it online with friends mostly, some streamers, too.
When I say multiplayer, I indeed mean those that focus on competitive PvP. Games like Northgard, that offer multiplayer in some variant for those who want it, but don't try to go for the competitive scene, do rather well.
Especially if the multiplayer they offer is co-op friendly.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 5 February 2020 at 8:48 pm UTC
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: 14Quoting: razing32Lord of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth - awesome story (though campaing was repetitive)
I had no care for RTS campaigns back in the teenage days. The idea was strange to me. I loved comp stomps though.
IT was fun and quite unique
I like the second one added even more races to play.
What I hated was the campaign in the first one.
The story missions were awesome. Defending Minas Tirith. Attacking Helm's Deeps with an army of Uruks. All awesome
What was not so awesome was defending Entmoot 10 times in a row.
Emperor Battle For dune and Warhammer Dark Crusade/soulstorm had the same tihng. A campaign made up of skirmish maps with a few story missions thrown in. Defending gets repetitive quickly. /rant over
0 Likes
See more from me