Developer Odyssey Interactive unveiled a new project in development called Byte Breakers, and it’s calling on players to decide if it lives or dies.
Soliciting feedback is nothing new, and some studios have community groups that help guide a game’s development. But Odyssey is intentionally looking to avoid a repeat of its debut title Omega Strikers, which shut down last year just four months after its full launch.
Omega taught the studio “the risks of keeping things under wraps for too long,” said co-founder Richard Henkel. By being more transparent, it hopes to draw more interest (and by extension, more feedback) to its future work.
Henkel and co-founder Dax Andrus further explained the studio has multiple prototypes in the works. By letting players try an extremely early Byte build, it’s hoping to see if it resonates enough to be worth full development time.
According to Henkel, this approach will be the way forward for “all of our next projects. We want to hear what you think much, much earlier.”
Odyssey needs players to guide its future
Byte Breakers’ prototype will be fully public and available to all players. As they test out the build (and servers), Odyssey has encouraged folks to share their thoughts (and stream or share content) online.
At the same time, the studio stressed that this (or any other) prototype may ultimately not move forward. Even so, Andrus called this “the best way of figuring out if our ideas have juice.”
“We trust you,” he continued, “and we trust your feedback.”