Public roadmaps

When is it coming?

Every week, the same question lands in our Discord: "When is the Hyper Shards level editor coming?" In March, Kai answered "next month!" It didn't come. Now each new question sounds a little angrier.

A public roadmap is a plan for future updates that players can see. Done well, it answers the question once, for everyone, and builds trust. Done badly, it becomes a list of broken promises. This lesson is about doing it well.

Now, next, later

• NowBeing built and tested. Very likely in the next update, like the Frost Beetle pest for Garden Defense.
• NextPlanned and designed, but not started yet. Comes after Now, if nothing changes.
• LaterIdeas we like, such as a level editor. No promise, and some may never happen.

Instead of dates, many teams sort their plans into three columns. Columns show the order of the work and how sure we are, which drops from left to right. A date is a promise, and game work often takes longer than planned: a bug turns up, a store review is slow, a teammate gets ill.

Promise less, deliver more

Valve's guide to Steam roadmaps says it is "better to err on the side of making less concrete promises" than to make promises you later have to change. So:

• Describe the goal, not every detail: "More ships", not "12 new ships".
• Keep Now small enough that it really ships.
• Add a Not planned list of things we decided against, with the reason. "No loot boxes in Hyper Shards, ever." "No online battles: a small studio can't run fair servers for them."

A clear no saves players months of hoping.

Players vote, the studio decides

Letting players vote shows we're listening. Discord has built-in polls, and a #suggestions channel lets players react to the ideas they like.

But a vote measures what players want, not what is possible, affordable or good for the game. The loudest voices are also a small slice of all players (Reading the numbers shows what everyone actually does). So we only put options on a ballot that we could really build: "Which ship comes next: Comet, Wasp or Lantern?" The studio makes the final call, and explains it.

When plans change, say so

Plans will change. What matters is how we tell players.

• Move the card and add a short note: "Level editor moves from Next to Later. It needs a new save format, and fixing crashes comes first."
• Say it on Discord too, so nobody discovers it by accident.
• When a Now item ships, the patch notes (the player-friendly list of what changed) announce it, and the card moves to a Done column. Players see that the roadmap tells the truth.

Update the roadmap after every release, even if it's only to tick something off.

Where the roadmap lives

• SteamThe store page editor has a Special Announcement Section with a Roadmap title, shown just above the description. Valve suggests an image at least 1600 pixels wide, so players can open it and read the detail.
• DiscordA read-only #roadmap channel with one pinned post, kept up to date.
• Our websiteA roadmap page, linked from the "What's new" panel in Hyper Shards. Phone stores have no roadmap field, so Garden Defense links here too.

Roadmaps matter most in early access, when players buy a game that is still being finished. Steam's early access rules say "Do not make specific promises about future events" (the Early access lesson in Stage 7 goes deeper).

Bolt says: Next: reading the numbers, to check whether what we shipped actually helped.