We've been leaving some hints that we've been working on another project, and are thrilled today to tell you all about Tyto Online, the game that this company was originally founded to create.
Tyto Online is an educational MMORPG where you explore a futuristic, alien planet as you solve problems and complete quests, learning real-world science with your friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNI8cm-sxiI
Company History & Background
In August 2014, we completed a successful Kickstarter for Tyto Online, with over 300 early backers who believe in what we’re working to accomplish. After heading deeper into development with the new funds, we quickly realized that our ambitious goals needed to be approached in smaller steps. We decided to take a small piece of Tyto Online’s gameplay, the create-your-own ecosystem portion, and release that as its own stand-alone, offline game.
You all obviously know that game already as Tyto Ecology.
Releasing this first game was a tremendous learning experience for us. It gave us useful insight into what you all enjoy the most, what releasing a much larger game would entail, and taught us how to engage with our awesome and lively community around our product. It also allowed us to grow as a team so that we can tackle more complex challenges in the future.
Early Access
A game like Tyto Online takes a lot of time and resources to craft. We’re an early stage independent studio, and we’ve accomplished a lot with the support of our Kickstarter backers, early investors, and the revenues from our fantastic Tyto Ecology players. We decided we want to keep building like this, in close communication with our player base, and so we’re going to be launching Tyto Online in early access. This is planned right now for this November, just two short months away!
Those of you who pointed out that Tyto Ecology should have been early access when we launched will be pleased to know we learned from that experience. :)
While we're talking about this -- tossing us a vote on Greenlight would definitely help!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=762689718
Tyto Ecology
Okay, so what does this mean for the future of Tyto Ecology?
Obviously our attentions are going to be on developing the game that should be able to support the future of our company with Tyto Online, but we're not abandoning our awesome player base here.
First, we will be releasing new creatures, one every two weeks, for the next two months. These are a free add-on, of course! Our first creature, launching this week, will be the Gila Monster for the Desert! We know you all have been dying for some new reptiles.
We know some of you have been looking forward to potentially a brand new ecosystem with new DLC, but we do want to go ahead and let you know that's not on the books this year because of everything else we have to accomplish.
The game will continue to be supported alongside Tyto Online, though! Since Tyto Ecology exists as a feature inside Tyto Online, updates that it sees will often be able to be integrated back into Tyto Ecology. We know not all of you are going to want to play in the online gaming / MMO style, so we will make sure to bring development updates back here as well.
Please don't hesitate to ask us any questions about this, and we look forward to hopefully playing Tyto Online with many of you, as well.