Athena Crisis recently launched out of early access, bringing the modern retro turn-based strategy game to fruition. Developed by indie studio Nakazawa Tech, Athena Crisis is inspired by the classic Game Boy Advance strategy game Advanced Wars and could be just the ticket for those eagerly awaiting the next title. With the launch of Athena Crisis version 1.0, fans now have even more features to enjoy, like co-op and map invasions as a game created with its community not just at heart, but hand-in-hand. Indeed, The Best War Games recently sat down with Christoph Nakazawa, Founder of Nakazawa Tech, to hear more about how the studio involved its community during its early access period to not only build a game but also a community. For instance, this even included letting players contribute to the game's open-source code and have their names in the credits, to pinpoint just a couple of examples.
In an interview with The Best War Games before the release of version 1.0, Nakazawa discussed the creative challenges, successes, and stand-out moments of Athena Crisis' early access period, which also involved building everything from scratch from its AI to the game engine, and beyond. Nakazawa also spoke about how the studio hopes to continue its community-driven approach following Athena Crisis' 1.0's release. Furthermore, Nakazawa shared some valuable insights for developers looking to build a video game community, and much more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Athena Crisis Early Access Reflections
Q: How does it feel launching the full version of Athena Crisis after roughly 6 months of early access?
A: It’s been a journey to fully launch after releasing in early access, but ultimately it feels like another step in the process. We knew everything was working, stable and balanced, so flipping the switch on Steam felt easy to a degree. Thankfully, Athena Crisis was built entirely from scratch, so we control everything powering the game with ease. Even deploying fixes and rewriting core systems based on feedback from the community was simple, as we can push those updates to players within three minutes or so.
Q: What were some of your biggest learning lessons or challenges during early access?
A: Since we built Athena Crisis from the ground up, we had to build everything from scratch: The game engine, the gamepad support, the AI, the design system, animations, backend, really all of it. No individual part was overly challenging or impossible, but putting all the pieces in the right place, and making it fun, was an extremely rewarding experience.
Q: What were some of your biggest successes or stand-out moments in this time?
A: One of the best things was definitely open sourcing the code of the game during early access! We always aimed at creating one of the most open games in the genre that invites feedback, criticism, ideas – and even code contributions to make the game something everyone can enjoy. Hearing feedback from the community throughout the process was incredibly rewarding and immensely helpful to the development cycle with Athena Crisis. Our community is incredible.
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How Athena Crisis Involved Its Community During Early Access
Q: How do you think your community has changed or helped improve the game in this time?
A: There were so many contributions to the game that many folks are even listed in the credits. From new unit art, to extremely detailed bug reports, to hundreds of maps and 8 awesome community campaigns. One contributor even helped overhaul naval combat completely to make it more modern and interesting. We got a daily feedback stream on Discord that we could tap into to make the game significantly better during Early Access. We launched the story and campaign maps well ahead of the 1.0 release and were able to improve the narrative as well as the design of each map.
Q: Has any community feedback or ideas surprised you for any reason?
A: I knew balancing was extremely important for games like Athena Crisis, but meeting other people who spent so much time with the game that they knew various formulas and unit behaviors better than me at times was surprising! I’m extremely grateful that so many people really took in the game, tried to understand what we were going for, and provided ideas on how to make detailed balancing adjustments – without losing sight of the fun.
Athena Crisis Version 1.0 Release And Post-Launch Plans
A: We strongly feel that games are best enjoyed with others, so we didn't just want to build a game, we also wanted to build a community. Our vision is that we’ll work openly with the community to make Athena Crisis one of the best games in the genre, and everyone is invited to share their ideas.
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A: Our list of things we want to build keeps getting longer rather than shorter. The story starts slow, but opens a wonderful universe (multiverse?) With many characters, personalities, factions and some lore. We’d love to explore what happens after the main story concludes, and what happens in other locations during the main story, but nothing to confirm on that front just yet.
Tips For New Athena Crisis Players And For Developers Building A Video Game Community
A: Athena Crisis is trying to improve on a well-known formula by bringing new gameplay elements, more units, and a unique invasions feature that allows you to join a friend for co-op, but also opens the door for other players to battle you – all in the “single-player” campaign. This leads to tons of emergent gameplay, turns the formula on its head, and is just plain fun.
A: It was intense, but tons of fun!
A: Just hoping we’ll see many new faces in the community, and we can’t wait to see what ideas they bring that we’ll be able to turn into new gameplay elements!
Here are also a few tips for other developers curious about how we build the community:
As said, we can publish a new version of Athena Crisis incredibly quickly. Owning the whole stack allows us to create new major features in very little time. One thing that we always try to do when a new player joins our Discord is that we’ll try to address their feedback in real-time. If it’s possible to implement their feature quickly, we’d just go ahead, ship it within 10 or 15 minutes and show them a screenshot of their idea in-game, saying “Great idea, it’s live in the game now.” This kind of responsiveness usually keeps them engaged, and their feedback will compound to keep making the game better. It takes time to build a community, and that’s the case for almost any indie game, but with patience, consistency and taking their feedback to heart, people will come and stay engaged with you during the project’s lifecycle.
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Athena Crisis is available to play on PC.