By Antonela Pounder @AnimatedAnt (Community Manager – 505 Games)
Well… We did it! Last week, we left Early Access and we’ve now launched Portal Knights in Europe and North America on console and of course, Steam. We’ve been on such a crazy roller-coaster of a ride since we launched into Early Access last year and looking back, we’re so proud of how far we’ve come. However, as we’ve said many times already, we couldn’t have got this far without the support and feedback from our players. It means everything to have you guys on board with us and be rest assured, we don’t plan to slow down anytime soon!
Let’s rewind to February 2016… February 4th to be precise. On this day in 2016, we announced our all-new action RPG title, Portal Knights, to the world. We had absolutely no idea how the community would react to it, so it was pretty terrifying, but exciting for the team.
Thankfully, the response to Portal Knights was positive and we began to see our community grow in the run-up to launch, which excited us greatly! You guys flooded our channels with questions, which is EXACTLY what we wanted to see! There was a level of excitement growing not only within the community but in the team. We were onto something here…
Leaving Early Access
With Portal Knights, the aim was simple. We wanted to grow the title with our community, for our community. At the end of the day, we wanted our players to love Portal Knights, which is why we wanted to involve you guys from the outset. When we entered Early Access on February 25th, we launched with a solid foundation, but instantly opened our doors to community feedback and suggestions. And boy, did you guys deliver! Our forums and social channels became flooded with your thoughts.
Early Access has given us the opportunity to really listen to our players and figure out what it is they want. Ever since day one, we committed ourselves to developing Portal Knights for many, many months to come. We never once ruled anything out, nor promised anything unless we were 100% sure we could make it happen.
Over the course of our Early Access launch, we implemented a ton of features in response to player feedback. First came a whole new selection of character customization options, then events, optional auto-aim and all-new weapons. Later down the line, we introduced larger islands, additional language support, key binding, controller support, vanity items, pets, NPC’s, water, split screen and much more! Every single one of these features came about in response to community feedback. For that, we want to say a massive thank you. YOU guys have helped shape our roadmap and we’ll forever be grateful.
You know, leaving Early Access is scarier than you think… What will new players think? Will our community think this is the end? So many questions! Be rest assured, just because we’ve now left Early Access, that doesn’t mean anything will change. Going forward, we fully intend on updating Portal Knights, like we always have done, and filling those updates with community requests. However, we can’t do this without your support. So please, keep talking to us and keep telling us what you want to see in-game!
Console Launch
As many of you will know already, last week, we launched Portal Knights onto PlayStation 4 and Xbox One across Europe. Today, we launch across North America. This is such an incredibly exciting time for the team and we’ve been truly overwhelmed by your positive messages. Bringing Portal Knights to console has been an enormous task for the team, but they’ve done it. Again, a massive thank you to our awesome community for the level of support shown between announcement and launch. It means so much to us!
Speaking of console… Let’s talk about Nintendo Switch for just a moment. Now, we know many of you will be wondering what’s going on, we want you to know it’s absolutely, definitely still happening, but not just yet! (None of that last sentence made sense, but you know what we’re getting at!) Whilst we don’t have any news to share today, we suggest you keep an eye on our social channels for the latest. Stay tuned! The team are making it happen.
What’s Next?
Good question! Well… Now we’ve launched out of Early Access and onto console, the team are working flat out behind the scenes on upcoming content. As we’ve said already, we have no intentions of slowing down anytime soon. The plan is to keep on involving our community as much as we can and keep on making Portal Knights the game you want it to be. We are already working on some truly exciting things behind the scenes and we can’t wait to share more info with you all.
Thank You
Let’s end this blog here by saying a HUGE thank you to each and every single one of you who has tweeted us, messaged us, left a suggestion on our forums, shown us support, believed in us and got involved in one way or another. Community means everything to the team here and we’re so thankful to have surrounded Portal Knights with such a supportive group of players.
As your Community Manager, I’m so unbelievably proud of everything you guys have done for us and I would like to personally thank you for absolutely rocking our forums and social channels. It’s an absolute pleasure to chat with you all daily, see your AWESOME creations, check out your streams and hear what you have to say. NEVER a day goes by where this community doesn’t make us smile in one way or another! That means everything to a CM. While it’s practically impossible for us to reply to every single one of you, please know that we do read your messages and we do listen. If we don’t reply to a message or a tweet, please don’t ever think we’re ignoring you! We might just be busy on another channel, planning something awesome behind the scenes or simply grabbing a bite to eat or catching up with some ZZZ’s. (CM’s need sleep too, you know?) 😉
Over the next couple of weeks, we plan to publish a survey to gather some feedback from both our Steam and console communities. Please use this opportunity to be as open and honest as you can be. The info we gather from those surveys will be passed onto the team to analyse and will be invaluable.
OK, it’s probably time to stop typing now… On behalf of the whole Portal Knights team, we’d like to thank you all for getting us where we are today. The future is looking bright and we hope you guys stick with us for the journey ahead, as we’ve entered such an exciting time in our development. We just want to carry this momentum forward and keep on developing Portal Knights into something even more special. So please, keep on supporting us! You’ve no idea how much it means to the team.
Thank you so much for believing in us and for believing in Portal Knights.
Oh… One final thing! If you come across any issues whatsoever and wish to submit a bug directly to our Support team, please use our bug submission form below. This method will ensure that your bug is seen by the team…
BUG SUBMISSION FORM – https://fs30.formsite.com/505games/form16/index.html
Should you wish to speak to someone directly regarding any issues you’re having, please reach out to our dedicated Customer Support team. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer support to everyone on our community channels, but our Customer Support team can investigate any issues you may be experiencing – https://support.505games.com/support/signup