Breathedge 2 — Now in Early Access!

Hello, hello, hello to absolutely everyone. It’s no secret that we’re standing on the brink of a very big and momentous occasion for our very small and largely unmomentous studio: Breathedge 2 is launching into Early Access! It took us several long and fairly brutal, uh… however many years it’s been, but somehow, together with you, we’ve finally managed to crawl all the way to release. Hooray!

The exact launch date and time: today, AUGUST 31, at 3:00 PM UTC (8:00 AM PT · 11:00 AM ET · 5:00 PM CEST)

Early Access launches with a discount and at the lowest price the game will have. As major updates roll out, we plan to raise the price a little, just like we did with the first Breathedge.

One more thing we want to make absolutely clear: Breathedge 2 is launching in Early Access. This is not the full release of the finished game, but only part of it. Please keep that in mind when deciding whether to spend your hard-earned money now or wait for version 1.0, with all the planned mechanics, the complete story, and a much more thoroughly polished balance.

We are not a AAA studio, and Early Access is what allows us to build a game of the scale we originally envisioned without resorting to black magic, ritual sacrifices, or other questionable production methods. More importantly, it lets us work alongside the players, see what actually works outside our own heads, adjust our plans as we go, and make the game better in ways we simply could not do in isolation.

If you do not like this kind of development model, we genuinely recommend waiting for version 1.0. If, on the other hand, you enjoy taking part in development, giving feedback, watching the game grow, and discovering which texture the half-blind developers somehow failed to notice before you fell straight through it, then Early Access is probably exactly your kind of thing.

We also do not like the idea of releasing something obviously raw and calling it Early Access. Our goal is to make the part of the game that is already available feel as polished and complete as we can make it, even though the overall project is still unfinished. That does not mean the existing content is set in stone: we can still fix mistakes, rebalance things, improve mechanics, rethink decisions, and even add some brilliant new idea suggested by one of you.

In short, Breathedge 2 will keep changing, growing, expanding, and improving all the way to release. Early Access is not an excuse to leave things unfinished; it is the part of development where you get to watch us finish them.

That would be a perfectly reasonable place to end this announcement, but no. There are still a couple of things worth mentioning, so rather than dragging this out any longer, let’s get straight to them.

You may have already noticed the first one on the Breathedge 2 Steam page: our Early Access Roadmap. If you missed it, here it is again:

If you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, fair enough. The short version is that the roadmap contains our various fantasies about future updates and the full release, along with some approximate dates by which we fully intend to have failed to finish everything on time. In other words, a roadmap in the finest tradition of roadmaps.

In reality, development from here should move much faster than it took us to get this first chapter out. The core gameplay has finally settled into something coherent, and we know exactly where we want to take it next. We already have a huge amount of work done on the story, the planet — technically even two planets, with some caveats — assets, the ship, and plenty of other good stuff. A number of major mechanics still need to be built and properly tested, of course, and there is still a mountain of level design and dialogue work ahead of us.

At the same time, we are deliberately not rushing straight into the next stage. We want to see your reactions, reviews, comments, and ideas first, and use all of that to make the project better. If something clearly needs to move in one direction or another, it is much easier to change course now than after a questionable decision has been welded into the game forever.

And speaking of feedback: to make it easier to reach us, especially when you run into bugs, we added an in-game bug report tool. At any time, press Esc, find Report Bug, and send us a message. The more precisely you describe the problem, the easier it will be for us to track down the cause. If you can attach a save file where the issue occurs, even better — you can do that in the same window using the toggle at the bottom.

One more personal request: if you think you’ve found something important or genuinely game-breaking, please consider leaving some contact details in the report, such as an email address, so our heroic programmers can get in touch and ask how exactly you managed to destroy their beautiful code. Completely optional, of course.

And since everyone loves numbers, here’s another mildly interesting one: Breathedge 2 has now passed 480,000 wishlists. For a small studio like ours, that is an absolutely ridiculous number, and we’re incredibly grateful for the support.

For a bit of historical context, the first Breathedge entered Early Access with around 30,000 wishlists. That is quite a difference.

Does this mean the game is already a gigantic success and we’re about five minutes away from becoming millionaires? Nope. Does it mean we just wanted to mention the number and be happy about it for a moment? Yep.

And finally, a little bonus.

As everyone knows, chickens have excellent hearing, and we are no exception. Which is why we happen to be very fond of music. We have big plans for the soundtrack in Breathedge 2 and still have a lot of work ahead of us, but now that the outrageously talented sound designer, composer, Unreal Engine specialist, and all-around grand music scholar Dmitriy Migal has joined the team, some of those plans are even starting to look vaguely achievable.

And yes, we do remember that you wanted a portable radio for the Man. We haven’t abandoned that idea just yet… but this is not about the radio.

Breathedge 2 begins in the city of Outskirts, and like any self-respecting planetary city, it has not only its share of problems, but also its own anthem. We wrote one, drawing inspiration from all sorts of modern music. The incredibly talented composer and vocalist Ivan Savelchenko played and performed it, while the equally talented sound engineer Egor Khripkov handled the mixing and mastering.

You can hear the final version in the game, but we also wanted to share it separately:

And as a super-bonus, here’s a little live recording of Ivan performing it himself:

Whew. If the person writing all this had a voice like that, they’d probably be singing too instead of typing all this nonsense. But never mind. Someone has to do it.

Anyway.

We’re really looking forward to seeing you in the game later today — and to your comments, emails, blessings, curses, laser beams, and whatever else you feel like sending our way. Your feedback genuinely matters to us, and we really do value your ideas, so don’t be shy about writing to us anywhere you can reach us. We read everything.

We may not always have enough hands to reply to everyone — let alone reply quickly — but every message you send will be seen.

You can contact us through any of the social networks listed below on this page, or through the game’s main Steam page. You can also email us. It’s electronic, modern, and does not require stamps:

https://info@breathedge.com

And of course, you can still wishlist Breathedge 2 even though it’s already in Early Access, if you haven’t quite decided whether you need it right now. You do, obviously.

But if, for some mysterious reason, you still have doubts, feel free to hit that Wishlist button. We’ll be happy either way.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2412960/Breathedge_2