On behalf of everyone at 505 and Sproing, we want to express a huge thank you to our community so far. Launching a game is always nerve-wracking – and even more so for an Early Access title where there’s still so much more we want to do. We really appreciate everyone’s feedback and suggestions, both positive and negative (seriously). We especially appreciate the constructive criticism, and the detailed analysis of balancing and overpowered strategies.

Rest assured, we’re committed to addressing issues and supporting the game for many months to come. Things will change. Our development backlog is extensive – and we’re already revising it based on feedback we’ve received over these first few days. We plan on releasing a major update every 4-6 weeks – in addition to smaller patches for critical bug fixes or balancing on a weekly as needed basis.

While the precise features & content we’ll be adding over the coming months are still crystallizing (and we’ll share details closer to when each update goes live), we did want to take the time to share the design pillars for Quarantine that will shape its overall vision:

STRATEGIC DEPTH. First and foremost, we're a strategy game, so gameplay will come before anything else. We're proud of the foundation we've built, but know we have more systems to add, and much more refinement to do. Gameplay must be strategically interesting, with many valid approaches and play styles – there should never be an obvious “best strategy”. Furthermore, scenarios should be highly replayable on every difficulty. Many of you have written to express that Security operatives & Medic tech trees are too powerful, that the game is too easy, that sessions are too short, and that there isn’t enough content (or strategic variety within content) to provide the depth you’re looking for. We hear you loud and clear, and addressing these criticisms is our top priority.

AUTHENTICITY. With Quarantine, it was one of our goals that the experience felt grounded in reality. Epidemic disease is a serious (and frightening) topic, and we wanted to make sure the stakes felt real, and that we paid proper respect to real-world science and emergency response. Admittedly, over the course of development the game shifted gradually from being more of a simulation to being more of a traditional game (in the interest of mechanical transparency and fun) – but the theme is still important to us, and we want to express it and deepen it wherever possible. This is especially a focus in our disease traits and situations, where the theme is most palpable, and where we want the player’s decisions to be emotionally evocative and meaningful.

ACCESSIBILITY. As we've mentioned previously, a big part of why we're going Early Access is to draw from the incredibly passionate and intelligent strategy community here on Steam – and this is already paying off. But we also know that we're never going to be among the most hardcore strategy games. We want to keep session lengths manageable (though certainly longer than they are currently), and the learning curve reasonable. We don't want to require that players watch extensive tutorials on YouTube or read wikis just to get up and running.

We're always going to try to create as much depth as we can from existing systems before adding new ones. A big part of accessibility, for us, is making sure that the mechanics are as intuitive and transparent as possible. We think there’s a lot more we can do here in terms of user interface and tooltips that will also aid with strategic depth.

IMMERSION. We want to make sure that Quarantine's visuals and sound design capture the spirit of managing a high-pressure crisis – and give you the sense of the lives at stake and the situation “on the ground”. At the same time, we want to make sure that these elements are balanced with gameplay. We have lots of ideas for how to add cinematic polish to the game and are excited to share with you

We’ve seen some occasional suggestions for a campaign mode, as well as for multiplayer. To be upfront: we need to acknowledge the reality that we have a lot more iteration we want to do on our core gameplay before we could look more into adding these. If you feel passionately about these or other features, please look to post your ideas/comments on our discussion forums: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/489370/discussions/2/

Thank You!

Again, we really appreciate all the feedback and suggestions, even in the few days since we launched. We’re listening carefully and are planning accordingly. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we’re excited that the game is finally in the hands of the community. We’re going to do our absolute best to prove out the vision we’ve put forward with this launch version. There’s much more to come – stay tuned.

To keep up with development, sign up for the newsletter at www.playquarantine.com

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If you're having technical issues, please check out our customer support page at https://support.505games.com/en/support/solutions/folders/24000000536

YouTube or Twitch streamers, feel free to email us at community@505games.com

Thanks again!