The first public Early Access version (b0.9.6) of Abstrrkt Explorers was released on Google Play one year ago. This is a reason to look back at the past year and forward to the future of Abstrrkt Explorers.

The Journey So Far

Without any marketing budget it was a slow launch with only about a hundred downloads in the first month. Daily download numbers increased over time though and on on May 18th 2021 the game reached 100.000 individual installs. As of today the game was downloaded more than 360.000 times all around the globe with the top regions being Russia, USA, Germany, Brasil, Ukraine, UK, Spain and France.

The increased download numbers probably can be attributed to apperances on multiple YouTube channels, participation in several events like gamescom, DevGAMM and Games Gathering, and nominations (plus a win!) in games competitions like Indie Blast, GWB Game Awards and NYX Game Awards.

Development

Throughout the year I got a lot of valuable feedback about the game. Many great ideas reached me by mail, the Play Store feedback system and the official discord server.

A lot of those ideas have already been implemented and many remain to be tackled in the future. One of the most requested features, the online multiplayer, is coming along nicely and is already available for alpha testers (visit the discord server to find out more about that). It should not be too long until it will be released to the public Early Access version.

There are also some more elaborate ideas for the more distant future of Abstrrkt Explorers, which I think will be a lot of fun and I cannot wait until they are ready to be announced.

Thanks For The Support

At this point I would like to extend my thanks to all those who contributed to the success of the game: by direct donations, Patreon memberships, IAP purchases in the game, watching ads in the game or contributing to the game's discord server. Your support motivated me to keep improving and extending the game and do so in the future.

Especially those who supported me directly financially I think deserve to receive some information about where their money went. So here is a rough list of what I spent the money on:

• Hosting for the game's website, including the domain and email service.
  
• Localization of the game into multiple languages and a comission for the main menu background artwork.
• A new development laptop and a color accurate QHD monitor. This was badly needed as my old setup had a lot of problems (slow performance, out of memory problems during build, unreliable network connection). The current chip shortage made finding a capable and avilable laptop a real challenge though.
  
• Fees for the events I participated in. (DevGAMM, gamescom etc.)
• Fees for the Play Store (deducted beforehand) and income taxes (deducted afterwards).
  

That's pretty much all of the money Abstrrkt Explorers made in the first year, after those expenses there is no huge pile of money left.

Anniversary Announcement

To celebrate this anniversary, I am glad to announce that the official wiki for Abstrrkt Explorers is now available! This should be the definitive stop to get detailed information about the game in the future. I have started to add content myself and I will continue to add some stuff in the future, but I also invite everyone to join and improve. The wiki is hosted on Fandom and can be found here.

Thanks Again

My goal with Abstrrkt Explorers is to create a fun strategy game for mobile and I am glad so many people enjoy the game. So again, a huge thanks to everyone who was part of this the first year and lets see what the next year will bring!

Alex