After two years of closed development, martial arts-themed indie game The Scroll of Taiwu launched a milestone update on September 21st, and the devs stated that this would be the full version. However, so far, the game has received mixed reviews, with only 47% positive of the most recent 4,500 ratings.
Fans admitted that there are a few noticeable improvements in the content and storyline. However, the most severe problem is the lack of mission guidance.
As some missions have been replaced or changed and the previous strategies no longer work, the lack of mission guidance makes it difficult to get familiar with the gameplay and follow the plot, especially in the early stage.
Some bugs seem to be game-breaking, while many players have critiqued the messy UI and degraded combat experience.
The devs of ConchShip Games haven’t responded to players with an announcement, but the situation had them quickly creating and posting 16 short video tutorials on Bilibili in order to show players how to move objects, collect resources, do combat, etc. Since then, they have also made a post on Weibo explaining bug fixes.
A screenshot of The Scroll of Taiwu’s latest tutorials on Bilibili.
In contrast to the current reviews and complaints from fans, The Scroll of Taiwu once had a solid reputation; a few years ago, it was considered a phenomenal Chinese indie game.
Its Early Access began in 2018, and after the first month, sales exceeded 800,000 units, making it the biggest dark horse game that year. Most players agreed that it proved the excellency of Chinese indie devs.
However, unbeknownst to many, except those close to the project, the devs faced much pressure internally, a common occurrence among indie game teams.
It remained in Early Access for some time, but in April 2020, the creators suddenly announced a closed development, meaning no more updates during this process.
The abrupt decision made players very confused. But in a vlog released on Bilibili around that time, developer Eggplant gave several reasons, including a need to restructure the game’s code, which required a long period of demanding work because he had not previously learned game coding in a formal way.
Some players suspected reasonably that the delicate basic structure of the game’s code would not allow much new content to be added, which would significantly limit the final result, so Eggplant and the other programmers had to take time to recode the game, almost from zero.
In the vlog video, Eggplant also mentioned that they had some personnel challenges to overcome, and there was significant external pressure from players, whose comments were not always friendly.
Eggplant stated in the latest dev log that their two-year development was hectic.
The hardships did not stop the devs from continuing the project, and after two years, they managed to bring their new version to players.
In the update dev log on September 21st, Eggplant promised to try his best to fix all the bugs and problems present, mentioning that the two-year closed development had been hectic.
ConchShip games has a lot left to do in order to satisfy fans. For now, it seems the game will be mired in controversy, at least until the devs make good on their promises.