Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era's huge demo feels like Early-Early Access because its strategy champion devs are constantly working off your feedback: "The philosophy here is transparency"

If you've played the Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era demo recently, you might have noticed that Unfrozen has patched it following an immensely successful Steam Next Fest run. It's a "pretty unusual situation," remarks developer Unfrozen's CEO Denis Fedorov – I can't think of many updated demos off the top of my head – with notable changes including nerfing the easiest difficulty. But he holds his hands up to admit that this is but one key lesson the developer has learned on the long road to Early Access.

"We have several people in the team who are current champions – I mean first place participants and winners of Heroes tournaments," Fedorov confesses. "But we cannot build the game for them. It's just suicide. We're trying to satisfy everyone, and casual players are obviously a priority. We definitely want to satisfy this category of slow enjoyers as well, because, after all, Heroes is for everyone."

Dragon taming

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era isn't out in Early Access yet, but I've somehow sunk 20 hours into the demo. According to Fedorov, those are humble numbers. Some of you have apparently racked up 200 or more hours in Olden Era, which is why Unfrozen already feels a duty to provide the best experience possible.

Not only is it important for Unfrozen to satisfy its demo players and "fix the obvious problems," the demo has given the devs an opportunity to work with player feedback and implement changes we'd ordinarily expect to see once a game launches into Early Access. "One of the lessons we learned is that we definitely need to make the game easier. And it will be in the future – it will be even easier for the ones who enjoy slow-paced play, or the lowest level of difficulty and just prefer to enjoy the game, enjoy the story," Fedorov says. "For the high-skilled players, we will make the AI even more clever, even more advanced, more aggressive."

The staggering amount of belief in the project is a pleasure and responsibility not to be taken lightly, according to Fedorov. "The philosophy here is transparency. We knew for sure that the game is good, and our internal testing shows that people are really liking the game. And if you have a good project in your hand, it's important to polish it, of course. But from the beginning, we decided, 'well, we will just give the players the game and ask their opinion, what they think, and let them play.'" It's not just the Steam reviews being taken into account here. "We are listening to everything. We're reading everything," he says, referencing how "crowded" the game's Discord is getting in terms of suggestions.

Dream team-up

This hands-on approach to building and listening to communities is something Fedorov and the whole Unfrozen team has carried across from its first strategy-RPG game, Iratus: Lord of the Dead.

Here, the devs learned "how to work with a publisher, how to work with music, with voice acting, with localization, from the concept art till the latest verification. And most importantly for me, what we learned is how to work with the community, because the philosophy of Unfrozen is to make games with the community and learn from our mistakes."

It's a collaborative, player-minded effort that helps Unfrozen stay true to its ethos. As described by lead designer and game director Leonid Parmenov, Olden Era's philosophy is "to revive the classics, to make it [more] involved, and to bring something new" to the decades-old franchise. From "bringing in more RPG elements" to a campaign mission with "unlimited movement" that can feel more like a "real-time thing" with "a never-ending day," the whole point is to create a game that franchise devotees and newbies alike can settle into comfortably.

The same applies to PvP competitive play. Fedorov, Parmenov, and the rest of Unfrozen keep an eye on Twitch streamers and bloggers to get an idea of how its three multiplayer modes should work.

"People who are playing [Heroes in] PvP multiplayer use various mods," Parmenov says as an example. "Our goal is to implement those things into the game to make it closer to the modern multiplayer standard of gaming, when basically a player can open the game and just start playing, without installing anything extra."

As Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era moves towards a mystery Early Access launch date, it's clear that Unfrozen is keeping its playerbase front-of-mind. Few developers give us the privilege of getting such a lengthy demo taster, and after sampling the two newest factions in the latest build, I know Early Access will be worth the wait.

Check out the best strategy games to play while you wait for Olden Era