'We'll Make Sure That You'll Get an Excellent Product.' No Rest for the Wicked Dev Explains „Mixed” Reviews of aRPG on Steam
No Rest for the Wicked is slowly regaining the trust of players. Another hotfix has been released for the game, and the Moon Studios team wants an „excellent product” to eventually reach players.
Moon Studios team appears to be eager to quickly deliver on their promise. No Rest For The Wicked already has almost 70% positive reviews on Steam (or even over 70% according to SteamDB), and exceeding this threshold would mean that the game's reviews would no longer be categorized as "mixed."
What's more, just 5 days after its release, the game received its third major hotfix. The update improves, among other things, the movement between locations to make it smoother, and brings in numerous enhancements related to graphics and optimization. The gameplay balance was revisited, with weapon parrying weakened by introducing stamina consumption (excluding shields) and enemy behavior improved.
Of course, Hotfix 3 also contains numerous resolved errors. You can find the full list of changes on the No Rest for the Wicked card on Steam.
Game more important than polishing
Fans of Moon studio are certainly pleased that the team quickly started improving the game. However, this doesn't change the fact that the initial reception of one of the most anticipated titles of April (if not the year) turned out to be a big disappointment. How this came about is explained by the CEO of Moon Studios, Thomas Mahler.
Since the premiere of NRftW, the dev has remained very active on X (like another studio that makes its presence visible on social media). In a recent post, Mahler revealed that the mixed response to the game's early access is due to Moon Studios' approach, which, like with their previous title, prioritized the "elements" of the game over optimization and "polishing."
According to the Austrian, the developers hoped that players would understand such an approach of the team. After all, optimization is one of the elements that usually undergoes the biggest changes in early access.
He added that the studio was working on the "premiere" version of NRftW practically until the last minute. Many quality of life improvements, which players demanded after the "release," were already being developed by the devs earlier - they just didn't manage to finish them on time. This would explain the pace at which Moon Studios managed to release three fairly large hotfixes.
Mahler also mentioned another problem: a localization bug with No Rest for the Wicked, which prevented the game from displaying subtitles in some languages (most of the "negative" comments were posted by Chinese players; via X). This very bug was supposed to be the reason for many negative reviews (rightly so, as the dev admitted). Fortunately, it has already been fixed, and more localization fixes are on the way.
In the end, the developer should be satisfied with the "premiere" reception of No Rest for the Wicked. Mahler also confirmed that the Moon Studios team is working hard to deliver an "excellent product" to players after the release of version 1.0.
