What's next for Grid Empire?

Hey everyone,

It has now been a while since I originally launched Grid Empire, and it has also been a while since the re-launch. You might have noticed that the entire game is kinda hidden from public and only available through our Discord server. This is actually intended because I want to make a great first impression on people with the game, and right now the game is not there yet. 

When is the full launch of Grid Empire?

I'm planning to launch Grid Empire fully on summer 2026. This means that the playerbase is kept very small until then (as intended). However, this does not mean that I won't update the game at all until summer 2026, far from it. I have big plans to add great content to Grid Empire and when I feel like the game is ready, then I launch it fully. I will tell my high-level roadmap for the game and what direction I want to take it to.

Next Update

Next update is coming in 2-3 weeks (estimate). And it will include new craftable items and brand new questline system for crafting. This questline is intented to tie the entire feature together and motivate people to craft different items. I want to make so there is a reason to craft all the items (other than just liking the design). This questline is intended to be very long, I'm talking about months of actively playing the game. I call it "Crafter's Journey" because when you are at the end of the journey, you're gone from inexperienced player to an experienced crafter.

The questline has like a road with rewards you slowly unlock when you progress in the quests, and they give different rewards like items, coins, lucky chests, and ...badges?! (I'll tell you more about badges in the future). At the end of the journey there will be something really special that makes the entire long questline worth it. But remember, the questline is not designed to be finished in days or weeks.

Sidequests

Everyone loved the Summer Hobo's Apology (and hopefully has accepted his apology). The Summer Chests got a really nice reception from everyone and actually spiked the active player amounts and even the entire player retention to higher than ever. Trust me, I take these statistics very seriously, nothing actually tells clearer that feature is good than the fact that it spikes the retention of players. This is why I want to add summer chest -like feature permanently to the game in the form of sidequests. Let me explain how it works.

The Crafter's Journey will have a limited amount of quests you can do per day (unsure how many exactly) and then there will be a cooldown of 24 hours so you can take break from playing ..or do sidequests which is a feature that activates when main quests is done for the day. Sidequests are easier, activity specific quests like (for crafting related quests it's e.g. "break 100 blocks", craft 100 items", you get the point) and the cool thing about these sidequests is that there is no cooldown, so you can just grind them forever!

What are the rewards for sidequests?  They will have cycling rewards of coins, lucky boxes and different chests. (Also, lucky chests will be renamed to lucky boxes to reduce confusion) These different chests all act like summer chests but entirely different rewards, and  there will be multiple different ones that will be permanently always available from the sidequests. You cannot buy the new chests with coins or real money. 

Whats after that?

Once I'm done with crafting feature, and I feel like it's complete, I will start working on the next activity. I have teased fishing in the past, however this new activity will not be fishing, it will be something more original than that. That new activity will also have its own questline and sidequests too. This is my grand vision: each activity would have its own long questline and sidequest system so when the amount of activities increase, the amount of quests and "stuff to do" would greatly increase too. 

Fishing is definitely coming as it's a highly requested feature and I enjoy it too. I just feel it's not really what the game needs at the moment, but don't worry, I can guaranteed fishing is coming at some point (it's also partly already developed.

Overall, my grand vision is more activites, more items, more quests, more rewards and tons of community requested stuff. And when the game feels like it's ready, it's time for the big launch and we will see where the game goes from there.