How Perun Creative Went From Mostly Negative Reviews to Now on the Road to Positive

Perun Creative, the Czech indie studio behind survival RPG Hobo: Tough Life, has achieved a remarkable turnaround for action-adventure RPG Kromlech after a challenging Early Access launch. The game entered early access on the 5th of March, and it was hit with a wave of negative player reviews, dropping the review score down on Steam to mostly negative within hours. However, less than a week later, following a speedy series of community updates and a substantial first patch, Kromlech is now sitting at a mixed review score on Steam! This outcome speaks volumes, as it shows how responsive the developers have been with the wider community and, most importantly, have taken the feedback they have received on board.

Kromlech is an action-adventure RPG that is set in an Iron Age Celtic-inspired dark fantasy world, drawing comparisons to the beloved RPGs of the early 2000s, particularly the Gothic series, while incorporating modern rogue-lite progression. Players take on the role of Cronach, a lone adventurer navigating a world on the brink of collapse, with a crisis system that creates world-altering consequences depending on how the player responds to emerging threats within a strict in-game time limit.

The launch problems were unfortunately significant, and players immediately flagged severe performance issues, an install size approaching 150GB, and load screens of punishing length that triggered every time the player died and the entire world reloaded. These were a few of the most highlighted issues within the Steam reviews. 

Within 24 hours of release the studio published a detailed community update that acknowledged each problem by name rather than retreating behind vague promises. They committed to a new vegetation rendering pipeline to lower the install size, a rework of the death system to eliminate the full world reload and replace it with instant respawn, a brand new tutorial level, and rebalanced early encounters to give new players a better experience. Players rarely receive this kind of post-launch communication, and the community responded to it positively. 

The result of all of the fixes and communication has meant that the Steam review score has moved from Mostly Negative to Mixed, and the community has shifted from being frustrated to excited about what’s to come. 

"This is just the first step on a year-long early access journey, and we have many more to show you." –  the studio wrote in their patch notes. With the death system fix still to come and a full twelve months of planned development ahead, Kromlech could look a lot different in the future. 

For more information about Kromlech and to stay updated on future developments, visit the official Steam page, X/Twitter or join the Perun Creative Discord. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va26YWJmVJo