After an ugly launch that saw its Steam rating crater to "mostly negative," briefly climb to "mixed," and then biff it back to "mostly negative," MindsEye developer Build a Rocket Boy says it's working "around the clock" on performance improvements, and that the first in a series of planned patches is slated to arrive on PC at the end of this week.
The team acknowledged on launch day that the game's minimum system requirements "are very high" and said on Reddit that developers are "working around the clock to improve performance on mainstream hardware as well as consoles." In a subsequent update on Steam, Build a Rocket Boy went into more detail about what it has in the works.
"Right now, our top priority is game performance," the studio wrote. "We understand that the requirements are high and have limited the experience for many of you, and for this, we sincerely apologize.
"Improving performance across all devices is our immediate focus. A patch that begins our commitment to address this is scheduled for the end of this week on PC, which will also roll out to consoles as soon as possible."
The first hotfix will include:
- Initial CPU and GPU performance improvements, along with memory optimizations
- Reduced difficulty for the CPR minigame
- A new setting to disable or modify depth of field
- A fix for an issue with missing controls for the MineHunter and Run Dungeon minigames
- Pop-up warnings for PCs that have Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling disabled, and PCs with CPUs that have potential crash issues
Build a Rocket Boy also said the content creation platform Build.MindsEye is now fully accessible, and it's also working to resolve problems with missing DLC, which will be added to owners' accounts as soon as possible.
The release of MindsEye has indeed been a mess, to the extent that Build a Rocket Boy seemingly cancelled a sponsored stream with CohhCarnage, literally as the stream was starting—"first time that's happened," the streamer said.
The real trouble facing Build a Rocket Boy is that while the technical issues are very real, MindsEye's bigger problem is simply that it's not very good. We don't have a review but PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde has played the first two hours—and his impression was that "the Steam collective had it right back when the reviews were 'mostly negative'."
It's impossible to properly review a game after just a couple hours of gameplay, but this does not look good:
Ironically, MindsEye ran pretty well for Tyler, despite his aged RTX 2070 Super GPU: "I was a bit worried that my stubborn refusal to upgrade would finally defeat me, because early negative Steam reviews often come from players who have technical problems, but it's stable for me, if frequently ugly on the settings I'm using. It's gone all slideshowy a couple times, but only in narrative moments where it didn't screw me up. The faces look nice, at least."
Build a Rocket Boy encouraged players to continue sharing feedback through "support channels, Discord, Reddit, and through direct messages on social media," and promised that it reads them all—"even the tough ones."
