What's the game with the strongest early development (most content, more polished) you remember? It failed or continued?

[andafer]

I only played top ranked games on this site or some of my "sligthly less popular" favourites since well advanced their developments (third-fourth major version or later) and I can't find 0.1 version of none of those games now. In the case of all new games starting their development in last 20 months or so I played, there are many more 0.1 versions (or equivalent), but I don't get "top game" vibes from any of those early versions, neither by quality or content quantity, only after 2-3 major updates in the best cases and I'm pretty sure none of those new games earliest version could beat top ranked games equivalents, but I have no way to compare properly. Another thing I observed is that many of those new "promising" games (after second-third major update usually) tend to end abandoned after a while, while the most mediocre quality and low effort games imaginable continue more frequently their development (?), for years even, but maybe that's just confirmation bias on my part.

The only case of a top ranked/all time classic game in which I can find info about its earliest major version would be Being a Dik (? It's just a table with info on its forum, I still can't find the proper earliest, but probably a little shorter and less polished than this) with a impressive first chapter including 1301 renders, 7 major scenes with 51 animations, for a total of 3:29 minutes of animations and over 2 hours of general gameplay, with 1.1 GB file size. Considering the size of their 0.3, 0.4 or 0.5 versions the earliest I can find I think most other top ranked games on F95 would have "smaller" 0.1 versions than BaDIK but I'm not so sure about quality.

What other examples of "huge" and/or very polished games on their earliest version you know (any, popular or niche)? Did those games continued their development or ended abandoned?

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

What a Legend had a very polished 0.1. It had also a very apparent (at least to me) overscope problem. We won't see an 1.0 of that one in years.

 

[Doorknob22]

I only rely on memory here, but I think Summertime Saga was pretty amazing pretty early.

On the other hand, the first review my own game received started with the words "this game is shit on stick."

 

[anne O'nymous]

The DeLuca Family.

Over the 54 reviews he got the three first months, so for it's 0.1, only five weren't five stars. And most of them weren't the usual "wow, promising game" 3 lines reviews that we can see now.
The game have been reworked since, but the introduction was already a master piece, giving a perfect overview of the main characters and their personality, as well as over the story and the tone to expect from the game itself. This quality writing being served by renders that, at this time, were, with Philly ones, the best ever seen for an adult game.
And, must be said, all this for a game that do not place sex in first place and that, at this time, hadn't a single full frontal nudity CG. So, the reviews were really about the quality of the content, and not there because someone had a good fap session.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

This was a weird one. Excellent art, decent writing, a few hours to it, but very rushed corruption. Currently "Completed" on an update called Day 1, and clearly not a complete story, though the corruption sure felt like they were speedrunning it.