Five years ago, developer Sauropod Studio took to Kickstarter with Castle Story, a voxel-based strategy game featuring adorable little creatures called Bricktrons

It was 2012: Kickstarter was still new and excitement around the platform was comparatively much higher than it is in now in 2017. Castle Story rode this wave of excitement to a very impressive funding total of $702,516 across over 27,000 backers.

Then in September of 2013 the game launched on Steam Early Access, and that wave slowly but slowly turned into a long, bumpy road.

Almost four years in Early Access should be all the indicator you need to know things did not go as smoothly as Sauropod Studio would have liked. There were well known issues -- as the developer acknowledges -- of miscommunication, missed deadlines, and crippling bugs rendering the game unplayable at times during its stay in Early Access. It went from soaring heights to some lowly lows for the newly formed developer.

And these were just the publicly known issues. Privately, there was legal issues, funding problems, and general growing pains all whilst under a considerable amount of public and personal pressure.

But now it's over. Well, kinda. The game is out. Like actually out -- and not just in Early Access. But things aren't over -- there is still bug fixing and post-launch support to tackle. But Sauropod will surely feel it's ready for any of the adversity that happens to fall upon its post-launch path.

The developer -- who is now a fully-fledged team of over 20 developers (it started off as two college friends and one of their brothers) -- writes the following message about the journey, giving its thanks to all who endured the five years alongside them:

"From the very bottom of our hearts, thank you for sticking with us on this long journey, thank you for being part of this story and thank you for all your support. It means the world to us and we hope you’re eager to see what the future will bring for Castle Story and Sauropod Studio."

For those that don't know: Castle Story is a game where you command an army of friendly creatures called Bricktons. Building castle-like structures you will task them with exploring, carving, digging, gathering resources, and reshaping the voxel-based world around you to your desire and to the needs of your structure.

You will also need to build catapults, explosives, and more as your Bricktrons defend themselves from mysterious creatures called Corruptrons. There is also a physics system that will challenge the sturdiness of your design and crumble your structure if you prove a poor designer.

Notably co-op multiplayer and a World Editor for you to design and share your own maps are also featured.

Castle Story is available for PC, Mac, and Linux at the price-point of $24.99 USD. Below, you can check out an official launch trailer, which released today alongside the game.