Ahoy everyone,
Unfortunately, there’s been a change of plan regarding our release schedule. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to delay both the full game and prologue to February 2022, and the prologue will no longer be part of the October Steam Next Fest.
The new release dates are:
- Buccaneers! The New Age of Piracy (prologue): 17 February 2022
- Buccaneers! (full game): 24 February 2022
In recent weeks, we’ve lost a lot of development time for various reasons, which made us re-evaluate our previously-stated release date of October 14th. It was already going to be an extremely tight deadline, and we would need to put in a lot of extra hours just to finish the full game’s content - there would be no time left for polishing and very little for QA testing. The game was not going to be the finished product we envisioned, leading to poor sales and reviews, so it was clear that we needed more time.
So why February? Simply put, with stiff competition and the usual Steam sales just around the corner, the rest of this year would have been a bad time to launch our game. We would have suffered from low visibility and reduced sales as a result, so we couldn’t take that risk even if the game was done by the end of the year. January isn’t a great time for new releases either, as it’s typically a lull right after the Christmas period. That leaves February as the earliest viable month to release the game without compromising its chances of success.
The good news is this gives us more than enough time to finish the game and polish it to the high standards we’re aiming for. We’ll have plenty of time to act on feedback that otherwise would have been put on the backburner due to impending deadlines. There is no doubt the game will be a much better product because of it.
However, we know this will come as a huge disappointment to many of you, especially this close to what would have been the game’s release. We’re disappointed too; after nearly four years of development, we were really keen to launch the game this year. These extra four months will do the game good, but for us, getting over the finish line just got that bit harder.
If you’re still itching to play the game before its release, don’t worry - we’ll give you more opportunities to test the game soon.
As always, thank you all so much for your continued support. We remain committed to delivering the awesome pirate game you guys want, and we hope it will be worth this extra wait.
- Team Skyward 🏴☠️