Hi everyone, we get a lot of questions around our release plans so I thought it was about time to talk about them!
The TLDR is that our goal is early 2024. I’ve got a much more specific time in mind, but I won’t give an exact date until I know it’s locked in. That’s because there are so many moving parts that’ll become clearer over the coming weeks and we’re always going to prioritise what’s right for the game rather than hitting arbitrary dates. As soon as it’s locked in, you’ll be the first to know :)
For those interested, here’s some additional context that has been influencing our thoughts:
- At the start of 2023 we’d hoped to release at the end of the year. That can be a tricky time because you only have a small window between the Autumn and Winter Steam sales, which are times where any release momentum you achieve gets obliterated by countless discounted games! That means you can’t delay from early December to late December; if you don’t make that early December window you need to wait.
- Next Fest was a fantastic success and the feedback was brilliant. It added a huge amount of polish tasks onto our already substantial list of work though! We’re a tiny team with one programmer, one artist, one designer and as we can’t throw people at the problem to get things done quicker, that only leaves time/release date as a changeable variable.
- Despite being an Early Access game, our first launch is important to get right. Making SENTRY as good as it can be really matters to us as a team, so we’d rather err on the side of caution and overshoot quality than risk anything else.
We’ll leave the demo up longer so you’ll at least be able to get your SENTRY fix while you’re waiting for release. It’s getting a bit out of date versus the version us and our playtesters are enjoying, however we need to be careful that updating the demo doesn’t detract from us making the main game. It’s certainly something for us to ponder.
I hope this helps provide transparency on everything we’re considering and trying to balance. Please know that every decision we make is always with sincere intentions for creating the best game as possible and as I mentioned above, we'll continue to communicate our plans as soon as they're locked. We’ve also got a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline we can’t wait to show you :)
From everyone at Fireblade, thanks for the support!
