Hey everyone!
We know we've been rather silent for a while... Our focus is to get the best game made, as fast as we can. And since there's only 2 of us, that tends to result in reduced communications, since we're spending all our time on working on the game itself...
Announcement
The short of the announcement is that we're now targeting 2027 for our release date.
Why the delay?
The longer the journey goes, the more we realize how massive a project Pathbreakers is turning out to be. Tons of complex systems, tons of art, sprites, animations... multiple hundreds of sound effects... The scope of everything has grown a lot since we started working on Pathbreakers, and while it's making for an awesome looking game, it's also taking a while.
We were tentatively hoping to release in 2026, but it's not looking realistic at this point. If we're perfectly honest, the release date has always been more of a "it'll be ready when it's ready" kind of date for us though, so it's not too big on a change on our side. But, we know lots of you are eagerly awaiting Pathbreakers to be ready, and we're sorry for the delay. >.<
Where we stand
While things are taking longer than anticipated, a lot of it is due to an increased scope and just the sheer amount of work needed to get everything we want in the game. Still, we're making good time. By now, we're pretty much done with the art and about 50% done with sound effects and music. Those should be completed within a few months, so we're in a good spot with assets.
Mainly, we're missing more writing, more polish, more tutorials and some difficulty settings. We're also planning a big playtesting phase, and that'll be important in making sure the game is as solid and exciting as we want it to be.
Looking ahead
We're planning to have a Steam demo in early 2027, with a playtesting phase a little before that. The current idea for the demo is to showcase a part of the story of 1 of the 6 starting characters. While it'll be a shortened version of their adventure, it should be a full vertical slice of the game's experience, so you can get a first-hand sense of the adventure.
From there, we'll focus on all the feedback we get on the demo. Once we've integrated everything that makes sense, we should be ready for release.
Thank you!
As always, we want to give a huge thank you to the community for all the support and patience! We're very excited to finally show you Pathbreakers and it's coming soon, so stay tuned!
If you haven't done so already, feel free to join our Discord as well, to better stay up-to-date with any news: https://discord.gg/yCcgyvMsQz
