After getting opinions from other developers, followers on Twitter, and some press people, we're going to end up delaying the launch of Death Road to July 22nd. I've updated the release date on Steam to show this. The rest of this post is going to be about explaining why we decided to do this, and what it will mean for the game.
The main reason for doing this is that E3 is a swirling vortex that destroys most other games that aren't huge enough to get major E3 coverage. This is combined with May being pretty bad for unknown game releases due to Overwatch and Stellaris. It became more clear that releasing the game in late May would probably kill the launch.
Due to the above and also No Man's Sky, it makes a long period of being brutal to get press for a new game. E3+NMS means about 1.5 months where there's a wasteland of press coverage. I don't think this would end until after the middle of July, where coverage opens up for games that aren't heavily promoted in E3.
This gives us another 2 months to develop Death Road to Canada more. The game's nearly done right now, we're putting Steam achievements in at the moment. With the extra time we now have, here's how we're going to spend it:
- More rare locations. I wanted the game to have lots of super rare things you can find. Now I have a lot more time to add these.
- A nice implementation of local co-op. With a May launch, we were going to have to cut it out completely and add it back in after the game was out.
- More testing and balancing.
- Getting more press and streamers to know about the game, so it has a better chance on its launch day.
- A solid month where we add little things that make Death Road better. No big new features, just small polish until the game is really shiny.
- Not dying from the stress of trying to sneak in before E3 took over everything.
Sorry for this one last delay. It was just looking like sticking with the May launch would have killed the game due to scheduling.