Greetings everyone,
The decision has been made to release the game tomorrow - and for many of you, that’s already today, 03.04.26!
Why the sudden change? I was planning for May 1st, but I’m releasing tomorrow. Turns out I finished everything faster than expected. But there are other reasons too - starting mid-month, there’s a wave of AAA releases, DLCs, and big titles: Atomic Heart DLC, Diablo 4 DLC, Pragmata, Heroes: Olden Era, and several others - and after that, Gothic Remake. All of this will flood the news cycle and push indie games down in Steam visibility. Streamers and content creators will be playing AAA, not indie.
At the same time, I’ve basically wrapped up the final tasks, and realized - tomorrow is Friday, it’s quiet, no major releases, Crimson Desert hype has already cooled down. It’s time.
Partially good news: the quests in the first location (around 7 hours of gameplay) are fully voiced in English. To be precise, everything has already been voiced, but only the first 7 hours have been implemented in the game so far.
The rest of the English voice-over will be released within 1–3 weeks. I originally planned to release on the 1st only because I didn’t have time to finish the English voice-over, but since that would be a very bad release window for an indie game, I sincerely ask for understanding and apologize to the Western audience for releasing slightly earlier with incomplete voice acting.
After release, I will focus entirely on localization and English voice-over. I won’t even be taking days off. Please, if you like the game, don’t postpone your purchase - I promise the voice acting is coming!
I’m grateful to everyone who supported me along this journey. And I have one last request:
We need to push this release no matter what. Otherwise, all of this will have been for nothing.
What matters most for Steam is activity at launch:
sales volume
discussions
screenshots
community engagement
playtime
concurrent players
Don’t just pass by:
buy the game at launch (not now - at release moment)
ask your friends, family, dogs, cats, literally anyone
even if they refund later - the goal is to push visibility
Let’s push the game up so it gets noticed. Let’s show Steam what we can do.
Play the game, keep it running even while working, upload screenshots, write posts, be active in discussions - all of this helps a lot.
If you have any connections - ask for coverage. Share the game in groups, forums, anywhere you’re active. You know I’m a developer, not a marketer. Promotion is hard for me - but that doesn’t mean the project should be forgotten.
This was not an easy journey. But I kept my word and brought the project to completion. I won’t repeat what it cost - you already understand.
The scale of this game surprises even me, considering the resources behind it. Honestly, I’m impressed myself - and I genuinely enjoy playing through it.
I hope it wasn’t all for nothing.
See you at release.
Patch Notes:
Added an option to enable/disable vibration.
Added an option to hide hints in the top-left corner.
Added an option to completely hide quests from the screen.
Fixed a bug where the Domovoy quest could be turned in immediately using milk, honey, and bread, which broke it.
Fixed a bug where you couldn’t interact with the raven.
The cold zone has been slightly shifted toward Khladny Yar so it no longer interferes with the forest on the right side of the river.
Fixed an issue where the tutorial hint on the shore was not displayed, leaving players confused about why they couldn’t leave.
Likely fixed an issue where, during very long loading at the start of a new game, the character could die immediately. Not 100% confirmed since it’s hard to reproduce, but I believe I identified the cause and took steps to prevent it.
After the battle against Gorynych, health and mana are now fully restored to make it more comfortable to start the fight against the demons.
The river on the western island is working again.
Tomorrow there may also be another patch:
a new Bestiary with images
a few more achievements (they are already partially available)
and some additional gamepad adjustments