Thursday 26 September 2019

OFF GRID Release Update

Since our incredible Kickstarter backers helped us successfully smash our Kickstarter goal late last year, we’ve had a big year of development.  We also opened our FIRST ACCESS programme, started doing dev streams every two weeks, and have been enjoying some great banter with our Discord community.

Now we’re nearing the end of 2019, and you might be wondering if there is a release announcement coming soon…

During the Kickstarter campaign, we promised delivery of the game by December 2019.  This is possible, but we believe OFF GRID would be better served by delaying its release into 2020.



There are several reasons for this:

1.  Our team has changed.  We said farewell to one of our developers, Steve, earlier in the year.  He did a huge amount for OFF GRID, and though we miss his daily humour, we wish him nothing but the best in all his future endeavors!    Another team member, Sarah, reduced hours to better accommodate family life, which we fully support.

We’ve since brought on two new team members:

Cue Filipe, our new producer!  With 15 years in videogames and running two studios previously, he brings a wealth of experience to the team and is invaluable in helping us meet some new ambitions for the project.  We have some exciting announcements on platforms for OFF GRID coming soon that he has been at the forefront of planning, so keep your eyes peeled.

We have also been very fortunate in getting our new programmer, André, on board!  André has stepped in to fill the gaps left by Steve on a technical level, and his previous experience with console porting is an exciting opportunity for us (say no more ;P).

These two have been great and hit the road running!

2.  We have realised that to get the best out of the game we have to allow space for more user testing and a bigger public beta access.  We have got some really cool collaborations coming together on this front - we can’t wait to share more on this!

3.  There really are indie sweet spots as far as release windows go, and we have realised that we don't want to be releasing in the upcoming winter quarter.  There are several technical and marketing reasons for this, but ultimately OFF GRID is intended to grow and become an ongoing universe post release, and for this to happen we want to make the biggest splash possible.

4.  We have some exciting tech partnerships that are as of yet unannounced that we feel will improve the experience and in order to make them happen, we needed more time.

Ultimately, we are committed to delivering you the very best game we can, and we believe that taking the right amount of time to do so is extremely important.

We’ll be delivering all backer rewards in the months running up to our new release date - we want to harness all of the excitement to help make the biggest bang possible come release.  We aren't ready to announce *exactly* when this will be, but we are aiming for next summer.  When we have pinned the exact release date down, you will be the first to know!

If you have any questions, please feel free to pop in and ask @devteam in Discord or email us at contact @ semaeopus.com.

A few pleas before we go:
THANK YOU!
The OFF GRID Team

P.S. If you're reading this on the day of publication, (Thursday, 26th September), there is a dev stream scheduled for later today that you can tune into!  Follow along from 8:30 pm BST via:  YouTube | Twitch | Steam Broadcast | Mixer | Periscope

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