Woah, has it really been 2 years already? Indeed: CrossCode started Early Access back in May 2015. To celebrate the occasion we have a Daily Deal today on Steam! Now before some of you might be tempted to take the offer we thought it would be fair to talk about the ever-so-important question: When is CrossCode finally finished? Back in 2016 we posted our release schedule and at that time, we estimated the final release for June-September 2017. We're now very close at this date and unfortunately see that there is still too much left to do. Yes, most major locations and dungeons have been finished and you can already gather all 4 elements. The only major thing that is now missing is the story. And story is difficult. It's important to us that the plot will leave enough space for character development, will be able to surprise you and most important of all: will have a satisfying conclusion. All of this unfortunately takes time, more than we estimated. The only way we could release on time would be by cutting content, making the game shorter than intended. This will of course leave the final product lacking and we really want to avoid this. The good news is: financially we can afford to develop the game until it reaches the intended conclusion. That of course means we have to postpone the release. We fully understand that some of you might be angry about that. But we also believe that, in the end, nobody wins when we release an incomplete game on time. We owe it to you to give this game a satisfying conclusion and we believe this is what most of you want us to do as well. With all that being said, we now target a release of CrossCode in Early 2018. Yes, this is big step, but this should give us enough time to finish the story and make sure it reaches a satisfying conclusion. It will hopefully be the last time we have to postpone the release to such an extend. Since it will be another half a year, we plan to add a few more releases in-between with more content to play.

New Release Schedule

CrossCode 0.9.5 Release Date: June 2017 This update will finally extend the story! By quite a bit as well. It will slightly expand locations around Maroon Valley, Rookie Harbor and Autumn's Fall, include several smaller boss battles and plenty of interesting plot developments. It may also be leaving you wanting more story, so be warned. Includes:

• More Story
• More Quests

CrossCode 0.9.7 Release Date: Autumn 2017 This release will add the new area Sapphire Ridge with new enemies and puzzles included. You may recognize the area from another part of the game you've already played. We'll also finally work on all those backer perks we promised back during our Indiegogo campaign. Includes:

• New Area: Sapphire Ridge
• More Quests
• First Backer Food / NPCs / Quests / Enemies

CrossCode 0.9.9 Release Date: End of 2017 This release will implement the new level 3 combat arts so you can try those out and give us feedback for balancing! You will also, for the first time, be able to enter Rhombus Square. You might only be able to enter certain parts of the city in the beginning, but we intend to expand the place over time, even beyond the 1.0 release. Includes:

• Level 3 Combat Arts
• New City: Rhombus Square
• More Quests
• More Backer Food / NPCs / Quest / Enemies

CrossCode 1.0 Release Date: Early 2018 This will be the big release of the full version! It will include a (hopefully) satisfying conclusion to the story. Includes:

• Full Story
• Complete Skill Tree
• Indiegogo Backer Food / NPCs / Quest / Enemies (maybe not complete)
• More Quests

Note that versions 0.9.7 and 0.9.9 will have less content compared to previous releases. That's because a lot of content for the final version will be developed in parallel to those versions but only released with the full game. Post Release Content Of course we still plan to develop the game beyond it's final release adding more post-game content and remaining backer perks we didn't manage to implement on time. This includes:

• New Game+
• All remaining Indiegogo Backer Content
• A Battle Arena in Rhombus Square with a lot of different challenges
• More Quests

And this is our new schedule! Again we're very sorry we have to postpone the release once again, but we really hope that all the wait will be worth it in the end!

Localization

Two weeks ago, we released the Chinese Localization with help of our partner WhisperGames. We are now also happy to announce that we're working on a Japanese Localization with our new partner Dangen Entertainment to be released sometime during Early Access, possibly with version 0.9.7. Now many of you asked for translation into other languages, be it Russian, Spanish, French etc. We're still in the process of looking for potential partners for some of these languages, but if nothing comes up, we do plan to involve the community to help up translate CrossCode to other languages. However, we plan to start those community translations later once we're closer to the version 1.0. This is mostly because working with more people to translate the game early on may further distract us from developing the game itself and we really don't want to keep postponing the release!

Back from BitSummit

We're back from BitSummit in Kyoto, Japan and man... what an event. We met a lot of other cool developers including Konjak (Iconoclast), Bomb Service (Momodora), Kayin (Brave Earth: Prologue), and Stellar Jockeys (Brigador) among many others!
Our CrossCode booth got a lot of visitors by all kind of folks... and also the press! And now you we nice articles by IGN Japan and IGN USA! There was also a Famitsu articles that disappeared... but maybe it'll show up again! Traveling all the way to Japan was quite exhausting and so was standing at the booth all day long, but overall it was definitely worth it and we'd gladly do it again next year! We also want to say thanks to Dangen Entertainment for organizing a great deal of the whole thing and taking good care of us in general!

See you at Dokomi!

This Saturday and Sunday we'll be at Dokomi in Düsseldorf, Germany presenting CrossCode! You'll find us in Hall 4, Booth L12! If you're there, feel free to drop by, say "Hi!" and get a sticker! And that's all folks. Until then!

[ 2017-05-30 15:17:31 CET ] [ Original post ]