After being announced more than three years ago, it was finally looking like the pixel-art cyberpunk noir adventure, REPLACED, was heading towards release. Unfortunately though, developer Sad Cat Studios has just announced it’s pushing the game back a little more, to 2025.
The studio shared a message on social media announcing the delay and revealing it needs more time to bring the game to the quality bar it’s set itself. The game will be publicly playable at this month’s Gamescom event, and the studio has said it’ll have another surprise to share later this week. Here’s what it said:
“Hey everyone.
“We’ll keep it short: REPLACED will now be released in 2025. Our initial release date was optimistic, and we apologize for that. Developing REPLACED is quite a unique challenge, and we’re proud to be creating something that special.
“We need more time to ensure we meet the high standards we’ve set for ourselves and to meet the expectations of our fans. Feel free to join our Discord – we post lots of devlogs there to share the progress and are open for a chat.
“REPLACED was featured at Summer Game Fest earlier this summer, and now it will also finally be available at Gamescom for everybody to play! Come say “hi”!
“For those not attending we’ve prepared something special for later this week.
“Now back to work. We want you to love REPLACED when it launches, so we have to go the extra mile here!
“Sad Cat Studios Team”
— REPLACED (@REPLACEDGame) August 13, 2024
When REPLACED does eventually launch, it’ll be available on both Xbox Series X|S and PC and will be available to relevant Game Pass subscribers on day one.
Brodie recently had the chance to get hands-on with the game at Summer Game Fest and came away enthusiastic about its potential, saying, “Leave it to an independent, 2.5D action-platformer to absolutely capture the film noir quality after taking inspiration from the genre’s prime movers. Replaced comes away from the summer’s showings as one of the year’s more promising indies.”
