Having previously warned backers that they would likely miss Shadowrun Returns' original estimated release target of January 2013 due to the increased scope of the Kickstarter-funded project, developer Hairbrained Schemes has narrowed the delay window down to be "looking at May or June" 2013 (via
Polygon):
During its initial Kickstarter funding the studio planned for a scheduled launch in Jan. 2013, with releases on PC, iOS and Android devices; However, following a highly successful campaign which saw a 470 percent increase on the studio's original $400,000 funding goal — jumping to nearly $1.9 million via Kickstarter and PayPal contributions — the project grew in scale.
"As we announced a few months ago, we've backed off our original delivery date of January 2013. It might've worked for the scope of the game we originally envisioned but as our ambitions (read that "features list") grew, so did the time we needed to deliver! Plus, we made a big move from our original top down camera to an isometric point of view and that took serious R&D time. Right now, according to our estimates, we're looking at May or June.
"We've spent the majority of our time getting our game engine, art pipeline and base gameplay up and running and we've covered a lot of ground to get a lot of systems in place. Our engineering team has been crunching off and on for months to maximize the amount of time our designers will have to create our story."
On top of the project's initial ambitions, stretch goals added during the project's wildly successful crowdfunding drive included the plots of the Super Nintendo and Sega Megadrive Shadowrun games being woven in together for closure, the composers of the memorable soundtracks of both of those 8-bit games collaborating together on the new game's score, and the implementation of "Physical Adepts" --a character class described as mystical ninjas.
Swing by the
Kickstarter project page for all the details.