As we pass the 11th year of development, it's time to provide yet another update.
COMPLETED
The game is 99% complete and only missing some final musical and text elements as outlined below. All game elements (levels, cutscenes, menus/systems, etc.) have been merged together into a single, fully-playable build. This is a significant milestone to have a fully playable beta.
Voiceover underwent a casting call and final recordings of NPC characters to complete the roster for cutscenes. All scenes are now fully voiced in English. There are no plans at this time to have cutscenes voiced in other languages.
Final voiceover selections have been completed and are now in the core game. Across all cutscenes, there were over 6 hours of voiceover that required review and editing for final-use composites. This was a staggering undertaking from an editing perspective.
Sound effects have been added to cutscenes.
Hundreds of hours have been dedicated across in-house testing, polish, balancing, optimizing code, and addressing bugs.
REMAINING ITEMS TO COMPLETE
A handful of cutscenes are now ready for musical elements to be composed now that imagery, sound effects, systems and flow have been finalized.
Voiceover will soon undergo final mixing, mastering and effects processing such as reverb, etc. This should be a relatively simple effort and will simply overwrite current audio.
Tomes (5 hidden throughout each level) will need final writing and implementation. These further expand on the lore and world of Anathema. The system for these is already programmed and ready, and simply needs the final text to be inserted into the core game.
Journals (unlocked after completion of each level), similar to Tomes, need final writing and implementation. The system for these is already programmed and ready, and simply needs the final text to be inserted into the core game.
Once a build with all remaining audio/text elements is available, we can aggressively expand on bug-testing and further balancing efforts. There is no benefit in external testing at this phase as we want a complete build of all remaining to-be-completed elements to ensure true and complete testing notes.
A marketing strategy will need developed leading up to release. This will include an updated demo to replace the previously deactivated 2017 demo. We have no date to announce for a new demo at this time, but rest assured that will in advance of release as part of a marketing strategy.
Discuss the potential of console ports with publishers. This won't necessarily slow down the PC/Steam release and most likely will occur after initial release on PC/Steam.
We are not prepared to announce a release date at this time. We've long maintained the stance we refuse to give a release date we don't feel confident we can meet and that remains true. That said, with the game 99% complete, we're closer than ever and no one wants this game finished and out in the wild more than us, but there is still more work to do.
With life events and general day-job obligations becoming increasingly more complex and demanding in recent years, along with the expected burn out of an 11 year development cycle, development unfortunately was slowed significantly. It may be a crawl, but we're almost to the finish line.