KatHawk Studios and Hooded Horse announced today the space strategy game Alliance of the Sacred Suns is delayed until early next year.
The delay will allow developers to conduct a large-scale free play test in January. Interested players can sign up here.
“Alliance of the Sacred Suns‘ unique angle of putting players in the shoes of a real, mortal character in charge of an empire is extremely exciting, and we want to make sure the game gets the time required to fully implement and polish its many innovative mechanics,” said Tim Bender, CEO of publisher Hooded Horse. “Steve and the team at KatHawk Studios have done an amazing job getting the game ready, and we look forward to player’s feedback during the play test in January to help make the game even better before release.”
Developers said they are focused on polishing and refining two of the game’s big features:
- The Oratory system, which allows players to debate, confront, and convince other characters in fully dynamic conversations
- A revamp of the Emperor system, which fully immerses the player into role-playing, with personal ambitions, skills, traits, and even the need to maintain their health through the many actions players can take to increase or reduce their life expectancy
In addition to the delay announcement, lead developer Steve Hawkins gave a deeper look at the both of these systems and other upcoming features in Alliance of the Sacred Suns in the homestretch of development that include an expanded skill tree and scales system.
The team grew to seven full time developers working on the game this over the past year.
“We’ve made more progress in the last 3 or 4 months than we have since the end of 2020, and we’re moving faster every week!” Hawkins said.
Hawkins said the game is fully playable and “quite stable,” noting he plays 40-50 turn games every night to QA some of the game’s longer-term trends and systems.
Alliance of the Sacred Suns will release sometimes in Q1 of next year on PC.
