Red Candle games has announced that its "Taopunk" Sekiro-inspired platformer Nine Sols has been delayed until Q4 2023. If you backed the crowdfunding campaign for the game and you're waiting for your physical rewards to arrive, you'll be waiting a bit longer, too, as those have been delayed as well.
The studio announced the delay to Nine Sols via Twitter earlier today, as well as via its own website a couple of days ago. Red Candle says that after the release of the second Nine Sols closed beta, it received a lot of "helpful insights" regarding the game's future direction, but also "discovered some shortcomings in [its] future planning".
According to Red Candle, the remaining time before Nine Sols' original intended release window of Q2 2023 was "indeed not enough to achieve the gaming experience that our team envisions". That's why the game has been pushed back two whole quarters. It's now expected to arrive some time in late 2023.
In order to apologize for the delay, Red Candle says it's adding another closed beta period for backers, which "includes a large amount of game content". Having something more substantial to play will hopefully alleviate your dismay at not being able to check out the finished product sooner if you're a backer. According to Red Candle, the closed beta represents around two-thirds of the final game.
Red Candle's updated timeline for Nine Sols now looks like this.
Work on the game is expected to be completed by Q4 2023, with porting and physical rewards production being carried out later this year in October. Following that, Red Candle expects to deliver crowdfunding rewards in Q1 2024. It's not too bad a delay, but it'll likely still come as something of a disappointment to those who've been waiting to check this one out. Stay tuned for more info on Nine Sols.