Our release plan, and an invitation to test

We've been a bit gun-shy in talking about release dates or our plans for how the release of the game will go, mainly because we are cognizant that we misunderestimated the release date in the first place, and didn't want to muddy the waters any further. Not that we regret the time we've taken; it's given us a chance to iterate the art treatment, codebase, and story of the game a few times until we really found ourselves where we wanted to be, instead of forcing a particular implementation of the game from the start. Things are really taking shape now, and we have a solid plan to finish up Kentucky Route Zero and get it out there!

So, first off -- we've decided to release the game in five acts, rather than all at once. It seems like a good fit for this game because the plot is already modeled after a five-act play and explicitly separated into acts and scenes. Act I is looking like it'll be released late November. The remaining four acts will be released at intervals of 2-3 months over the course of 2013. At this point, we're basically just creating content, and the overarching plot has been mapped out for a while now, so producing the latter four acts will take much less time than it's taken us to get to this point.

Pricing will be something like $7 per act, or $25 to purchase all five acts at once. We'll sell the game through our own website at first, and probably work out some additional distribution later through platforms like Steam. Everyone on this mailing list will get a download code for Act I. As promised during the Kickstarter drive, everyone who contributed $40 or more there will get a download code for all five acts.

We'll release the game for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The Linux details are a bit vague right now, but it is something we'll be figuring out, hopefully in time to release on all three platforms at once.

Would you like to help us test the game between now and release? If so, we would really appreciate it!

You can sign up to test KRZ using this form

We'll start sending out test builds somewhere around mid-October.

thanks & more soon!

jake&tamas

PS - About the soundtrack CDs; we have a few more tracks to master but got distracted working on other parts of the game. Sorry for that, they'll be out very soon. We'll be in touch to make sure we have current mailing addresses for everyone. Thanks for your patience!