Shadowrun Returns - Update #36, New Release Window

Harebrained Studios has posted a Thanksgiving-flavoured Shadowrun update that provides an overview of current development and a shift in the expected release date:

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. 

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Based on the team’s feedback, we redesigned our first-draft combat interface, and the second-draft works much smoother. We’re going to play with it for a few weeks and keep a running list of the team’s feedback before making further revisions. We’ve also revised and debugged our base combat AI so they choose the right weapons (watch out for the grenades), use cover appropriately, reload, use medkits, attack aggressively or become cowardly, and respond to gunshots or calls for help. It’s taken awhile but they’re fun to fight with just guns, fists, and swords. Once NPCs start using tech and magic, things are going to really get crazy. 

After many weeks of hardcore debugging, iterating, and reworking, we’re happy to say that we’ve “found the fun”. We’re happy with Run ‘n’ Gun and feel confident that we’re building the rest of the game on a solid foundation. Beyond all the design meetings and system writeups, our designers have created more than a dozen additional scenarios that exercise the editor, the AI, the interface, the combat systems, and our skill as players. And they did it without the use of our extensive trigger system which is just now being implemented. It’s sort of a spiritual successor to the trigger system we used on Crimson: Steam Pirates and a very powerful, flexible tool for our designers (and with some time and patience, you too).