Steam Next Fest hit that's like GTA but you're a cop instead of a robber has been delayed to 2025 to deliver "the game we believe you deserve"

The Precinct is an '80s police sandbox where you play as a cop putting away bad guys, and it's been delayed into 2025 to ensure developer Fallen Tree Games can make it "the game we believe you deserve."

The devs made the announcement on Steam. They explain "we are a core team of just 5 people, so we do not have the same resources as the large triple A studios that make similar sandbox-style games."

Despite the small size of the team, The Precinct has impressed a lot of people already. Its demo shot to second place on Steam Next Fest's 'Trending Upcoming' tab during the week where we lost all our time to the vast selection of cool trials on offer.

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To ensure fans of the demo aren't disappointed by the full release, "We have been working tirelessly at the moment to add polish to the final game and implement bug fixes so that we could try to hit our 2024 release," the devs say. Unfortunately, "Even with all 5 of us working as hard and as fast as we can, we do not believe we will be able to deliver the game we want to by the end of this year. In short, the game we could deliver this year is not the game we believe you deserve."

And so, they've made the tough, but probably smart, decision to delay the game into 2025. There's no exact release date yet, but "we’ll let you know as soon as we have a new date confirmed", they assure us.

As an open-world game about crime, it's been compared to GTA a lot, but it's really the exact opposite since you play as the cops, not the robbers, and it's now going to be coming out the same year as the highly anticipated GTA 6.

While I completely understand the comparisons given the criminal theme of The Precinct, I think it looks different enough to stand apart from GTA. I love the grimey aesthetic of Averno City – it doesn't make being a cop look glamorous, but dangerous and dirty. It also has a not-quite-isometric POV, with a third-person view keeping distance from the protagonist so you can see the rooftops as you patrol the city's dark alleys.

While you're here, you should check out other upcoming indie games.

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I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.