Upcoming Persona-inspired tactics RPG Demonschool was recently delayed following the Hollow Knight: Silksong release date reveal, with developer Necrosoft Games dubbing the Metroidvania "the GTA of indie games" after postponing its own launch.
The delay didn't make all that much sense to fans, however, with Steam threads seeing users tell devs to "not delay" Demonschool as "your target audience is not Silksong players" – a sentiment that Necrosoft Games is all too aware of, as creative director Brandon Sheffield tells Aftermath in a new interview. Although the studio itself didn't initially want to delay its game, publisher Ysbryd Games thought it'd be the right move.
Sheffield explains that Ysbryd initially "had a discussion" with Necrosoft – the publisher "didn't just blindside" the team with the decision to delay. "We talked about it, and I was more in favor of staying, but I understand why they wanted to move."
Ysbryd's proposal to postpone all boiled down to capitalism, apparently. While Demonschool, as Sheffield puts it, "is an RPG with tactical battles," its differences with Silksong ultimately wouldn't matter.
That's because the market would… well, keep on market-ing. "The fact is, if you want to make decent money off your game," describes Sheffield, you have to be hyper-aware of other big releases like Silksong – especially "when you've been working on it [Demonschool] for a bunch of years." The dev continues: "I wish we didn't live in a capitalist society, but guess what? We do. So I've gotta make a certain amount of money, we're gonna run out of money, etc."
It makes sense – and it's not as though the Demonschool devs and publishers have been the only teams to make such a last-minute call in the wake of Silksong's hotly anticipated arrival. The Hollow Knight sequel is responsible for at least eight indie game delays so far, with titles like Baby Steps and CloverPit making the same difficult decision Ysbryd and Necrosoft felt they had to make to ensure Demonschool's success.
The video game market is brutal. As Sheffield concludes, "If you want to [make money], your best shot is at being the indie game of the week that is getting discussed. And if that doesn't happen, you'll lose out on all the curious people."
Searching for something else to be excited about? Browse through our roundup of the biggest new games coming this year and beyond for even more to look forward to.
