Sea of Stars characters walking over tree

Retro RPG Sea of Stars Pushed Into 2023


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Peter is a semi-professional writer with 5+ years of experience within the games media space. Having been a general contributor, staff writer, and associate editor, Peter has published over 4,000 articles and long-form interviews with game developers for several major games outlets. Additionally, Peter has experience with capturing game footage, editing reviews, and even live streaming.

The retro-inspired RPG Sea of Stars, from The Messenger developer Sabotage Studio, has been delayed into 2023. The news broke earlier this week with a message on Twitter that asked for understanding while promising a demo for this year.

Table Of Contents

    Stars in the Sky

    Announced a few years back with a Kickstarter campaign, Sea of Stars was revealed to be a brand new story in the universe of The Messenger, a break-out indie hit from 2018 that was heavily inspired by Ninja Gaiden. Set to be a prequel to the main plot of The Messenger, developer Sabotage Studio asked for a meager CA$ 133,000 and was able to raise CA$ 1,628,126. With an expected release date of 2022, things had been progressing nicely and it looked like Sea of Stars would make its initial promise.

    For an undisclosed reason, the game has now been delayed. On Twitter, the studio wrote, “Keeping in mind our two main priorities -quality of life for our team and quality of the finished game- we can now confirm that Sea of Stars will be released in 2023.”

    Patience is a Virtue

    Unlike a few other stories this past week, fans of Sea of Stars were understanding of Sabotage’s message. Instead of responding with vitriol or malice, most people accepted the delay and wished Sabotage the best. With high-profile disasters such as Cyberpunk 2077 bringing to light how awful crunch can be on a team and the final game, it appears as if certain communities are more understanding when it comes to setbacks.

    With the back half of 2022 looking to have some solid games be released, there are certainly enough choices to go around. Sea of Stars would have been a nice way to cap off the year, but it will still be just as nice releasing in 2023.