Upcoming action-adventure game Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened has been delayed by a few weeks due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
As announced via the game’s official Twitter account, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened has been delayed from its original February – early March release window, and is now expected to release in late March – April 2023. According to Frogwares, the game’s developer, work on the game has “always been challenging” due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, however, “the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.”
Despite our best efforts to meet our February / early March release window, near-daily power outages and missile attacks have forced us to replan everything. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.February 16, 2023
Alongside an update provided on the game’s Steam page (opens in new tab), Frogwares also released a video that explains why the team felt the need to delay Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, as well as shows how it’s getting ready for release, and even a little gameplay footage. In the video, members of the development team show the reality of making games in Ukraine right now. Due to things like blackouts, tasks that should take a few hours to implement in the game are taking days, so a few extra weeks are needed to compensate for this.
“We’ve been trying really hard to make our planned release window, but the near-daily interruptions of electricity, on top of the missile attacks that come every 10 days or so, meant we had to replan everything,” Frogwares explains. “It also means the game itself has been impacted too, not just the schedule. But we’ll do our best and push on as much as we can. Once we feel we are maybe a month away from release, we’ll be able to announce our exact release date.”
Thankfully, it seems fans of the upcoming game have been completely understanding of the circumstances, with several replying to the developer’s tweet telling the team to take as long as they need on the game and to stay safe. Which is pretty heart-warming to see.
Wondering what this game is all about? Take a look at Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened’s first gameplay trailer.