Little Devil Inside caught my eye as soon as I saw it in action in May last year. The game’s colourful, polygonal art style reminds me of my favourite Zelda title, The Wind Waker, if Wind Waker was given steampunk weapons and more beheadings in its combat. But, following a lack of major updates and a significant delay, backers won’t be able to play Little Devil Inside until 2018. I’m disappointed, but not surprised.
The gameplay revolves around taking quests to hunt monsters outside of the town, Little Devil Inside’s main hub area. Your character is hired by a Professor to investigate the outside world. After joining his faculty, the Professor sends you on missions to bring back artifacts and information for study. The game promises to offer deep exploration, survival and action RPG elements. It does look fantastic in motion.
The problem is, the game was supposed to be released by now. Last month, in fact. The team at Neostream have finally announced a new, more realistic set of milestones, including appearances at GDC in March next year and E3 in June. The full world build is set to be completed by the end of 2017, with an early access release slated for 2018.
It’s safe to say some backers aren’t happy with the delay. Neostream haven’t been the chattiest of developers, and on Kickstarter, fan interaction is crucial. But a one-year development time was hugely optimistic to begin with, and the update isn’t all bad news.
Neostream have acquired additional funding for development. They can’t disclose how much they’ve managed to acquire, but it’s enough to double Neostream to a team of 12. The extra funding should allow the team to sink a larger amount of time into making Little Devil Inside bigger and better. They’re also still working on importing all the game’s assets into Unreal Engine 4.
Neostream haven’t necessarily done anything wrong with Little Devil Inside’s development. More frequent updates wouldn’t have gone amiss, but the game isn’t in development hell. It just had an ambitious, overly optimistic release schedule.
