Replaced, a 2.5D pixel art platformer that was originally set for release in 2022 and then delayed into 2023 and again into 2024, has now been delayed to 2025. It’s the second Xbox exclusive to be pushed this month.
The developers at Sad Cat Studios posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, saying that they had to push Replaced to next year because the “initial release date was optimistic. We apologize for that.”
“We need more time to ensure we meet the high standards we’ve set for ourselves and to meet the expectations of our fans,” the statement continued, capping it off with a tease that there will be some sort of announcement planned for later in the week. Replaced will also be available to play at Gamescom, a huge convention in Cologne, Germany, next week.
— REPLACED (@REPLACEDGame) August 13, 2024
The cyberpunk side-scroller, which has become hotly anticipated thanks to its “industry-leading pixel art,” as Digital Trends’ Tomas Franzese described it, was revealed in 2021, but had to be delayed from 2022 to 2023 due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It was delayed again from 2023 to 2024 due to development bottlenecks. Sat Cat Studios wrote in another X post that while production was progressing steadily, it needed more time to meet their high standards, specifically in terms of its art assets. “The main character in Replaced has more than 500 meticulously hand-painted animations made just for platforming,” the post read. “We want to deliver every aspect of the game to the same high standard, and that requires additional time and effort.”
This is the second Xbox exclusive to be delayed to next year in the past two weeks. Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming RPG Avowed was delayed to February 18, 2025, “to give players’ backlogs some breathing room,” according to Xbox.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”