Those of you who follow us on Twitter or kept up with some of our Steam posts may recall that we confirmed console ports for Dead Estate shortly after the release of the Goodnight update. While I can't announce a solid release date for those ports right now, I wanted to write provide some updates on them because we very recently hit a milestone in their development: we've pretty much wrapped up working on the Nintendo Switch port!
I anticipate some questions regarding this post, so I'll do my best to answer the big ones:
What platforms will Dead Estate be ported to?
In addition to the aforementioned Nintendo Switch port, we've also nearly finished working on a PlayStation 5 port and plan on releasing both versions simultaneously. We're in the process of getting an eventual Xbox port going as well, but I can't say for certain if it'll release at the same time as the other two ports or at a later date.
When will the ports release?
I'm not able to confirm a release date at this point, but I'd really like to get them out before the game's anniversary. The main purpose of this post is to reassure everybody that we haven't stopped working on the ports and to provide a small update about where exactly we're at with them. That said, as far as I can tell, the Switch and PS5 versions are both just about ready for release! There's still a little bit of work left to do beyond actually developing the ports, but I do think that if everything goes according to plan from here on out I'll be able to announce a firm release date in maybe a month or two! No promises, but here's hoping.
Why'd the ports take so long?
Too many reasons to explain all of 'em, but the biggest ones were these:
We didn't want to start working on ports until after all of the big content updates were complete and launched. It just would've been too time-consuming to test the game on all platforms as the updates released. This alone pushed most of our development work on the ports back from 2021 to late 2024 at the earliest.
We developed them in-house! Many indie game ports are outsourced to third parties who specifically handle this kind of thing, and while that's generally not a bad idea I'm a very hands-on type of person and I like to be involved in every aspect of development. I also happen to be the only programmer on the team, so I had my work cut out for me.
Working and communicating with some of these console manufacturers can be a long and arduous task in its own right. I won't get into detail here and I deeply appreciate the effort of everyone who was able to lend us a hand during the development of these ports, but boy was there a lot of frustration and waiting.
Development of the ports coincided with us entering production on a new project! I mentioned this briefly in our fourth anniversary Steam post, but we've been hard at work on our second "big" game since last year. No, it's not Dead Estate 2, but I think it'll still be of interest to fans who are interested in the world of Dead Estate. More on that eventually!
That's about all the information I can provide right about now. We're nearly there; the vast, vast majority of the work on these things is finally out of the way. Again, I hope I'll be able to make a more solid announcement in the next few months, but rest assured knowing that we're dead set on getting these ports out the door.
-Jack (Milkbar Lads)
