If you are a fan of Supreme Commander you will know about Sanctuary: Shattered Sun. For the uninitiated, its the game that Chris Taylor (the creator of both Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander) called “the spiritual successor to the games we created at Gas Powered Games.” If you want to know more about Sanctuary, check out our article here:
Up to speed? Good. Sanctuary has been in-development for a few years now and we are close – oh so close – to a release. About this time last year, the two project leads sat down for an interview with me and we discussed the aftermath of PAX AUS 2023 and the future roadmap for Sanctuary. You can read the entire interview here, but I want to pick something out and talk about it a little bit. This is the quote:
We don’t want to launch too soon but we don’t want to leave it too late either. You want to make sure you have enough time from when the Kickstarter happens to that you can spend that money on the game. We are looking at Q1 or Q2 2024 for Kickstarter. Before July, before the summer. Don’t hold us to that as things might change but that is what we are looking at right now.
I appreciate that wasn’t a promise. “Don’t hold us to that as things might change” is far from a promise to launch the Kickstarter on a certain date, but the question on the lips of the growing legion of fans is, “Where TF is the Kickstarter?” Especially when “before July 2024” was mentioned. Sanctuary has a significant following. There are 11,000 members on the Discord server, and back in July the game clicked 100,000 wishlists on Steam:
For an indie game, still a while away from release, with no demo (the game is pre-alpha – and it’s okay to be jealous of me as I have access), this much interest is just incredible.
But, in the immortal words of Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility.” The development team have a great responsibility to release a polished product which is going to satisfy the 100k people who have added it to their wishlist, and attract a new generation of gamers who have never played Supreme Commander. I admit I am biased. Sanctuary was the game that got me back into building websites last year. I started the community forum at shatteredsunrts.com and I’m involved with the community. I want Sanctuary to be successful. I expect Sanctuary to be successful.
I am confident it will be.
That Kickstarter, then?
Some comments have been fairly negative. I’ve seen, “if it ever comes out” bandied about on the Steam community page and on some YouTube videos. The general consensus is that no news is bad news. This flies in the face of the traditional proverb, “no news is good news.”
And no news, in this case is good news. The lack of a Kickstarter means that Enhearten Media, the company behind the game, have enough investors on board to not need to resort to crowdfunding just yet. They have Kickstarter in their arsenal and can deploy it when its needed. Right now is isn’t needed and that’s a really good thing.
Those waiting for the game to be released should take the lack of a Kickstarter as a good sign. Development has not paused, or stalled, or put on hold. Development of the game continues apace. The game will go to Kickstarter at some point. As dev nine2 said, “The longer you leave it the better it looks and the more people are likely to invest because they believe in you more.”
When the Kickstarter does eventually launch it will feature mini-campaign to give people a taste of what to expect in the final game. When it launches you’re looking at six months to a year before Sanctuary Shattered Sun goes to Early Access on Steam, and then another six months to a year before release. They developers are still insisting that a 2025 release is possible, but I’ve done that math is it’s entirely possible that Sanctuary will slide into 2026. Only time, and the eventual release of the Kickstarter campaign, will tell.
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