Finding Paradise, the sequel to the 2011 tear-jerker To the Moon, has been delayed. It was originally expected to be ready for release this summer, but developer Kan Gao announced this week that he's had to push it back to the end of the year.
"The delay was largely due to a couple of aspects: One is that a lot happened in my personal life in the past year or so, and given how involved I am with the project, there was definitely an effect there. Although some of that might actually have shaped the game for the better in hindsight, as my games kind of evolve with me," Gao explained in an email. "The other would be that the original projections were based more on To the Moon's production value, but I'm finding that things with Finding Paradise have been a lot more meticulous. There's a lot more effort to add to the characters' liveliness via graphical details and animations, as well as to the world."
Interestingly, he acknowledged that the 2014 animated short A Bird Story "wasn't particularly well received"—we gave it a 40/100 in our review—but said that it really helped improve his ability to convey ideas visually. "It felt kind of like training with my hands tied; and now that I could transfer what I learned into a full-fledged game akin to To the Moon, I'm trying to bring the best of both worlds to Finding Paradise," Gao said.
"It'll be the players who judge how it shapes up. To me, though, it's a story that I've been wanting to tell for quite a while," he continued. "And as with To the Moon, it's something that's quite personal to me, and I hope there will be others out there who would be able to relate to it in their own ways as well."
A solid release date hasn't been set, but Gao said that To the Moon was released on November 1, and he's thinking that Finding Paradise will show up "somewhere near that time frame as well." There's also a new Finding Paradise website up at freebirdgames.com.
