We got our first look at HEVN back in February by way of a pair of teasers that hinted at something very sinister happening on the isolated planet of Naic. Developer Miga said the tale of investigation into controversial off-world mining set in humanity's dark, ugly future is inspired by games like Deus Ex and System Shock, which is never a bad place to start, and Joe seemed suitably impressed by the two-hour demo that was released last month.
That's the good news. The bad is that the release, which had been scheduled for July 19, has been pushed back so the developers can "address feedback and improve the game, ensuring the final release is as good as it possibly can be."
"For a small team like ours, spending heavily on QA teams is unfortunately out of our budget, which is one of the reasons why getting a demo in front of players was so important to us," co-creator Mat Mathews said. "The Steam community has been exceptional in helping us to track bugs, and both players and the media have helped us to think more about the way we're pacing and structuring the game, and how players interact with it."
Co-creator Larry Johnson said that the studio will "iterate on the demo over the coming weeks and months, to keep a public log of what we're working on. It's never good to delay games but we want to share improvements with our players as we go."
A new release date hasn't been locked down—"later in the year" is as precise as it gets right now—and that sort of open-endedness always leaves me a bit nervous. But better a delayed game than a bad one, especially when it looks as promising as Hevn. If you haven't tried it yet, the demo remains available on Steam and Itch.io.
