At the beginning of the year we listed Tengami, a slow-paced, visually stunning adventure that unfolds in the pages of a virtual pop-up book, as one of the best PC games of 2014. "Best" in this case was based on expectations rather than experience, since it (along with several others in the list) hadn't actually been released. The mobile version came out in February, however, and it was magical, and so I've really been looking forward to the PC edition. But developer Nyamyam announced today that I'm going to have to wait a little longer.
In an unusual twist for a delayed game, Steam preorders will still be fulfilled within the next few days, and if you want to buy it now, you can drop the studio a line and they'll happily take your money. That's because the game is actually finished—but for pragmatic reasons, it won't be put out to the public until January 15, 2015.
"With Christmas coming up, a lot of big titles are being released and most of the big publishers are fighting over the ‘big Christmas business’. This also means that the gaming press is very busy with covering these big releases," Nyamyam's Jennifer Schneidereit wrote in a pleasantly frank blog post. "We worry releasing Tengami into this situation, will result in greatly decreased attention by press and players alike. Visibility is nowadays one of the key factors for a game’s success on any platform and frankly we don’t think that we will be able to create enough awareness for the game’s launch during the ‘festive’ season."
It's a fair take on the situation: Tengami, as far as I know, did quite well for itself on mobile platforms, but the PC milieu is much more crowded, and it's easy for non-triple-A releases to get buried at this time of year. So even though it may be disappointing, holding it back is probably a good idea.
