Developer Supermassive Games has announced a delay for their new game, The Dark Pictures: Little Hope.The announcement comes via CEO of Supermassive Games, Pete Samuels. The studio has around 200 employees on staff at the moment, and that amount of people poses a health risk. It just isn’t a good idea to have that many people cooped up in an office every day right now.
The game was originally slated to drop in Summer 2020 as the second game in The Dark Pictures Anthology. The group of horror games that take the formula laid down by Until Dawn and expand it into other settings and stories. This new setting takes the timeline back to the 17th century and brings in some new scares. And hopefully the extra time in production offers a polished experience.
The delay comes as a result of workflow disruptions due to the shift to remote work. Most of the game industry made the shift after the breakout of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic across the globe. Supermassive stated that “Our priority, throughout, has been the safety of our team,” making it clear why they made the call to push the game back. And they’re not the only developer to make this call.
With the announcement, which can be seen via Tweet below, Supermassive made it clear why they made the change. In short, they want to deliver the best game possible. “We have now been successfully working from home for some time, with the entire team committed to delivering the best possible games. With that in mind it falls to me to make the unfortunate announcement that Little Hope will be delayed past the Summer release already announced, now targeting Fall 2020.”
The new game will follow after last year’s Man of Medan with a new story. The Dark Pictures: Little Hope will move away from the nautical themes of the first game in the series to a much more spooky tale about witches and 17th-century witchhunts. The sequel will feature Will Poulter of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch fame. The Dark Pictures: Little Hope is now planned for a Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC release in Fall 2020.
