Hey Patrons,
Unfortunately we have to push back the release date of Mahou Arms by three months, from April 27th to July 27th.
The game is 99.9% done and we are extremely pleased with the progress that has been made lately. Finally being able to play the game from start to end is very satisfying and fun, but it has made it obvious where the game still has room to improve.
To release the game now would be putting out a "good" game, but there are so many small things that could be improved in three months to turn it from "good" to "great". To not put in the extra time it deserves would be a disservice to all the hard work that got us here.
For example, we implemented a leveling and skill points progression system. Your character now becomes stronger as you play and unlock new abilities. It's surprising how good it feels to get rewarded as you gain experience, but it's also skewed the balance of the game. The early game is now too hard (since you begin the game weaker) and certain enemies feel unbalanced depending on when they show up. Rebalancing the game will take some time.
There are also a number of uncommon, but game-breaking bugs that need fixing. They don't happen all the time, but in a single-player game a bug that blocks your progress can easily ruin the experience. We want to make sure these are all fixed before release. Unfortunately, fixing these bugs has been more time-consuming than expected and there are still more to deal with.
There are also parts of 1.0 that we considered optional at the time of our release date announcement, but now consider important enough to wait for, like voice acting, extra cutscenes, and more enemies. We also have something special in the works that needs a little more time. It's not gameplay related, but it's something fun that we're really hoping to share before the game comes out.
We know this announcement is disappointing and that some of you may have made plans to enjoy the game around the original release date. We sincerely apologize. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but with a single-player game like Mahou Arms, the first playthrough is important to get right. We can't fix your first experience later on with a patch, so we want it to be great. That being said, the July 27th date is firm this time. We're quite confident we'll get everything we want finished before then, but if not then it will have to be patched in later. You've all waited long enough.
On that note, there will be a final status update within the next 2 weeks where we will show off some of the new parts of the game that we've been working on. If you can't play it yet, you can at least see what we've been doing for the past few months.
Also, in light of the release date change, early access bonuses will be extended to July 27th.
Patreon Wind Down Plan
In addition, we would like to announce the finalized wind down plan for Patreon. May will be the final month with monthly art rewards, after that we will focus 100% on the game for the final 2 months. After May 2026, the Patreon will run for 14 months in "crunch mode", which will grant extra tokens to all tiers for unlocking past rewards, but there will be no new monthly art. For those of you with a lot of tokens and no more rewards to unlock, we will be adding more stuff to unlock in the future, though we have not figured out what these will be yet.
In August 2027, the Patreon will be paused indefinitely. Patreon crowdfunding was always a means for us to fund Mahou Arms, so it will no longer be needed once the game is finished. In the future, we might unpause the Patreon if we have another project that we feel could benefit from crowdfunding. We will give lots of warning before doing this (and details on the project).
Ending Thoughts
We plan to support Mahou Arms with content updates (and bugfixes) post-1.0, in case that wasn't clear. More information about future content updates will be announced at a later date.
We sincerely thank you for your support all this time. If you have questions, feel free to ping us on Discord, though we might reply a little slower than usual since we'll be crunching on the game until release.
-softmode aka paperbag