Some train wrecks never know when to stop smoldering. You’ll recall that at the top of 2023, Soulbound Studio’s Jeromy Walsh vowed that the small team was going 100% on the development of its two titles — Kingdoms of Elyria and Chronicles of Elyria — with a promise to ship a reduced-focus Kingdoms by the end of this year.
So guess what’s now not happening? Yeah.
“While pushing for a release this year was already looking unlikely, I have come to recognize that rushing the launch wouldn’t be in the best interest of the players or the studio,” Walsh said in a new dev blog, citing Baldur’s Gate 3 as an inspiration for the delay (something to do with polish).
The decision to jettison the “quick release” of Soulbound’s first Elyria game in favor of an extended alpha also comes from a new deal between Soulbound and an unnamed mobile MMO company to license the former’s engine. According to Walsh, this deal will provide financial freedom to pursue development at a less breakneck pace. What wasn’t mentioned, however, was using any of those new funds to refund long-suffering backers.
So what’s next? “While I can’t provide an exact timeline for how long the Alpha and Beta tests will last, I’m still planning to launch the Alpha test by the end of the year.”
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