Dex Post-funding Kickstarter Update #38: No GOG For You

If you contributed to the crowd-funding campaign for Dreadlocks' 2D cyberpunk RPG Dex and were sitting tight until the DRM-free GOG version was available, you may have to wait indefinitely as the team has announced by way of Update #38 that CD Projekt has refused to release their game due to "mixed reviews". And while a Metacritic score of 64 doesn't make the cut, there's still plenty to look forward to:

Current Development

We have now several lines of work in progress. For the first couple of weeks after launch, we concentrated mainly on fixing the bugs, while our artists worked on the physical rewards. Right now, we are in the middle of porting Dex from Unity 4 to Unity 5, which gives us a few new possibilities and allows for easier ports to consoles and other platforms. The majority of the work is basically done, but we still need some time for testing and optimizing. Some of the benefits of this work will include manual saves (yes, we heard your feedback!), improved user interface, better controls, better localization support (right now everything needs to be manually added into the game, so it is not very smooth in terms of fan localizations, etc.), improved AI, and numerous minor fixes all around.

It is still early for us to be absolutely specific about the timing of the next release, but if all goes nicely you can expect a more detailed update a couple of weeks from now.

OUYA and Wii U

Our current plan is to have the OUYA version ready before Gamescom 2015, which is in late July or early August. We'll be able to say more about this in the next update a few weeks from now. The Wii U version will take more time, but the porting to Unity 5 should make a number of things easier for us. We can't estimate a date for Wii U version yet but we hope to be able to do so in a couple of weeks. So far we haven't encountered any really major issues, so that's good!

Game Extension/Free DLC

As we promised earlier, one of the lines of our current development is the Free DLC (Game Extension Stretch goals). While our programmers are working on the Unity 5 porting and the technical issues and improvements mentioned above, our artists are creating and animating the unique armor sets. They look really cool and we believe that once they are all implemented, they will make a nice addition to the game. There'll be some other new additions in the Game Extension/Free DLC, but for now we'll keep them a secret, just to build a little anticipation.

GOG Version

Sadly, the GOG team has refused to release Dex on GOG, claiming mixed reviews as one of the main reasons. We are not giving up yet and we intend to approach them again once we finish the Unity 5 port and most/all of the features planned for the Game Extension (think of it as (Dex the Director's Cut)). If you are still waiting for the GOG version, we might suggest playing the Humble Store (DRM-free) version instead, as we cannot guarantee that things will end positively with GOG but we will definitely try, because we believe Dex would be a great fit for GOG's portfolio! If you want to support this pursuit, please vote for Dex on the GOG wish-list.

Thanks for the tip, Thomas.