We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

The Surge release date estimate is early next year, currently still in pre-alpha

The Surge release date

Sci-fi RPG The Surge, despite looking rather lovely both in trailers and at the press event last week, won’t be hitting for around another 12 months. Speaking to Jan Klose, CEO of developers Deck 13, we asked what state the game was in, how development was going and when we’d get to put our hands on it proper.

Don’t forget to check out Fraser’s preview of The Surge for more info on how it plays.

“We’re in a pre-alpha stage” explains Klose “We are sketching out all the levels right now, we have some levels completely in place. We can play through a lot of the game already.”

You might be thinking how is it still pre-alpha if they can play through the game, and it comes down to the way they’re developing it:

“We’re doing it layer by layer so we integrate everything into every moment in the game. So we need the story, we need the progression path, we need the dramatic part in there. We’re revisiting a lot of our design over and over again to add the next layer and the next to really make it all fit together, becoming one solid thing.”

This kind of iteration is more common than you might think, and it works. They’ll keep going back and changing things as new systems are implemented and improved upon. With a year to go, they’ve plenty of time to polish everything up, and that 12 months is hardly set in stone – “early next year” could be as late as April, and slippages aren’t unheard of.