Strategy game from hell Solium Infernum gets a week delay to February 22nd

rockpapershotgun.com:

League Of Geeks's remake of cult strategy game Solium Infernum is having its release date pushed back by a week, the studio have announced. It will now launch on February 22nd, instead of its original date of February 14th - which is a damn shame, if you ask me, as nothing screams "romantic Valentine's night-in" like trying to backstab your other half in a bid to rule hell in Satan's absence. Alas, we'll just have to make do with the altogether more pedestrian date of a regular Thursday in February, as the team need just a bit of extra time to ensure it's "as polished as possible" before release.

It sounds like part of the reason for the delay is player feedback to Solium Infernum's recent multiplayer playtest weekend. In a Steam blog post from last month, League Of Geeks said that over 4000 players joined the fray over the weekend, playing upwards of 400 matches during its three-day test period that "unearthed a number of sneaky issues that are now getting our immediate attention ahead of launch."

In that same blog post, they describe three major takeaways from the playtest, relating to the tutorial, game stability and its performance.

"The MP Playtest Weekend showed that while the tutorial was great at getting the core of the game across, it seemed to break a little too easily for our liking," the post explains. "New folks getting held up by bugs so early in the game – before they even understood it – it’s not ideal!"

As a result, the team have "very aggressive targets for stability", and that "performance is a major priority", adding that players "can expect the game’s performance at launch to be leagues ahead of where it has been pre-release" when it comes out in full.

Bugs aside, myself and other members of the RPS Treehouse had a good time plotting and scheming against each other during an asynchronous multiplayer match ahead of the public playtest. There will be regular real-time multiplayer matches in the full game, too, as well as single-player