Don Carlo
Member
Source is this site which held an interview with Soulframe:
Q: At the end of the video, you mentioned that there will be a playable demo this year. Could you tell us more about this?
A: Yes, there is, but the time is not decided yet. We are preparing a 30-minute demo open to a certain group of people invited from our social media. Testing is really important to collect feedback and generate a community of core players.
Q: Is the anime part just for this video, or do you want to implement more 2D animation into the actual game to make it more stylish?
A: It’s an interesting idea. You know, Asian studios are good at making 2D animations. Many of our friends’ works feature great anime-style graphics, although we want to make the main part of the game realistic, dark, and deep, as you saw in last year’s PV and this year’s footage. But there may be some possibility of using 2D animation to illustrate special scenes, such as the memory world, phantom illusions, or other scenes different from reality. We are still figuring it out.
So the game may not be releasing this year as well. Damn. Hope that doesn't happen honestly. Was expecting it to drop later in 2024.Q: Normally, a game opened for public demo means a game is about to be released. Can I expect the game to be released within one year after this demo?
A: For many games, maybe, for us, no. Testing is alongside the whole development process of our game; it’s a part of development, not a marketing event. We don’t use demos to raise pre-orders but to polish the game in a real environment. It’s one of the several things we borrow from the mobile game developing experience. There are alpha, beta and pre-launch tests. I am not saying we would do the same, but I do love to have players get their hands on an early version of the game, and we polish the game further to the next test, from which players can see the progress.