Caves of Qud is a science-fantasy roguelike developed by Freehold Games and published by Kitfox Games (of recent Dwarf Fortress fame). It has been under development for more than 15 years, spending a substantial portion of that time in Early Access. It has been continuously updated for this entire duration, receiving new features/bug fixes weekly and larger content updates a few times a year.
On April 10th, 2024, Freehold Games released a statement on Steam saying the game will leave early access and have its full 1.0 release in "late 2024," though they declined to provide an exact date.
Will it release fully this year? If Caves of Qud 1.0 releases before January 1st, 2025 and/or the game leaves early access by then, this market will resolve YES. Otherwise, it will resolve NO.
I will not trade in this market.
@Stralor Honestly, I agree. There have been a few missed dates in the past, but they really seem to be in the home stretch at this point. There's some room for uncertainty with regards to competing release dates but I believe in the team!
Full text of today's announcement:
Hey quddites,
As you probably know, we announced that Caves of Qud is finally releasing on Steam in its full glory later this year, after more than 15 years of work. But we haven’t talked a ton about how we get there and what’s left to do. So let’s get to it!
Very Soon: Spring Molting
We’ve decided to put out one last pre-release feature arc on our Journey to 1.0. This update is already in private beta, coming to Patreon supporters extremely soon, and then going to open beta in early May & releasing a few weeks after that. Here’s what’s included:
ALL NEW INTERFACE
The much-touted, transformational UI redesign is complete! Fully mouseable, fully gamepaddable, and gorgeous, but all carefully designed to maintain the essence of what makes Qud Qud.
a refresh of the starting town of Joppa, with as much texture & lived-in feeling as the rest of the world
hundreds of new sound and visual effects
40 new achievements
several new narrative touches, big bug fixes, & performance improvements
Gallery of the gorgeous new interface: https://imgur.com/a/slSlWbh
Summer & Fall 2024: Secrets til Launch!
We don’t want to spoil everything, but throughout summer and fall our central project will be to finish the main quest, and then add something to satisfy those who complete the entire narrative arc of Caves of Qud. We’ll add a more hands-on tutorial, too.
There’s also always tons of t’s to cross and i’s to dot when finishing a game: those last achievements, missing sounds and visual effects, more bugfixes, etc. All of these things will need to be built and tested behind closed doors, and they’ll keep us busy.
Late 2024: Launch
No, we don’t have a date, as it’s still awhile away and we don’t want to be up against the marketing budget of the next Assassin’s Cry: Breath of the Duty (trademark pending).
Part of the lead-up to launch is preparing the game architecture so we can properly handle big meaty updates post-launch. Which begs the question…
What About After Launch?
Yep! We’re going to keep updating the game! Major content and system releases. Of course how many exactly does depend on the financial realities of sales, but no matter what, we have two big DLCs planned already. We honestly don’t know yet if they’ll be paid purchases or free upgrades, but we’re thinking about the right approach.
We’re also considering how to best support other platforms. It’s not urgent or pressing, but we want to make sure we don’t code ourselves into a corner if/when the time comes to maintain several control schemes, hardware, etc.
Back to Work!
Those are all the updates for now. We’ll be posting a brand new trailer when we have Spring Molting up on Steam for you, but hopefully this clears up any lingering confusion about what comes next. Feel free to keep asking us questions on the Discord; we’re watching out for ‘em.
Live and drink,
Tanya, Alexandra, Jason, and Brian