Fullbright overhauls Tacoma, pushes launch back to 2017

By Danny Cowan March 16, 2016

fullbright delays tacoma to 2017 tacomadelay header — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gone Home developer Fullbright announced that its next project, the sci-fi exploration game Tacoma, has been pushed back to 2017 as the studio aims to “reexamine and rework a number of the core assumptions we’d held about the game.”

Tacoma was originally slated to launch in “mid-to-late 2016,” giving the team at Fullbright a significant amount of extra time to overhaul the core experience prior to its final public release.

Tacoma is a first-person adventure game set in deep space aboard the Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma. Gameplay focuses on exploration of abandoned environments and the relationships that develop between its cast of starring characters.

“We’ve made some decisions about where the game was at and how much time and attention we believe it deserves, and have decided to give it the extra time it needs,” Fullbright announced today. “As you can tell from this decision being made a full year before we plan to launch, this isn’t a last minute ‘we just need a little more time!’ thing, but more of a ‘we need to be responsible about giving the game more space to live up to its potential’ kind of thing.”

Fullbright notes that its decision to delay the game arrives after multiple sources voiced concerns with the feasibility of the game’s implementation of concepts like gravity and augmented reality.

“After we did our big unveiling last summer we sent out a playtest build to a bunch of fellow developers we trust, took a long hard look at their feedback and our own feelings on where we were at, and decided to reexamine and rework a number of the core assumptions we’d held about the game,” Fullbright explains.

The studio is also focusing on the player’s role in Tacoma‘s narrative, specifically in regards to creating meaningful interaction with the game’s environments. Fullbright hopes to create a narrative in which players connect with the game “in a fundamentally different way than anything we’ve worked on before,” but did not divulge any further details regarding the game’s plot or themes.

Tacoma is now set to launch in the spring of 2017 for the Xbox One and PC platforms.

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