Despite several delays under its belt, Golem, a unique looking VR adventure title headed to PSVR, is on track to launch in 2018, affirms developer Highwire Games.
Golem was originally due to launch on the previously delayed release date of March 16th, but a week prior developer Highwire Games announced an indefinite delay to ensure the studio could “release a polished VR experience that we are proud of,” and at the time said they “don’t expect the delay to be very long.” Yet, with no update from the company in the intervening six months, some folks over at the PSVR Subreddit feared the worst—that the game may have been canceled—upon spotting that the ‘Golem’ trademark held by Highwire Games had recently expired.
We reached out to Highwire Games to learn what we could, and are happy to report that Golem is still alive and well. A spokesperson for the studio told Road to VR that the game is still on track for a 2018 release date. The lapsed trademark, which was first filed in 2015, was just due to a missed renewal deadline.
The spokesperson further called Golem’s progress “slow and steady,” and said that the game’s content is largely complete, and that current work on the title is “almost entirely optimization.” Level streaming—seamlessly loading parts of the game’s large environments without interruption—was fingered as the primary challenge.
Characterizing the game’s structural design, the spokesperson remarked that Golem is “closest to [something like] Dark Souls in terms of structure. Not wide open terrain or totally free navigation, but a single large interconnected environment to explore.”
Golem, which will launch as a PSVR exclusive, has been anticipated since its announcement way back in 2015—nearly a year before PlayStation VR launched—not only because it looks like a unique VR game that makes great use of scale, but also because the studio behind the game was founded by a handful of game development veterans who helped define the iconic Halo series during their time at Bungie.