Hand-painted in a distinctive art style that fits the game’s mood, fully voiced and featuring an eerie original soundtrack, Saint Kotar draws inspiration from p&c classics like Broken Sword, Gabriel Knight and Black Mirror, along with the works from horror fiction writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.

Invited to attend an exhibition of rare medieval art, the protagonists travel to Sveti Kotar at the end of October 2006. The welcoming is cold, as they find themselves dragged abruptly into a macabre series of murders, allegedly related to devil worship and witchcraft. These dreadful acts compel the protagonists to follow the shadow of something deeply hidden behind the town’s dark past.

Saint Kotar’s playable demo release and Kickstarter campaign launch have been rescheduled for Spring 2018. As announced back in November, the playable demo release and Kickstarter campaign launch were both scheduled for April 10. It is now with great sadness that we need to announce we were forced to delay the campaign and, subsequently, the demo for Spring 2018.

Although being a very common and normal thing in game development, our delay isn’t related to the project’s production itself. Instead, it is a consequence of an administrative roadblock related to Kickstarter. We’re very close to solve the last remaining problem, so the release/launch date is not that far away!

The official and final name for the playable demo is Saint Kotar: The Yellow Mask. A playable sneak peek of the demo will be available at the Reboot Develop conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from April 19 to April 21. The “sneak peek” means it will be literally just that, as we want to keep the full experience and gameplay reserved for the official release.

For most of us, fear to fail is something that we’ve adopted very early in our lives. Failure meant that we are not good enough, that we didn’t work or prepare, or that we didn’t care. Consequently, that emotional reaction of shame implanted itself so deeply in our brains that we reject failure, all the time at all costs. I could continue writing philosophical sentences forever, but let’s face it: failure feels embarrassing and it hurts.

Nothing catastrophic is happening with the studio, neither we’re abandoning the Saint Kotar project - on the contrary! But we did fail, we failed you. As announced back in November, the playable demo release and Kickstarter campaign launch were both scheduled for April 10. It is now with great sadness that I need to announce we are forced to delay the campaign and, subsequently, the demo for Spring 2018. Spring is already upon us, which means they’ll launch either in May or before mid-June. That’s pretty close and you’d might ask yourself why we feel ashamed then. Well, it hurts to invest so much time and passion, have everything under control and then see your plans slip through your fingers because of an administrative roadblock. There’s a saying that a project without problems is doomed in the long run. In other words, problems are a common thing in development of creative projects. But, when your plans get stuck and delayed because of administrative problems - that hurts big time. As mentioned before, we’ve decided to crowdfund Saint Kotar on Kickstarter because we consider it the best platform for our project. Of course, we were aware from the very beginning that Kickstarter doesn’t support Croatia, and we have found a solution to this problem. But administrative work takes time, sometimes beyond any reasonable length. As a consequence, we cannot launch the Kickstarter campaign in April as planned, and as much as we'd want to release the demo for you right now, we believe the excitement would wear off long before our campaign can launch - and we’ll need every bit of support we can get at that moment.

The encountered administrative roadblock has a positive side too. It’s giving us extra time to further improve, add extra content and polish The Yellow Mask - the official and final name for the playable demo of Saint Kotar. The Yellow Mask will be free, of course, and available on Steam and as a DRM-free download as well. We'll also keep our promise and give to our newsletter subscribers an exclusive chance to be among the first to play the beta version of the demo, a few weeks before the official release date - and our Kickstarter campaign! So stay tuned, and if you haven’t subscribed to our newsletter yet, now is the time to do it as the release date is not that far away!

And, if you really can’t wait for The Yellow Mask to appear officially online, we have a workaround that might relief the wait: a playable sneak peek of the game will be available at the Reboot Develop conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from April 19 to April 21. The “sneak peek” means it will be literally just that, as we want to keep the full experience and gameplay reserved for the official release. But this will be the very first time we'll show Saint Kotarin public and we're really excited! So, if you're attending the event feel free to drop by our expo booth. We'd be more than happy to meet you and chat about the game. And, to keep our community in the loop, we’ll share photos and broadcast live from the event on our official channels!

Last but not least, in March we’ve held auditions for voice actors. We were astonished by the numbers of applications - a total of almost 250 candidates! The auditions were intended only for the roles needed for the playable demo, but we’ve already found voice actors for all characters in the full game. The amount of talent interested in participating in Saint Kotar is just amazing and we're both glad and humbled! Now all we need is a successful Kickstarter campaign to make the complete game a reality…

I want to conclude this post reflecting back again on the essence of failure. I believe all human beings should think about failure differently. Many mental coaches say that mistakes should be regarded as a necessary evil in order to grow. That’s not true. Mistakes are not evil at all, they are inevitable parts of our journeys and the only way to make dreams come true. We made a mistake to define the launch date too early, before solving all administrative roadblocks first. Now that we’re very close to solve the last one remaining, we’re journeying with full force towards our dreams, dreams filled with yellow masks and a place called Sveti Kotar…