The game is a mix of cinematic platformer, pixel art, free-flow action combat and deep engaging dystopian story set in an alternative 1980’s. 

In and around Phoenix-City, Outlaws are rife in society. Everything is ruled by corruption and greed and the ones in power see humans and their organs as nothing more than just currency.

A Dark Alternative to the '80s We Know and Love

Most of us think of the '80s as a time of questionable hairstyles, boom boxes, glam rock and the birth of iconic games like Pac-Man and Tetris; a simpler time (albeit with more glitter). But what would the '80s have looked like in a past where the Trinity nuclear test in the '40s went wrong, causing a bomb to explode and resulting in national devastation? In Replaced, you get a glimpse into that world, where "Sweet Dreams" are for the sleeping and you "Stopped Believin'" a long time ago.

Bioengineering is Just the Beginning

Replaced is set almost 40 years after the nuclear explosion, in a walled fortress known as Phoenix-City ruled by the corrupt Phoenix Corp, a company founded on "matching" voluntary donors with greedy clients looking to upgrade their body parts. As time went on, they found that voluntary supply was falling behind demand and soon the richest clients could get their hands on anything while citizens started to go missing at an alarming rate. Vocal cords, legs, eyes, livers? No problem for the wealthy.

Originally planned for 2022, then delayed until 2023 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, developer Sad Cat Studios revealed that Replaced is now being pushed into 2024.

Here at Sad Cat we would like to address the release date shift of Replaced.

First of all we have to admit: game development is hard. It's also rewarding in its own right, but mostly it's just hard. We would like to pay our respects to every team who delivers their project – no matter how small or big it is. It's a tremendous achievement.

After Replaced initial announcement in 2021 and its follow-up trailer in 2022 we had this incredibly high bar of community's expectations. And at this point we knew that we can't afford to release a sub-par game. We truly want Replaced to be something special and memorable for everybody. This is our first game, and we want to make every aspect of it the best it can be.

We want to stress the fact that we do understand the game's scope, and we're very aware of traps of over promising and under delivering. As of today, development is progressing at a steady pace. The majority of systems are functional now and we are in a super-intense asset production phase, which is currently our main bottleneck. Our quality bar is incredibly high. To give an example of this, the main character in Replaced has more than 500 meticulously hand-painted animations made just for platforming (luckily, these are all finished now). We want to deliver every aspect of the game to the same high standard and that requires additional time and effort. Unfortunately this also means we have to delay the game’s release.

Once again, we would like to thank everybody who supports us (honestly: we could not stop reading your awesome comments after initial trailer release)! If you are interested in some of the behind the scenes of Replaced and learning more about the development process — feel free to join our Discord server, where we share our developer blogs, thoughts, cats and just have a nice chat with our community.

Sad Cat Studios Team

By the time people realized what was happening it was too late, Phoenix Corp was running the whole country, throwing the leftover and unwilling donors into the "disposal" areas outside the city walls to live as outlaws (the ones that survived that is). In the early days, the corporation started looking into AI and how this could help run their system more efficiently — and that's how the first prototypes for R.E.A.C.H, the main AI, were created.

Replaced is inspired by cyberpunk stylized films like Blade Runner 2049, Alien, and Upgrade. The pixel art style complements the '80s aesthetic while the free-flow action-inspired combat creates an exciting and immersive gaming experience with some unexpected twists in the storyline to keep players hooked.

Replaced is scheduled for release in 2024 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam/Epic Games Store), while also being available through Xbox/PC Game Pass.