Developer Recreate Games revealed a release date for drop-dead adorable co-op brawler Party Animals of September 20, 2023 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, and PC via Steam, as part of this year’s Summer Game Fest. It’s a launch update that arrives long after many would have expected thanks to some delays, but it’s welcome all the same. Although the Party Animals release date trailer doesn’t show much we haven’t already seen, it’s nice to finally see those critters whacking each other again.
Party Animals is a physics-based party game similar to Gang Beasts except, instead of customizable colorful avatars, players group up to control cute animals to engage in a variety of party modes. Recreate has explained that most major gameplay features were completed at the end of 2022, with the remainder of the time being used to squash bugs. The team said that they “sincerely apologize to fans for the prolonged wait,” explaining that they underestimated how long the bug-fixing phase would take. Moving forward, Recreate will provide more accurate and frequent updates to ensure fans never feel left out of the loop. But as far as Party Animals is concerned, the team promised the new release date is “precise and accurate.”
“This is our first time developing a game, and we underestimated the time it would take to fix the bugs,” producer and CEO Zixiong Luo said in a statement. “Additionally, some necessary approval processes took longer than we planned. We are just as eager as fans to see Party Animals launch, and we want to ensure it’s as polished and bug-free as possible first.”
Recreate went on to reveal a timeline of goals it hopes to meet before Party Animals launches in September. These include achieving partner platform approval, two server stress tests, and plans to bring an offline build to the ChinaJoy game exhibition this July.
Recreate clearly feels some guilt for the long wait, but most fans are probably just happy to have a date to look forward to after all this time. Until there is more to share, we can expect Party Animals to bring more than 100 cosmetics, crossplay, and more physics-based fun when it launches for $20 this fall.
