Annapurna confirms delays for Twelve Minutes, The Artful Escape, and Last Stop
Now due in 2021.
Annapurna Interactive, the unnervingly reliable publisher behind the likes of Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and What Remains of Edith Finch, has confirmed that three of its upcoming titles - Twelve Minutes, The Artful Escape, and Last Stop - will no longer release this year as originally planned, and are now scheduled to launch in 2021.
Twelve Minutes is the darkly atmospheric work of Luis Antonio (who made the art for The Witness) and tells the story of a man who finds himself trapped in a time loop following a violent home invasion, with players attempting to change the outcome of events. The PC and Xbox game also has an all-star cast including Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, and James McAvoy.
As for The Artful Escape, it's a surreal rock opera platform adventure that charts the escapades of teenage guitar prodigy Francis Vendetti as he embarks on a cosmic journey to the psychedelic world of Glimmerdim in order to craft his stage persona. Music, unsurprisingly, plays a big part in the experience, and it's heading to Xbox One, PC, and Apple Arcade.
Rounding out the list of delayed games is Last Stop, a supernatural "anthology drama" from Virginia developer Variable State. We've not seen much of this three-stories-in-one adventure since its unveiling last year, but it's described as a game about "secret lives, the ties that bind, and how magic can be found in the mundane". So far, it's confirmed for Xbox and Steam.
All three games have had a broad "2020" launch window for some time now, but as Annapurna Interactive points out in its delay announcement on Twitter, "it's almost December and the end of the year". As such, the publisher says it's now "looking at 2021" for release, but notes that after a busy year of development, "it's pretty much polishing at this point".
The news is undoubtedly a little disappointing, though entirely understandable given the state of things, but hopefully we won't need to wait too long for Annapurna Interactive's incredibly promising trio of titles to arrive once 2021 gets underway.