Indie game Until Then (2024) will be releasing on June 25th, according to the game’s Steam page announcement. This definitive release date follows an announcement on May 2nd, where the studio announced a delay in shipping the game to ensure the best quality of the game would be present upon release.
The 2.5D pixel adventure game, developed by Philippines-based studio Polychroma Games and published by California based publisher Maximum Games (who has also published other games such as Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach (2021)), also has a free demo on their Steam page. Xbox controllers, according to the Steam page, are fully supported. The game is also slated to release in English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish (Spain).
Polychroma Games is an independent games studio composed of ten developers. Until Then was developed over the span of four years. Despite having only two games showcased on their official website, they seem to have developed a miscellany of other games such as Seen (2016), an interactive story through a chat-based interface. One of the main characters of Seen is also named Mark.
Tagged as “Adventure, Casual, and Indie”, Until Then follows protagonist Mark through fictional landscapes inspired by the Philippines. The trailer shows a wide amount of gameplay, from scrolling online chat rooms to cooking with friends. Despite the coziness of the game, the summary hints at a sense of supernatural:
A fateful meeting sets off a chain reaction, upending Mark’s life. People disappear and memories prove unreliable. Uncover a hidden truth with Mark and his friends in this narrative adventure and race to unravel the mystery before it’s too late.
The logo, formed into a butterfly-esque shape, as well as the summary of the game hints at the narrative following the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is a subsector of chaos theory in which it is believed that miniscule changes can snowball into larger changes in a future state.
In the same announcement page, the studio teases at “additional fun news regarding AAPI Heritage Month.”