The Command & Conquer veterans over at Petroglyph Games have been hard at work on their latest endeavor, Grey Goo. So hard, in fact, that they recently announced that the game is ready for a January 2015 release only months after Alpha testing.

The announcement was made over at the official forums, in which the developer said that a better-than-expected testing phase resulted in them getting all the information and feedback they needed to skip the initially planned Beta Testing phase.

Back in August, our plan was to start Alpha testing in order to get comprehensive feedback on the game, and then ramp up from there. What ended up happening is that our testing phases, including Closed Alpha, provided us with such valuable information on subjects like balance, stability, fun factor and more – that we were able to double down, start working on these things, and come up with a final road map that would take us straight to launch.

We know that many of you were hoping to be involved in a more full-blown Beta Testing phase. However, instead, we have been focused on using the data we received to improve the game so that we can get Grey Goo into your hands and onto your computer as soon as possible.

As a result, eager fans can expect the game to arrive on Steam on January 23 next year.

Petroglyph also posted the first of several Dev Diaries to chronicle the development of Grey Goo. In it, head honchos Mike Legg and Ted Morris share the experiences they had showing off the game to players at various trade shows and Closed Alpha testing. “We love hearing what you like, we even love more hearing what you don’t like,” Legg says on getting feedback from players.

Grey Goo is being touted as a classic RTS game that, true to Petroglyph’s C&C roots, features asymmetrical warfare across three diverse factions: Humans, Betas and Goo. Pre-release reception to the game so far has been good, and hopefully Grey Goo will present itself as the hit game Petroglyph needs.