Lightyear Frontier receives a delay from original spring 2023 window
In another delay in a string of them over the last couple of weeks, it turns out that space farming simulator 'Lightyear Frontier' will not be coming to Xbox in early access this spring as it was originally announced to be. The game was shown off last year as an unlikely merging of the sci-fi and farming genres where you create your own colony with the help of your mech. Taking influence from games like Slime Rancher, Lightyear Frontier looked to be a charming time sink in its reveal trailer.
The reason for the delay wasn't made clear by developers FRAME BREAK, but it’s likely that the usual suspects are at work: more time needed to polish bugs, new ideas being implemented and, of course, wanting to avoid the bad press behind an unfinished project-even if it was planned to be launching in early access. As a result of the delay, the game has changed its planned release date on Steam to 'Coming soon' rather than a 'Spring 2023' release window. No other window has been set just yet (likely to avoid another inevitable disappointing delay) but the developers have promised to announce one 'as soon as possible'.
This announcement comes after the delays of quite a few games recently including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and Starfield. Ever since the catastrophic launch of Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020, developers are keen to avoid being known as the next unfinished mess- and wisely so. It’s almost always better to accept the disappointment of a delay over the lasting bad press of a failed launch. Luckily, it seems as though even early access games are taking this into account- which should hopefully deter premature and unfinished titles from being justified by their 'early access' status.
Lightyear Frontier is still planned to be coming to PC and Xbox consoles, but you'll have to wait a little longer to play this mix of Stardew Valley and Slime Rancher. If those influences are anything to go by, this project has a lot of potential- which is something worth a little more time in the oven. If this looks like something you could be interested in, you can Wishlist it now on Steam and check out the Community tab to see any updates to the development of the project- including (hopefully) a new release window when the developers are ready
