Necrosoft Games’ indie RPG, Demonschool, is no longer launching next week following the surprise announcement of Hollow Knight: Silksong launching that same week. For many developers, launching games around the same time as phenomenon releases is a death sentence.
In a press release (via Insider Gaming), publisher Ysbyrd Games made the decision to push the game’s release to an early November launch in order to ensure the most visibility to Demonschool, which originally was slated to launch just a day before Silksong.
“With 11 years under our belt as an indie publisher, we at Ysbryd Games are reasonably qualified to say that any point of 2025, on balance, has been or will be as brutal as market conditions can get when it comes to releasing a game. Crueler still, that we should find out with such short notice that Hollow Knight: Silksong will launch just one day after our planned release for Demonschool.
We have to remind ourselves that gaining visibility for Demonschool is our main goal. Thus, the Ysbryd team strongly believes we would not be doing our game any favors by wading into waters we can clearly see are blood red. If the September period is going to be Silksong’s moment, then we need to be elsewhere on the calendar to give Demonschool its own moment to be seen and talked about meaningfully.”
Unlike Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is opting to not give out codes to reviewers, as it deems it “unfair” to its Kickstarter backers and other players, Demonschool already handed out codes, it seems, so, there’s plenty of time to get reviews squared away.
