Cthulhu Saves the World was originally scheduled for an August release. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t ready in time for that. There are a few main reasons for this.

1 – We are not full time developers. Breath of Death VII has sold well and continues to sell well (we should surpass 30,000 total sales this month), but we’re still not making enough money to quit our day jobs and develop games full-time. Hopefully that will change in the near-future, but for now, working on Cthulhu Saves the World is a part time job for us. That means that the amount of time we have to dedicate to making games varies from day to day and week to week. Sometimes we have a lot of free time and we get a lot of progress done; other times, life intrudes and our time is limited.

2 – Cthulhu Saves the World is a big step up from our previous game. The world is bigger, there are more playable characters (8 total), there’s a lot more music, the graphics are noticeably better, the maps are more sophisticated, etc. Even though, we have been able to build upon our experience and engine from Breath of Death VII, we still underestimated the amount of time and effort it would take to make Cthulhu Saves the World.

3 – Because of the way the approval process is set up for XBox Live Indie Games (basically it can take anywhere from 2 days to weeks or even months if you find last minute bugs), it’s impossible to set a firm release date in advance. I anticipate that once the game is ready to submit that we’ll pass quickly, but you never know.

So when is  the release date for Cthulhu Saves the World? I can’t say for sure, but my personal guess based on what is finished and what still needs to be done is that the game will be playable by the end of September, but won’t actually be officially polished up and released until October 2010. We apologize to everyone who is looking forward to the game that it isn’t done yet, but we’d prefer to take the extra time to create something truly excellent rather than rush a mediocre product out just to meet a deadline.

“We are thrilled with these results,” says Breath of Death VII creator, Robert Boyd. “Most casual game developers consider their game a success if they manage to achieve a double digit conversion rate. To have achieved a rate of over 2/3rds is just phenemonal.”

“I attribute our high conversion rate to the high quality of the game, the positive press we’ve received on sites like Yahoo and Kotaku, and the tremendous value the game provides. In a world where even indie RPGs frequently have price tags of $20 and above, being able to buy a great RPG like Breath of Death VII for $1 is unheard of.”

Zeboyd Games’ next RPG, a dark comedy called Cthulhu Saves the World starring the insanity-inducing monstrosity from the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft will have a slightly higher price tag of $3 due to price/size limitations imposed on XBox Live Indie Games ($1 games are limited to 50MBs, whereas $3 & $5 games can take up to 150MBs). However, the developers at Zeboyd Games are hard at work to make Cthulhu Saves the World just as much of a value as Breath of Death VII.

“Cthulhu Saves the World is longer, the visuals look better, the gameplay is deeper and more balanced, there’s more music and the music we are using is of higher quality, and the story is more interesting than the already great Breath of Death VII. Not only that, but there will be greater incentives to replay the game with multiple difficulty levels and three unlockable bonus modes, one of which (Cthulhu’s Angels) will include new dialogue and a bonus playable character.”

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning was released on April 22, 2010 on the XBox Live Indie Games Marketplace. The demo and full version can be downloaded at http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585504bd/ or directly on the XBox 360 Games Marketplace.

Cthulhu Saves the World is currently scheduled to be released on the XBox Live Indie Game Marketplace at the end of August 2010.

To celebrate, here’s a little gift – a copy of the Breath of Death VII world map. You can get it here.

4/22-5/2

5701 Sales
10727 Trials
53.15% Conversion Rate

1847 Sales in our first week (7th best selling XBLIG)
3481 Sales in our second week
373 Sales yesterday

We were hoping for 5k+ sales by the end of last week and we made it! Woohoo! If sales manage to stabilize at 1k or more average a week, we’re looking at a big financial success here.

Thank you everyone who has purchased the game and who has helped to spread the word. With your help, we’re looking forward to making many more high quality RPGs for the XBox Live Indie Games service.

I’ll let you know when the new version is approved and up. Once it goes up, just try to play the game like normal and it should prompt you to download the new version. Also, your old saves will work with the new version so no worries there.

Reviews have started coming in for Breath of Death VII and they’re very positive. Here and here both really liked it. This article was also very positive. Also, I was on the RPGamer Podcast last Saturday to talk about the game and various RPG stuff.

The bug has already been fixed in the code and we’ll submit the new version to the XBox Live Marketplace ASAP. Thank you for your patience while we take care of this problem.