WARSAW News

Hey everyone,

We’re postponing the WARSAW launch to October 2nd.

For the last two months we took part in WARSAW's preview tour around Europe culminating in last week’s Gamescom. The goal? Showing the game to the media. The reception? So far it would seem that we have something special in our hands.

At the same time we had a growing concern that we might not be able to provide you with the game as polished as we would have wanted it to be.

Therefore – after two weeks of weighing in all the pros and cons a final decision was reached yesterday: to delay the launch of WARSAW to 2nd of October.

Please do note that we didn’t wish to postpone the game indefinitely and only commit to the date once closer to it. So let’s call the 2nd of October a first and last delay for WARSAW at the same time.

Next week we will be dropping a new trailer. Until this week it was actually “an announcement trailer”, but the decision to postpone the launch will actually turn it into a “before the announcement trailer”. But we will not stop there. We will make sure to provide a steady stream of behind the scenes info on the road to launch here on the Steam page.

For now – apologies for making you wait that one month longer to play the game. But we are confident this is a decision that will be beneficial for everyone who will want to explore WARSAW.

(this is a still from the PAX East'19 WARSAW coverage reel we were showing at our booth)

The 7-part coverage of WARSAW’s Announcement comes to closing today. And what better way to round it up than with a handful of excerpts taken from various publications that covered the game’s announcement. Reading the past six parts you should have a pretty good idea of what we were going for. Now you can see how it worked out.

Tomorrow (or – depending on your time zone – still today) we will be starting a new 7-part piece. This one will focus on… Just check back here and see for yourself.

The order of the below excerpts is as they show in the google search. Some edits to the helpful google translate were in order to make things a bit more clear. And these are just a selected few of the stories than sprang after the GameSpot announcement.

US
https://screenrant.com/warsaw-reveal-trailer-emotional-tactical-rpg/
“(WARSAW) does show is the kind of horrors and heartbreaks associated with World War 2, and it doesn't shy away from emotional reveals.”

US
https://www.indiegamewebsite.com/2019/02/28/the-warsaw-announcement-trailer-will-give-you-chills/
“The Warsaw announcement trailer will give you chills”

US
https://pureplaystation.com/warsaw-unites-an-rpg-tactics-and-strong-emotions-in-announcement-trailer/2019/02/
“I’m always telling you (bullying really) to watch the trailers I post, but you would be cheating yourself if you ignored the announcement trailer for WARSAW. It’s heavy, but it’s really effective. (…). Announced today, WARSAW is a tactical RPG set in 1944 as a group of people tries to oust the Nazis from their homeland of Poland.”

US
https://www.dualshockers.com/warsaw-announcement-trailer/
“(…) we do get to see a wonderful looking animation that was created by Human Ark and features a song by Polish singer Brodka. The trailer introduces the setting as the 28th day of the uprising and shows a battle breaking out as a female character runs through beaten down streets amongst gunfire.”


RUSSIA
https://www.igromania.ru/news/81109/Avtory_Regalia_anonsirovali_Warsaw_igru_o_Varshavskom_vosstanii.html
“We are waiting for participation in the events of 1944, in the legendary Warsaw Uprising. This is one of the most tragic pages of the history of World War II for Poland(…)”


CZECH REPUBLIC
https://www.idnes.cz/hry/novinky/warsaw-hra-pixelated-milk.A190228_075220_bw-novinky_srp
“As commander of the guerrilla group, you have the task of liberating Warsaw from the Nazi occupiers.”

GERMANY
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/warsaw-darkest-dungeon-zweiter-weltkrieg,3341206.html
“Warsaw is an artfully designed role-playing game with an unusual theme: In Nazi-occupied Warsaw you fight as a Polish resistance for freedom.”

FRANCE
http://www.jeuxvideo.com/videos/1009299/warsaw-un-tactical-rpg-dans-la-veine-de-darkest-dungeon.htm
“WARSAW will immerse us in the context of the Second World War alongside a group of Polish resistance fighters (…)”

SPAIN
https://areajugones.sport.es/videojuegos/anunciado-warsaw-un-juego-que-mezcla-rpg-y-estrategia-en-la-segunda-guerra-mundial/
“(…) a city devastated by World War II and where real events of the conflict will be told in 1944, with the mechanics of RPG and strategy. It seems that he will want to tell a fairly adult and mature story about the drama of war”

ITALY
https://www.thegamesmachine.it/news-videogiochi-pc-ps4-xbox-wii-u-app/127393/warsaw-rpg-tattico-pc-ps4-switch/
“(…) a fascinating and heartbreaking Warsaw trailer, a new tactical role-playing game (…).Set during the famous Warsaw Uprising, the rebellion of the Polish people bloodily suppressed by the Nazis in 1944 which led to the complete destruction of the city(...)”

FINLAND
https://pelaaja.fi/uutiset/toiseen-maailmansotaan-sijoittuva-taktinen-roolipeli-warsaw-julkistettiin-nayttavan
“(…) combines beautiful visuals with the ugliness of war. Set in the uprising of Poland in 1944, the game tells the story of love, loyalty, friendship and adversity as the protagonists try to conquer their country from the Nazis.”

JAPAN
https://www.4gamer.net/games/451/G045129/20190228040/
“(…)the theme of Warsaw invasion by German troops in World War II”

When a major gaming website announces your game and for 24 hours it’s the only carrier of that information different things might happen.

For example quite a few of other media outlets from all over the world can republish that story. And if it’s helped by a proper media blast delivered by a specialized PR agency as well as your own channels it might turn out that when you type do a google search of your game you find there’s almost 300 mentions across more than 20 countries in the first 72 hours alone. Countries from Australia to Vietnam (sadly, nothing in Yemen and Zanzibar, and unless you tried Catalan – Xina also doesn’t count). All covering WARSAW.

I believe a certain admission is owed here. When we set out to make a game based around Warsaw Rising we knew that we can’t push that out to the front of the messaging. As mentioned before – Warsaw Rising isn’t a story many people are familiar with. And we never felt this should be something we constantly bring up.

The way we communicated WARSAW outside of Poland from the start was: “a tactical rpg set in WWII”.

We felt if the game has arresting visuals, compelling gameplay, engaging mechanics and an interesting tactical layer combined with historical setting – we will have gamers interest. And then – and only then do we uncover the facts. That the length of the Rising is actually the imposed time limit on the player. That all the characters are based on people or groups of people who actually took part in the Rising. That all the weapons you wield in game were used in the Rising. That uniforms and equipment were all consulted with a historian dealing with Warsaw Rising. That a dialogist made sure that the lines spoken during the battle by the combatants would be true to the era. That you move on a map based on the maps from Warsaw ’44. That the names of the streets are factual.

And we hoped that when WARSAW was being covered by whatever medium decided to run the story – once the genre, the visuals and all surface level qualities are mentioned – there will just be no way around mentioning what Warsaw Rising actually was.

Near total destruction of the city. Hundreds of thousands people killed. Even more relocated from the capital. Which until that point might not have featured in

Months later there’s more than 400 publications on WARSAW across major gaming media all around the world, and all of these mention Warsaw Rising. Sometimes in media that never touched upon that subject. All of these refer to the game first – as was intended. WARSAW is not a performance project but a game and needs to be one if it is to succeed commercially.

But at the same we’re extremely proud with what we achieved. In bringing a piece of Polish history to the forefront for hundreds of gaming media outlets.

Gaming company’s first title was the well received Project Warlock – an fps retro shooter created by a 19-year old Pole Jakub Cislo.

Pixelated Milk’s first title was the well received Regalia: of Men and Monarchs – a jrpg created by a team of close friends from Poland.

Despite these two companies’ earlier efforts were good – we couldn't be sure that our unannounced project will actually get people talking. Or even - that the story will be picked up just on the merit of a press release alone. We needed the attention.

Last year Steam saw the launch of some 8 000 games. Getting even a modicum of coverage fighting all the tripe A, triple I, sequels and next efforts from established devs is a challenge. You literally have to fight for attention among the 20 other games that show up daily. And in getting the media attention you also have to continuously combat the giants – games that continuously get coverage as they are what these websites’ audience and viewers continuously want to read and watch.

In short: it’s hard. (whatshesaid).

We felt that our announcement package was solid. A moving trailer. Non-fake, promising in-game screenshots. A less than obvious genre for a WWII game. An unknown chapter of a well known conflict. And a talented team attached. One that actually delivered a good game before.

But for the effect we hoped for we needed the attention from the biggest players out there. We wanted to show up on the radar by presenting the game through a largest possible gaming outlet.

Thanks to the intro by two great guys – Michal and Radek – we managed to get in touch with the editorial team at GameSpot, reached out and then waited. All of 24 hours when we were given the go ahead.

For one months we were going back and forth to deliver additional information, assets, work out the details of the timing and the announcement. Given the implied relationship of the trailer’s characters we were considering the announcement on 14th of February, but decided this might prove to be too much on the nose. And also diverting the attention from the actual story and setting of the game. We then pushed the release by further 12 days.

On the 25th of February, GameSpot shared a teaser Tweet, that currently (and appropriately) sits at 44,4k views.



The teaser consists of the sound of Karl's huge mortat shell hitting the Prudential building, but doesn't show too much. Or anything actually. The only visual clue was the background color that was to evoke more or less contemporary warfare setting. We were quite paranoid and felt that even one tiny detail might have everyone go - "oh. i knew it. It's obviously a Warsaw Rising game". So the sound and the color were the only hints we gave.

Oh. apart from the game's title that was prominently visible: in the Twitter handle's location. We actually alluded to that. But no-one guessed that until the next day.

And then the reveal happened.

In general you can approach making the trailer in two ways.

Either build it around the music or work the music into it. I guess the fact that we started with the visual part kind of betrays how we went about it.

Well, scratch that. We had some ideas for a song that we wanted to accompany the trailer and those were thrown around for quite a while. Some of more exotic ones were a hardcore punk, an old school rap, a pure piano and violin number, a 70s Polish song and contemporary rock hits. But nothing worked.

We listened to hundreds of songs. Proposed them, argued why they did or did not work, and moved in another direction. Quite a few at some point seemingly perfect stopped feeling so perfect for this or that reason. We felt we should go with a Polish song, but couldn’t find the right one. At some point we bounced in another direction and went for huge, anthemic hits. A long running one was David Bowie’s “Heroes” (no, not the more obvious but way less fitting “Warsaw”). Talking of obvious choices Muse’s “Uprising” also was considered for a while. There was the ambiguous “Wish you were here” by Pink Floyd that felt both right and wrong at the same time. But there was always something not working.

Enter Mariusz. The composer on WARSAW. Artist in a true meaning of the word. A musician. Game developer. And a close friend. It took him the better part of five minutes to come out with “Varsovie”.

Why was this the right choice you ask?

A Polish singer. A song about Warsaw. With contemporary sound. And an accordion.

It. Was. Perfect.

It took us around one month to get everyone on board for the project. The management of Monika Brodka and the two other co-credited authors: Bartosz Dziedzic and Quentin Carenzo went along. Mariusz remastered the track bringing out some of the instruments and our favourite - that purposefully out of tune accordion that you can hear at the beginning and the end of the announcement trailer.

That it required an extra pair of ears to introduce us to one of the largest contemporary Polish hits with Varsovie in the title is so painfully obvious it doesn't even require pointing out.

So, we locked down the deal. Had the terms negotiated. All we needed was the final green light. Which was due sometime over the next seven days.

All good right? Yes, only we had our exclusive reveal spot of WARSAW the following day. On the largest gaming website in the world. No biggie.