Shadow of the Road Release Date & Owlcat's Publishing Strategy — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Shadow of the Road

[00:30] didn't have a release date or, you know, it was just minor updates that would have been hard to cover given the game. But back towards Game Tom, we got a look at some of the stuff they have planned here as well as the official release date, which is November 12th, 2026, which should be, I mean,

[00:45] theoretically pretty clear for it as pretty much everything big has moved out of the way of GTA 6 happening that same month. And so November, as it stands, is pretty devoid of release dates as a result, but this obviously isn't something that's going to compete with that. But one of the reasons

[01:01] it took me so long to cover this, given that we've had the release date for a couple of weeks, is that there is a bit of a side conversation I want to talk about in terms of LCAC Games, who is actually the publisher for this title, but we'll get to that towards the end of the video.

[01:15] So, assuming you probably know nothing about Shadow of the Road, or at least very likely haven't been keeping up with it. Like most tactical games, it is a turn-based RPG, this time set in a

[01:27] feudal Japan, in the Edo period specifically, if I'm not mistaken, and it is merging things like samurais, etc., with steampunk contraptions you'll have to fight your way through, as you seek to protect a strange young boy with supernatural powers, and that is, of course, set against the

[01:45] backdrop of a brutal civil war putting you on a sure path to some conflict there now a lot of that information is actually something i saw firsthand via the i believe it was like a closed alpha that i had played previously which is where a lot of the footage you're seeing is almost certainly

[02:00] coming from so to be clear a little on the older side the game has uh hopefully come a long way since then but we've only got trailers and stuff to go by otherwise now i did say this game was a CRPG and CRPG. So in many ways those are sort of sister genres and I would say

[02:16] there are games that kind of don't fit neatly into one or the other but in the case of this particular game I do think it leans a little more on the tactical side than anything else As at least from the version of it that I played a while back you had relatively small maps with occasional fights on them and you could have like conversations and

[02:34] things, but the emphasis was more on, like, the combat scenarios than the rest of it, and that may well have changed since then, but that was my experience at the time. However, we do also have a core cast of companions who have their own thing going on.

[02:47] Your sort of main two characters, really, Satoru and Akira, I believe, are your sort of main characters. However, there are a couple of others, such as your tank character, Ishida, or the master of manipulation, Asuke.

[03:02] I don't have the full details, but they have hinted at here and there, all of these characters having relationships and things with you, the protagonist, and the rest of the party, and you having to manage all of that. So I'm curious how far they will wind up taking that in particular.

[03:17] But as with any game with any sort of tactical combat, the turn-based combat system plays a really big role. And a lot of it, at least from the playtest I messed around with, centered around a break mechanic. A lot of your abilities would take time to sort of cast and prepare,

[03:33] which would move you along the game's little timeline in terms of who's going when and like initiative and whatnot. The attacks that actually take time to go off create a sort of charge as you wait for that time to pass.

[03:46] And if you attack, like, say, an enemy that is actively doing that to you, you can break them, as the game calls it. Breaking them gives you more action points, which then allows you to do more, and the cycle continues ever onward.

[04:00] Now, I will say you do kind of see this type of thing in TRPGs a lot, where a lot of the combat centers around on essentially giving yourself as many actions as you possibly can and dominating the action economy, which then has the knock-on effect of just making the enemy not able to do anything.

[04:16] I don't know that that will be the case with the release version here, but you see it frequently enough that just from what I know of the combat system thus far, it is where I would be a little concerned about the whole thing.

[04:28] Now, in order to make that combat interesting, we will be fighting a variety of things. I already mentioned some steampunk contraptions who will be part of combat. There are also things like yokai, and I think what they're obviously trying to set up there is the sort of magic versus technology

[04:43] transition that we see in these types of games generally here and there Arcanum being the evergreen presence example of exactly that However a lot of the story being set in a very transitional time of Japanese history anyway

[04:58] also itself kind of bleeds into the inevitable march of time and where you fit on that sort of spectrum of these changes versus the more traditional stuff, and I imagine that will likely play into the story, but is also represented in combat via those varying mechanics.

[05:15] just to sort of carry forward that theme, if it wasn't straightforward enough for you, I suppose. But while that is all well and good, as I've already mentioned, it's been pretty quiet for this game for a long time,

[05:27] and so what we've gotten in the meantime were occasional little updates, usually in regards to, like, lore or certain characters popping up, that kind of thing, but basically you'd get the odd post, like, once every month or two,

[05:40] and it's been, again, just extremely quiet since I last took a look at this game, and now suddenly we have a release date, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I think the game looks mostly fine. The other sort of interesting aspect to this is what Owlcat Games is doing here,

[05:56] which is publishing this game. The actual developer is Another Angle Games, and Owlcat Games is, again, just the publisher on this one. And while I don't want to needlessly speculate about, you know, if anything went wrong, etc.,

[06:09] like, we're here, we have a release date, Everything seems to be fine, other than having taken a significant amount of time. But that actually kind of brings me to my point. So, Owlcat Games dipped its toe into publishing with two titles,

[06:22] Rue Valley, which is already released, and this game, Shadow of the Road. Rue Valley, we don't have any numbers, but I think it did okay, I guess. The reviews for it, however, are on the upper side of mixed, I would say.

[06:35] So, meaning that it's essentially in the high 60s as far as, like, user reviews over on Steam go. And so the reception to Rue Valley was a bit mixed, just very generally.

[06:47] And I kind of get it, having played that game for myself. It has a very particular bit of subject matter, and if that's not your thing, you're probably not going to enjoy that game because it doesn't really do anything else. Which is to say, Rue Valley was a bit niche, and I'm curious then, you know, how much money was made on that, was it profitable, etc.

[07:05] And while we not going to get any of those answers I imagine as LCAT does not make me privy to their sensitive financial information despite talking to them with some regularity that brings us to Shadow of the Road which definitely seems to be a larger endeavor overall that I think has probably taken longer than they anticipated just judging by the amount of time from things like that playtest until now

[07:29] And so my initial sort of gut reaction there is, like, what is the cost of this? What are the financials of it? What does this game have to sell in order to be successful financially? And all of those other little things.

[07:42] and I think that's important because for Owlcat, they've got a lot going on, and while I imagine they aren't going to, like, go under or anything if this game doesn't do well, what I am curious about is mostly just, like, whether they saw this foray into publishing as a worthwhile endeavor,

[07:58] or were, like, the margins on this stuff so low that it might not have been worth their time. And I guess those are answers that, realistically, we won't get for some time, because the game itself doesn't release until November 12th, as I mentioned,

[08:12] and then what's more, of course, we would simply have to wait and judge Owlcats' actions in terms of zigging or zagging, as, again, they're not going to release that sensitive financial information. That would be required to make any sort of informed speculation on this stuff.

[08:27] So, long story short, I suppose, Shadow of the Road finally has a release date. It's doing some cool stuff. November is very light, and I don't plan on covering GTA 6 until it hits PC at the very earliest anyway,

[08:39] and so my November is pretty wide open as a result, and I will almost certainly be reviewing this once we get that far, as it's still a few months away. And I imagine, along the way, we will learn whether the situation around this game is actually something genuinely odd,

[08:55] or if it, in fact, went really smoothly. So, a few things there to be interested in, even beyond the game itself, But as for today and this video, I do think that is pretty much going to cover it. Certainly hope you enjoyed it.

[09:08] I'd love to know what you think about Shadow of the Road down in the comment section below. Whether you had heard about it, forgot about it, or are learning about it for the first time. But regardless of any of that, truly, just thank you so much for watching.

[09:20] I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day. Thank you.