:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/30928941/original_kidred_screenshot_close.0.jpg)
Secret Ponchos, Switchblade Monkeys' upcoming top-down spaghetti Western game, will not launch in April as originally planned, according to a tweet from the developer's official account.
@CaptWarpZoned @SwitchbladeMkys John you are correct! Hangin there SP will come to beta testing to make sure its rock solid b4 release
— Switchblade Monkeys (@SwitchbladeMkys) March 29, 2014
Secret Ponchos is being developed for PlayStation 4, though a new release date has not been announced. We've reached out to the developer for more information and will update accordingly.
In Secret Ponchos, players battle others online for notoriety and reputation; each duel is recorded as part of a character's legacy. The game is being rendered with Sony's PhyreEngine and will be available as a free title through PlayStation Plus when it launches.
For more on how the title was inspired by fighting games, check out our hands-on look from PAX Prime 2013.
Update: Yousuf Mapara of Switchblade Monkeys provided us with the following statement:
"On the studio level, we felt that it would be a great asset to us if we could hold onto Secret Ponchos a little longer and expose it to more thorough testing and polishing, using real feedback from the community. In a game like this that sort of real-world testing can help us make important discoveries about the game and its balance.
That last 10 percent of quality is everything in a competitive multi-player game and it will only come from polishing a final product even when you have the opportunity or temptation to release. Ponchos is already fun, but there is this exponential amount of unknown factors that come into play when you get 100,000 people's hands on the game!
Once we decided to hold off on launch a bit, we approached Sony's Developer Relations, because we'd been working together on a few initiatives. They were very supportive of our goals to make the best game we can, and said they could make the adjustments required, so now we have the opportunity for a more robust beta, which we really wanted to do before our PS4 launch.
Next step is to finalize the format of the Beta. Our goal is to have a beta format that is very open community based and on a larger scale, so we'll have some announcements very soon."
