Friday the 13th: The Game Previews Engine Update, Won’t Release in April

Friday the 13th: The Game players now have a first look at the big engine update that Gun Media and IllFonic have been working on, but the update won’t be coming this month.

It was announced months ago that the developers were working on an update that would get the game running on a newer version of Unreal Engine. A release date for April wasn’t confirmed and was simply a goal from the devs, but despite the progress that’s been made, the engine update won’t be ready before the month’s end.

“Today we have been forced to accept that the update will not be able to be released in April,” Gun Media community lead Daniel “Shifty Samurai” Nixon said on Reddit. “The update is shaping up nicely, but there are still a few issues that we need to iron out to ensure the best gameplay experience for our players, and we still need to pass the patch through console certification. Our goal is to make sure the work is done right, and that meant we needed some extra time with it.”

The community lead also addressed questions about why the update wasn’t released on Friday the 13th this month, a date that would be more than fitting for the release. His previous comment was a clear indicator that if the update isn’t ready now, it wasn’t ready then, but he added that the game’s team hoped to avoid setting a hard release date and instead get the update out when it was ready.

With the update not releasing this month, Nixon went ahead and answered players’ next question: When?

“We are in the later stages of finalizing, but we are not yet at a place in the process where we can state a specific date with certainty,” Nixon said. “All of our major reworks and new features – updated game engine, Single Player Challenges, Victoria, Bot AI Improvements, Weapon Switching, Legendary Perks, etc. – are in place in our development builds. However, we are at least weeks away from release, and if major issues are found we will work to solve them before release.”

Some who watched the video had a difficult time telling what was different between the two versions and looked for huge graphics differences, but Nixon responded in another comment and said that the goal here isn’t to have a graphical overhaul. One change that players did pick up on though was that the game looked darker for some reason. Gun Media boss Wes Keltner confirmed on Twitter that the game is indeed darker, a change made to put more emphasis on flashlights.

The release date for the engine update hasn’t been announced, but look for more weekly updates from Gun Media leading up to its release.