Drinkbox Studios has pushed Blighted out of 2026. The Toronto team confirmed the slip at the top of its fourth Blighted devlog on September 21, saying that with the year winding down the Metroidvania action RPG still has no firm launch date, and that the studio wants more time to polish and tune it before release. The new window is simply 2027, and the Steam page has already been updated to match.
A delay with no new date attached
This is the second time Blighted's timing has moved in public. Back in March, Drinkbox announced a fall 2026 target alongside a batch of fresh screenshots and the news that the game would launch on Nintendo Switch 2 the same day as the Steam version, a reveal that landed during Nintendo's Indie World Showcase. That fall window is now gone, replaced by a full calendar year.
The studio's phrasing is worth reading closely, because it is unusually plain for a delay note. Drinkbox says the team has been working hard and growing, and that the extra time is going into polish and tuning rather than into new content or a change of direction. There is no talk of a scope reset, no shuffled leadership, no vague "we'll share more when we're ready." What the studio does promise is another dev update before 2026 wraps, teased with nothing more than an eyes emoji, followed by more news in the new year.
For a studio with Drinkbox's track record, that reads as a schedule problem rather than a project problem. Guacamelee! and Nobody Saves the World were both games that shipped tight and finished, and both leaned on hand-tuned combat feel that is exactly the kind of thing a team burns months on at the end. A Metroidvania that also wants to be a souls-adjacent action RPG has twice the tuning surface of either.
Hunting the Memory Bandits
The rest of the devlog is the most concrete look yet at how Blighted is actually structured, delivered by Drinkbox designer Chris Brady. It is not an open world and it is not a single contiguous map. Instead you work through a series of large, interconnected, handcrafted levels while hunting down a set of targets called the Memory Bandits. Each level hands out permanent upgrades along the way and ends at a boss fight against one of those bandits.
Checkpoints are called Memory Trees. Reaching one lets you rest, spend upgrades on your character, and reconfigure your current equipment, and each level opens shortcuts that loop back to them as you push deeper, the usual and still effective arrangement for a game that expects you to die on the way to a boss. Memory Trees also act as fast travel points back to your home base.
Crucially, the level order is not fixed. Drinkbox says you will frequently get to choose which level to attempt next, and that you can bail on the one you are in and switch to another if you want a break from it. That is a meaningful structural choice: it turns a wall into a detour rather than a stop sign, and it is the kind of thing that tends to matter more for a game with punishing combat than any difficulty slider does.
Watcher's Peak is the hub
The home camp is Watcher's Peak, built around the last living Memory Tree. Feeding it upgrade items raises your ability to take hits and to keep swinging without running dry, which places both survivability and stamina economy on the same progression track rather than splitting them.
The camp also fills up over time. Drinkbox says you will meet characters out in the world who can be invited back to Watcher's Peak, where they take over upgrading your gear and, if you talk to them, feed you information about the setting. Earlier devlogs introduced some of them by name: the Iron Mule, who escaped the Tycoon and now dispenses advice; a Shaman in a helmet that stops his brain being eaten after death, who handles potions and rare ingredients; a Widow who carries her husband's corpse on her back to keep bandits from digging him up, and who teaches weaponry as part of his legacy.
That tone is the whole pitch, really. Blighted is described on its store page as a psychedelic Western nightmare: an abomination called Sorcisto ate your village and seeded the world with a Blight, you are the only survivor, and you are racing to reclaim your people's memories before the Blight finishes you off too. The screenshots back it up, with isometric environments that read as rock and timber in one corner and raw viscera in the next.
Parries that open doors
The devlog also connects Blighted's combat to its map gating, which is the part that will decide whether the Metroidvania label sticks. The world blocks you with gaps you cannot cross and what Drinkbox calls strange fleshy doors, and the abilities that clear them are the same abilities you fight with. The example given is Power Parry: you earn it partway in, it turns an enemy's telegraphed Power Attack into an opening, and it also removes obstacles out in the world.
Drinkbox has been explicit that it wants that parry to be generous. Its July combat devlog described a system where a perfectly timed parry ignores all damage, but a badly timed one still absorbs a lot of it, and the health you do lose can be won back by hitting enemies. Around that sit a four-hit combo, a charge attack, a dodge, a gun, and mana-driven abilities, most of them drawing on a stamina meter. The studio's own framing is that Blighted sits between souls-style commitment and arcade-speed aggression rather than picking one.
The payoff for stacking traversal onto combat abilities is routing. Drinkbox says the knowledge you build up should let you plot wildly different paths through the game on repeat runs, which is a strong hint that replay structure is part of the design rather than a bonus mode bolted on later.
What is actually confirmed
Blighted is coming to Steam and Nintendo Switch 2, developed and published by Drinkbox Studios, now targeting 2027 with no month attached. The Steam listing flags single-player alongside co-op, both online and shared-screen, and full controller support. The next thing to watch for is that one remaining dev update before the end of the year, which is the only concrete commitment the studio has made on timing.
