Now the real business begins
Fetch your finest presentation materials about lines on graphs going upwards and proceed to try and beat your colleagues to death with them. Stick It to the Stickman, the roguelite beat ’em up which Anger Foot devs Free Lives have been bashing into shape for a year and a bit is set to emerge from early access on September 23rd.
The early access version of Stick It to the Stickman (SITTS for short) made my selection box last year, because the endlessly cathartic stickperson fights up through the innards of a hostile corporate office block were punchily chaotic and satisfying even in that abridged form. Look, it gave me reason to write the line: "I've infiltrated floor-wide discos after injecting myself with coffee, and unleashed immensely satisfying chainsaw chaos." It's brill.
Anyway, it's now taking on full release form. Albeit a different form than devs Free Lives initially envisioned, judging by a post they put up prior to revealing their early access end date. "The game has sold very well, but it has taken a toll, both financially and emotionally," they wrote. "The team changed from 8 developers to 4 developers, who have been trying to finish this game since 2021 (to the point where Evan woke up last week in a cold sweat trying to slide-dash away from his own ceiling fan). And so attempting to build every single mode means staying in early access until the sun explodes. Against traditional business practices, we are choosing the mental health of our workers and releasing 1.0 earlier than planned which was later than previously planned.
"So, we prioritised keeping the modes that our community was most excited about, and [are] ending development of other unfinished modes like ‘Rise of the Machines’ and ‘Marketing Department’."
As part of the full release, SITTS is getting two new modes, one dubbed Neurolink and the other seemingly designed as a grand finale once you've done enough runs to reach the top of the corporate food chain. Free Lives will also update the Foreign Manufacturing mode, adding in two new playstyles with which to take on its brawling around the world - the teleporting ninja and moneybag-wielding negotiator.
The game's also getting a price bump once it hits 1.0. It'll cost $12/equivalent from then on for new buyers, so grabbing it now is shrewd if you fancy it, given it's currently £4.19/€4.89/$4.89 on Steam thanks to a discount set to last until August 21st.
There's still a free demo on SITTS' Steam page too, which was my first taste of it, if you're keen to try before considering committing any real cash to stickperson smashing.