Art of Play

31/08/2026

Lady Death fans,

Digital release day of PS4, PS5, XBOX and Steam is upon us. Kickstarter backers and pre-order customers, here is what you need to know.

We have scheduled the keys to go out at:
- 3pm Los Angeles/Phoenix time (West Coast) 31st August
- 6pm New York City time (East Coast) 31st August
- 11pm London time 31st August
- 8am Melbourne time (Australian East Coat) 1st Sep

It will take approximately 1-2 hours for all keys to be sent. We need to stagger the release in intervals to avoid spam filters catching on fire as much as possible. There are thousands of emails to go out.

These times were selected to ensure all platforms were live and ready AND our team would be on standby for an entire business day to help.

HOW TO REACH US
[email protected] is the BEST email address for support regarding the digital launch. This is being watched by our team. It will allow us to promptly send back your key information again should there be an issue with the original email.

OR simply reply to the email address the key comes through from.

OUR OPERATING HOURS
We do our best to cater to the international audience we have. But we also need to sleep.

Standard operating hours
Our standard operating hours are 8am to 8pm Mon-Fri AUSTRALIAN EASTERN TIME
Please allow 2-4 hours for a response.

Outside hours
Outside standard operating hours (after 8pm AEST), requests will be processed the following day. Please allow a minimum 12hrs for a response.

The kickstarter link has a bit more information on the rollout should you be interested.

Demonicrons,Digital release day of PS4, PS5, XBOX and Steam is a bee's whisker away. Here is what you need to know.We have scheduled the keys to go out at:- 3pm Los Angeles/Phoenix time (West Coast) 31st August- 6pm New York City time (East Coast) 31st August- 11pm London time 31st August- 8am Melbo...

29/08/2026

Lady Death supporters!

XBOX, PS4, PS5 and Steam are all set to launch Monday 31st August. Keys will be rolling out on the day along with links to all digital extras!

Nintendo, at the end of this week, cited an "extremely high volume of release requests" pushing out our launch to September 11th.

There are many words to describe this. Frustrating is probably the most diplomatic F word at hand. The game is done. It is sitting idle on Nintendo's servers. There seems to be a bottleneck with getting the game onto the storefront on Nintendo's side.

We apologise in advance for this delay. And email has just gone out to all our digital pre-order customers - please check your spam/promotions folder to check it out.

*PRE-ORDERS*
https://artofplayshop.com/
- Physical pre-orders are remaining open until the end of September.
- Digital pre-orders will be removed as of August 31.
- New store items will appear during September.

Thanks again to everyone.
- AOP

21/07/2026

Due to a (much) longer than expected testing period with the major platforms, we have made the decision to extend the launch date to August 31 2026 for the digital release of Lady Death: Demonicron.

Demonicron is a labor of love for our entire team and we think this puts us in the best position for a stronger launch.

At this stage we do not see this effecting physical release timelines.

We understand this is frustrating for all. We appreciate the support we have received. Digital rewards are prepped and codes are set to be with us in the next few days.

We be at the Coffin Comics booth at SDCC in a few days, please feel free to swing by and mash a d-pad for a bit.

You can get more updates on the game via the official facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/share/198DMZmLwu/?mibextid=wwXIfr

LADY DEATH: DEMONICRON is an all new sword slicing, magic wielding, 15 level beat-em-up!

03/07/2026

So Sony did a thing.

From 2008 to 2020, Art Of Play made online and app games for some pretty big brands. Today, none of those games exist.

Due to corporate mergers and buyouts, first between Disney and Lucas in 2014 and then between Viacom and CBS in 2019, none of our 50+ games made over 12 years can be played.

In fact even attempts we made to share gameplay footage have been met with copyright strikes. So we don’t even bother.

Our belated transition into console at the end of our studio-for-hire run, was part of an internal desire to actually have something to show for all the time we’d say no to our family and friends in order to make something we loved. We grew up going to stores. Buying or renting games. Opening boxes. Reading manuals and the only micro transactions were fish and chips or pizza before a big gaming session.

Sony’s announcement was filtered through the guise of what consumers want. But let’s be real. It’s just corporate greed.

The secondhand market has plagued publishers and platforms for decades and lucky for them, consumers flocked to the ease of digital without any real concern about what was being given up.

With everything just being a click or tap away, nothing means anything anymore. There’s no sweat equity. No investment.

We make games because we love games. We will just have to adapt to the landscape and offer our players whatever we can to pay tribute to the world of tangible. Even if most days it seems like an uphill battle.

Lady Death and Danger Mouse will be our last games on disc for PlayStation. What a sad state of affairs.

Let’s hope we can wrestle some power back and stop being consumers of a product and start being connoisseurs of artists, studios and creatives that have something to offer other than a game to borrow for a while.

21/06/2026

Over 560 hand drawn frames went into making the Lady Death sprite sheet come alive. We've put together a poster (will be formatted slightly differently for printing) that will come as part of the Kickstarter digital rewards. This is only HALF of the sprites!

No rotoscoping. No AI. Just hours and hours of sketching, testing, discussing, finalising cleaning, colouring and exporting.

Credits:
Anthony Spay - initial sprite design.
Matthew Cutler - animation and vfx.
Ariel Medel - clean-up.
Brandon Crampton - colours.
Ash Nicholls - director and vfx.

12/06/2026

Introducing some key artwork for a top secret 16-bit arcade game we are going to announce real sooooon. Brandon first illustrates and paints the background to setup the colours, shape and lighting. Then our pixel artist Pilar redraws the piece keeping in line with pallet limits and pixel depth we have in mind. Exactly how it would have been done in 1989 (just with a few more colours to work with).

This process takes about 2 weeks to complete per background, depending on how many layers.

It is 100% AI free and with zero shortcuts. Just blood, sweat and tears.

04/06/2026

**DAMNED WAYS TO DIE!** ☠️☠️☠️
We tried to launch this on TikTok - but it has been banned already 😅 Pretty sure Zuck don't give a F☠️ck so here we go. This is just a small portion of the ways to overkill your enemies. Scythe, sword, boots... Over 25 moves for Lady Death - all with maximum destruction in mind.

03/06/2026

For those of you who have just joined us, Art Of Play is a small studio based out of Melbourne Australia utilising talented artists from here and around the world to help us realise our retro dreams. Everything at AOP is hand crafted. We still hold hope that in the ever increasing world of slop, there is still a place for smaller, fun, couch co-op experiences that'll make you want to scour Facebook Marketplace for a CRT.

Send a message to learn more

02/06/2026

We have locked in a release date for Lady Death digital.
**Thursday 30th July 2026**

Demonicron is also FULL PHYSICAL release on PS5 and Switch. What does this mean? Well, the cart or disk you receive in the case will be the full version of the game. No day one patch downloads. No lazy download key on the cart/disc. The full game. So if you are a collector or just a fan of the old days when games were games, we've got you covered.

After the digital launch in July, we spend the following 90 days making sure the 2300 kickstarter backers and all their tiers are looked after. We do bug sweeps and we listen to constructive feedback. We also take this time to submit the game to the ESRB which will require some heavy duty write ups about all the wonderful elements within. The end result is submitted to Nintendo and Sony for manufacturing.

Its old school. It costs us more to do is this way. But we're all in our 40s and yearn to do something about the products we spend 2 years working on and not just yelling at clouds. Well... we still enjoy yelling at clouds.