REPLACED
PC/ Xbox Series X|S
Client: Thunderful
Platform: PC, Xbox Series X|S
Release: April 14th 2026
Campaign period: May 26th 2022 – ongoing
Overview
Plan of Attack worked with long-term partner Thunderful on the campaign for REPLACED, coming on board in 2022 and following through to the release of the game in 2026. REPLACED is a cinematic 2.5D cyberpunk adventure with a stunning art style developed by Sad Cat Studios and published by Thunderful.
Plan of Attack had fantastic success with REPLACED over the course of the campaign. There were some challenges: it’s no secret that the game has faced some adversity during development, with multiple delays since its initial announcement, and this is something we had to deal with during our time working on the game too. Our ability to adapt quickly and deal with whatever circumstances may arise helped to ensure that this did not prevent us from securing a phenomenal amount of coverage at every step of the campaign. This included pushing video assets (the exceptionally high-quality of assets created by Sad Cat Studios obviously made our lives easier!), securing preview and review coverage and making the most out of the opportunities available to us - using our experience to help ensure momentum for REPLACED translated into it becoming one of the most successful demos of the February 2026 Steam Next Fest being a highlight.
The Campaign
We came on to the REPLACED campaign in 2022 to announce a delay and, at the end of the year, to support a new trailer that debuted at The Game Awards. The bulk of our work on REPLACED took place between the beginning of preparation for gamescom in 2025, during which a new Spring 2026 launch window was announced, through to the release of the game in April of 2026. After handling appointment booking for gamescom and announcing the Spring launch window in August, a release date announcement followed in December.
January 2026 onwards kept momentum going through to launch with a steady stream of PR beats. A physical preview event proposed by Plan of Attack was held in Gothenburg in January and was followed by an extra round of impressions based on us providing press early access to the game’s Steam Next Fest demo, successfully generating awareness and hype for the demo’s public launch. Our strategy for the Next Fest demo helped win the game a place in the top 5 “popular upcoming” category and as one of the top 20 most played overall. We put an opportunistic media blast out highlighting this success, combined with the announcement of hitting an impressive 850k wishlists, to give the game another push just ahead of release. A round of narrative focused interviews were also successfully pitched, giving the game another awareness boost and as a means of highlighting the story aspects of the game. We also had the unfortunate job of announcing another delay for the game when it was moved back from March to April and had to deal with a couple of publicly-acknowledged issues with the launch build. This certainly made things more challenging than they otherwise would have been, but that didn’t stop us pushing through and delivering strong review coverage when the game released on April 14th.
Throughout the campaign, our coverage results were exceptional. News beats achieved hundreds of hits and were covered by top-tier outlets in key territories in the US and Europe, as well as lots of secondary markets across the EU, South America and beyond. Positive preview coverage that highlighted the game’s “potential to be something special” (Eurogamer) and saw it hailed as “my new most-wanted game of March 2026” (GamesRadar+) fed into an amazing Next Fest demo campaign where REPLACED was among the 0.5% most successful games from the 3,500+ other titles it was competing against. We secured 394 reviews for the game, reaching a total of 3685 pieces of coverage.
What We Did
- 9 global press releases distributed + published on GamesPress
Delay Announcement - May 2022
New Trailer at TGA - December 2022
Spring 2026 Launch Window - August 2025
Release Date Announcement - December 2025
Demo Announcement - February 2026
Delay Announcement - February 2026
850k Wishlist Announcement - March 2026
Out Now Announcement - April 2026
Accolades Trailer - April 2026
gamescom 2025 bookings
Proposed and booked exclusive REPLACED/Planet of Lana II preview event in Gothenberg, Sweden
Successful interview pitching
Steam Next Fest demo pitching
Extensive review key outreach with press, including follow-ups
Coverage + Impressions
During the phase of the REPLACED campaign covered in this case study, we generated 3946 total pieces of global coverage, including 3398 news hits, 95 previews and 453 reviews.
Coverage appeared across 63 countries, with the strongest traction in key target territories including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. It’s worth noting that we generated enough buzz around REPLACED for it to be included in 44 “most anticipated games of 2026” lists across December and January. This included IGN’s Game of the Year predictions, Kotaku, Multiplayer.it, Everyeye.it and Eurogamer.
Press Coverage Breakdown
3398 News stories
95 Previews
453 Reviews
3946 Total pieces of coverage
Press Coverage Reach Highlights (Top outlets by reach)
The New York Times (US)
The Guardian (UK)
Meristation (Spain)
Forbes (USA)
IGN (USA)
GameSpot (USA)
Game8 Global (Philippines)
Jeuxvideo.com (France)
Steam Next Fest Success
Leading into Next Fest, we made a number of moves that harnessed the momentum we already had for REPLACED to maximum effect. The Gothenburg preview event brought REPLACED back into the forefront of people’s minds shortly before the Next Fest kicked off, with previews dropping telling them that the game is great right before they got the chance to try it for themselves. Giving press early access to the demo along with a heads-up about the demo's release date ensured strong news coverage of the demo, along with more impressions pieces telling people it's worth checking out. The demo going live for the public before the Next Fest kicked off officially was the final piece generating the crucial momentum that you need to be successful in Next Fest.
Throughout the Next Fest, REPLACED was one of the top 5 demos in the “popular upcoming” category and it ended the Next Fest in the top 20 most played games overall. With 3500+ games taking part, this places it close to the top 0.5% of most successful games.
Review Campaign
Given that a potentially game-breaking bug on Xbox was publicly acknowledged at launch, we’re not speaking out of turn by saying that conditions for the review build were not 100% ideal. This made things a little more challenging and required us to be quick and adaptable to keep press in the loop and do our best to ensure things like waiting for a patch on the issue mentioned above didn’t hamper us too much in terms of securing reviews. 453 reviews published, including 101 from verified OpenCritic outlets and 72 from Metacritic outlets, shows that we handled those challenges well. We were able to get strong pickup from top-tier outlets across multiple countries, regions and formats, and we even had some success breaking beyond traditional games media to get reviews from mainstream media outlets like the New York Times.
The game generally received a positive reception, though there was quite a range of scores that saw the game land everything from 6/10s through to 10/10s. Praise included GamingBoulevard referring to it as a “modern day classic” in their 9.5/10 review, TheGamer calling is “a visual marvel” in their 4/5 review and GamingTrend hailing it as a “Indie Game of the Year contender” in their 90/100 review.
Critical Response Highlights
Across reviews and previews, the sentiment was mostly positive, with recurring praise for:
Stunning visuals and cinematic direction
Strong worldbuilding and sense of atmosphere
Storytelling around sidequests that build out the world
Weighty and satisfying combat
Takeaways
The campaign is a reminder that success is often a combination of careful planning and adapting to react to challenges and opportunities on the fly. It reinforced our ideas around how to have a successful Steam Next Fest, showing how important momentum is and it showed how you can get away with negative news like delays if people care enough about your game.
The campaign highlighted the value of the following:
viewing Next Fest as a culmination to build to rather than a starting point
experience on dealing with challenges when things don’t go perfectly to plan
being conservative on timelines to increase your chances to deliver
