Abiotic Factor, by Dunedin-based game studio Deep Field Games, will be available to play on the consoles, in addition to PC, following its full release in the middle of the year.
Deep Field Games producer and narrative designer Henry Feltham believed it would be the first game from Otago to have a full release across three platforms simultaneously.
"It must be one of the biggest games to come out of Dunedin, ever, I think.
"As a product out of Otepoti — it's up there."
For a small indie studio like theirs, a release of this scale was "the absolute best possible scenario", and more common among larger studios with bigger budgets.
Abiotic Factor shot to No5 on Steam’s bestseller list days after it was initially released on PC in early-access — able to be purchased while still in development — in May last year.
At present, about 96% of the more than 20,000 user reviews for the title are listed on the platform as positive.
It is set in an underground research facility where a group of scientists are "caught between paranormal containment failure, a military crusade, and chaos from a dozen realms", according to Steam.
The studio was granted $150,000 for its development in 2022 by the New Zealand Centre for Digital Excellence (Code) — an economic development initiative by the government to grow the country’s gaming sector.
The game’s full release this year would conclude the final chapter of its main story. The amount of work to get it to this point had been huge, Mr Feltham said.
He estimated a standard playthrough could take between 50 and 60 hours to complete, "much bigger than we originally expected or even intended", and getting it all to work on PC, PlayStation and Xbox was a huge undertaking.
Getting the game to the conception of a "final polished product" came with a bit of pressure and a few challenges, but he hoped their audience would be amplified once on consoles and yield a "pretty solid bump" in players, Mr Feltham said.
"We're not there yet, but it's looking good — it's incredibly, incredibly exciting.
"As a game developer, it's what you hope for."
Balancing Monkey Games’ debut city-building game Before We Leave was released on Xbox in November 2021, PlayStation in April 2022 and for Nintendo Switch in August 2022.
Christchurch-based Black Salt Games also released Dredge on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch in March 2023 — with a film adaptation announced last year.
