REPLACED: Cyberpunk Pixel-Art Platformer Finally Gets a March 2026 Release Date

After years of anticipation and one of the most striking reveals of the Xbox Series era, REPLACED finally has a firm date. The cinematic 2.5D cyberpunk platformer from Sad Cat Studios will land on PC and Xbox Series X/S on 12 March 2026, launching simultaneously on Steam, GOG, the Epic Games Store and Microsoft’s current-gen consoles.

It has been a long road from that first E3 2021 trailer, where its smoky neon cityscapes and razor-sharp pixel art instantly turned it into a sleeper hit among viewers, to a concrete release day that feels within reach.

For players who grew up drowning in side-scrollers on the SNES and Genesis, it is easy to roll your eyes at yet another pixel-art platformer. REPLACED is very clearly aware of that fatigue. Rather than simply chasing nostalgia for the 16-bit era, the game blends hand-animated characters with dynamic camera moves, dramatic close-ups and heavy, weighty combat. The movement has the precision of a classic action platformer, but the way the scenes are framed makes it look closer to a sci-fi noir movie that just happens to scroll from left to right.

The latest trailer, built around an original track from the game’s soundtrack called Dusk, is our most detailed look so far at how those ideas come together. We see the protagonist sprinting across rain-slick rooftops, vaulting through derelict industrial corridors and crashing into brutal fistfights in dingy back-alley bars while synth lines hum underneath. Slow pans across the city hint at districts stacked on top of each other, while quick cuts to dialogue scenes suggest moral choices and branching conversations. REPLACED clearly wants to be more than a reflex test; it is trying to wrap tight platforming and brawling inside a moody, story-driven cyberpunk thriller.

That ambition is one reason the game took so long to reach this point, but it is far from the only one. Sad Cat Studios’ plans were violently disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a real-world catastrophe that forced members of the team to relocate, rethink their schedules and deal with personal safety before anything else. In another timeline, REPLACED might have shipped somewhere between 2021 and 2023. Instead, development was repeatedly interrupted, pushing the studio into survival mode long before it could focus again on polishing animation frames, tuning enemy patterns and balancing difficulty curves.

When the studio resurfaced in August 2025, it cautiously stated that it could say with confidence that REPLACED would arrive by spring 2026. Game director Yura Zhdanovich acknowledged that the project had slipped well beyond early expectations and openly apologized to players who had been following the project since the original E3 trailer. The message was clear: the team would rather take the time needed to deliver a genuinely special experience than rush something out the door after everything they had been through. The newly announced 12 March date suggests that confidence was not misplaced.

Judging by the footage shown so far, that extra time has been spent obsessing over details. Combat encounters are packed with particle-heavy impacts, muzzle flashes and finishing moves that look meticulously storyboarded. The 2.5D presentation leans heavily on parallax-scrolling backgrounds, animated signs and distant skylines to make the world feel deep even though you stay on a flat plane. Platforming sections shift comfortably between deliberate exploration and frantic chase scenes, with collapsing structures, spotlights and explosions constantly threatening to knock you off your rhythm.

Equally important is the tone that REPLACED is striking. Its alternate-history future is not a pristine chrome megacity but something rusted and lived-in: apartments lit by flickering CRT screens, alleys scarred by old pipes, rain spearing in through broken windows. The soundtrack, led by that melancholic Dusk theme, wraps the action in a tired, bittersweet atmosphere. For players who feel they have already seen every permutation of retro-styled action games, there is a sense here that pixel art still has room to surprise, especially when it is treated more like a deliberate aesthetic choice than a nostalgia gimmick.

As someone who long ago lost count of how many side-scrollers I finished on 16-bit hardware, I expected to shrug and move on when I first saw REPLACED. Instead, the combination of crunchy, timing-based combat, painterly pixel work and that mournful synth score has pulled me back in. It feels less like a throwback and more like a refinement of what those old cartridges were trying to do with a fraction of the tools. Even if you think you have played enough side-scrollers for one lifetime, there is something compelling about seeing that familiar template rebuilt with this much style and intent.

When 12 March 2026 finally arrives, players on PC and Xbox Series X/S will find out whether Sad Cat Studios has managed to turn years of buzz and real-world hardship into something truly memorable. If REPLACED can marry the precision of a great platformer with the punch of a hard-hitting brawler and the emotional weight its trailers hint at, it has a real shot at standing out not just as a cool retro curiosity, but as one of the defining cyberpunk games of this generation.