Shadows on the Vatican - Act II: Wrath

Shadows on the Vatican – Act II: Wrath released on October 26, 2015 as the second installment of a planned four-part series. The developer has consistently worked toward Act III: Sloth, which was formally announced in July 2022 with a 2023 PC release target and has its own Steam store page. On June 29, 2026 — just days before today's assessment — the developer published a substantial development update on Act III. They confirmed the project is still actively in production and provided a detailed breakdown of progress: writing and game design are 99% complete, programming is at 90%, character art at 90%, and backgrounds at 85%. The remaining bottlenecks are animations (20%) and motion comics (5%), which the developer described as the most demanding stage since every panel is hand-crafted and must be animated only after other visual assets are finalized. Audio is also early, at 10%. The developer promised to be in touch again soon and reaffirmed their commitment to finishing the game. In the months leading up to this update, the studio had also been actively maintaining Acts I and II: a January 2026 patch added Steam Deck support, and a May 2026 patch re-enabled the HD version that had been temporarily disabled due to crash issues linked to the aging Wintermute Engine — a technical challenge the developer has been working through since at least November 2025. The original 2023 release target for Act III has been missed by over two years, and the June 2026 update makes clear that significant work (particularly animated cutscenes and audio) remains. No release date has been announced. While the development is clearly still active and meaningful progress has been made, the gap between the promised timeline and the current completion status introduces genuine uncertainty about when Act III will ship.