This month, we welcomed a new housemate (again). Also, we wanted to tell you about Black Friday sales and share some tidbits about our next game.
Manufacture 43 moved in with us
So, a couple of weeks ago, we welcomed yet another indie game dev to our urban "commune" of the "21st Cobblestone Street" (well, to be honest, it's "21, rue des Retaillons", but it sounds way more like a "secret hideout" translated in English, don't you think?).
Daniel from Manufacture 43 has been working on his "Ikaruga meets rock-paper-scissors" shoot'em up Pawarumi for a couple of years, and he's in the midst of porting the game to console systems.
As you may already know, I'm personally not very good at this kind of demanding gameplay, but let me tell you that I've heard nothing but good words and praise for his title. It is a visually stunning piece of work set in a very original "Neo-Aztec" future. So, if you're into shooting at everything that moves from the pilot seat of your spaceship, you might want to check this one out.
An "in game" screenshot of Pawarumi. Beware of the nasty pink bullets!
Here's a link to Pawarumi's website if you want to learn more: pawarumi.com.
And, of course, you can get the game on Steam:
So, the time of the year when people lose all sense of sanity and restraint over crazy deals on the internet is upon us.
To uphold the tradition, our games will be on sale at their usual discount on Steam (and other digital retailers) during the Autumn Sales, running until next Tuesday (November 27th):
— Buy Seers Isle on Steam with 10% off,
— Buy Along the Edge on Steam with 30% off.
We're making good progress on our next project. I (Geoffroy) have written the story outline while Nico has been painting some concept art to pin down the visual style of the game. Meanwhile, Raphaël has been going quite deep under the hood, and if all goes according to plan, we might have a brand new game engine soon, opening up a whole new universe of possibilities, the sky being the limit and all (more on that later).
We're not ready to go into too much detail about the game, but we can safely say that we'll be visiting some familiar grounds, as you can witness for yourself in the concept art here below:
Concept Art: Alice at the balcony, thinking about her life.
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
Hello everyone!
This month, we received an award, welcomed new housemates, and made Seers Isle available in a bookstore.
Studio Black Flag moved in with us
That's the cycle of life. The bad news is that our friends from Shinypix moved out of the 21 rue des Retaillons (Nova-box's batcave, where the magic happens) to rise up to new challenges and opportunities. We wish Fabrice, Ludo, Julien and Olivier all the best, happiness and success in their future endeavors. We will miss having them with us.
The good news is, our friends Adrien and Maxime from Studio Black Flag quickly filled in the vacant desks, moving in with us at the start of the month.
You may have heard about them and their incredible upcoming game, Orphan Age, in past issues of this column. If you haven't, I strongly suggest you take a look at it. In fact, we love their game so much we wrote a small interactive novella named Orphan Age: Diaries to go along with it. I can safely say that it's not the last you're hearing about them. Stay tuned.
Here's a link to their website if you want to learn more: studioblackflag.com
Black Flag is moving in. From left to right: Adrien, Maxime, and a tired writer.
Indie Game Factory and the Animasia convention
Last weekend, the team attended the "Indie Game Factory", a professional meetup of the French game industry, followed by the Animasia convention where we showed our games to visitors.
Seers Isle's music composers, Camille and Julien, gave a speech about music and video games while I (Geoffroy) participated in a panel about narrative design and writing for video games, sharing the stage with Sybil Collas and FibreTigre.
We're also very proud to announce that we received the "Best Game of 2018" award during the convention. Our friends from Howly Games got the "Best Art Direction" award for their upcoming platformer Unspoken Chronicles: Nora (they're doing a kickstarter campaign right now, go check it out) and Tako Studio received the "heart crush of the jury" award for their puzzle game Minimal Move.
Seers Isle Steam keys are available at "Krazy Kat", a comic book store in Bordeaux
We're thrilled to announce that you can buy Seers Isle Steam keys in a real brick and mortar shop. Our friends from Krazy Kat, a comic book store located 10 rue de la Merci in Bordeaux have a limited run of keys nestled in a nice and exclusive leaflet.
If you're in the Bordeaux area, we strongly suggest you go pay them a visit. Matthieu and his team are of great counsel, very friendly, and they even have a bar where you can drink a beer or a coffee in the shop.
Well, this month has been quite hectic with post-launch frenzy following the release of Seers Isle. However, we found some time to start the pre-production of our next project. Everything is still under the seal of secrecy, of course, but since we love you best, here's a concept art picture, exclusive to you, newsletter subscribers.
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
If you already have Along the Edge in your Steam library, you can "complete your collection" using the second bundle and have 20% off on Seers Isle without having to buy Along the Edge again (or the other way around). That way, we can reward your fidelity.
And to top things off, Along the Edge is also on sale with 30% off until Monday, October 1st!
Press reviews
We've been overwhelmed by great feedback from the players and the press. Here's a selection of quotes from the reviews we received (follow the links to read them in full).
— “Seer Isle once again proves that Nova-box know how to make a visual novel with choices that matter. It’s rich, artistic, emotional and mysterious, and it draws you in quickly and holds your attention rapt. The twists are surprising, the characters are relatable and the environments are gorgeous. Seers Isle is about as perfect as visual novels can get if you ask me.”, Seers Isle Review, Jacob Wood, Indie Hangover.
— “Seers Isle est bien plus captivant que j’aurais pu l’imaginer. Il réussit à rendre vivant et interactif un genre qui ne l’est pas. Il faut saluer sa bande-son de grande classe, et sa direction artistique magnifique.”, Seers Isle – Le cycle des chamans disparus, Veltar, The Pixel Post,
— “Si on aime ce genre de productions, cela vaut le coup de donner un peu pour passer quelques bonnes heures de lecture un peu interactive”, Test de Seers Isle, Zekkangel, Jeux OnLine.
Animasia Convention in Bordeaux, France
Put it in your diaries! If you want to come say "hello" to us or try your hand at our games, we'll be at the Animasia convention in Bordeaux. It happens on the weekend of the 13th & 14th of October.
If you are a video-game professional, there's a special day for us on Friday, October 12th with interesting keynotes by our fellow game devs, under the moniker "Indie Game Factory".
There will be two interventions from Seers Isle's team members:
Places are limited, so you should move fast if you want to come and watch our talks!
You'll get info and directions for the Animasia convention over there: animasia.org (in French).
For the pro keynotes, take a look over here (in French also, I'm afraid).
As another incentive for you to come see us, we're working on a special collector's print to sell Steam keys in conventions, and... other places (we'll tell you more about that soon).
Here's a glimpse of our prototype:
New prints available on Society 6
You may have already seen the portraits of Seers Isle's characters Nico made with our friend and colleague Ludovic Rivalland. If you love them enough to decorate your walls with them, go no further. We added them to our fine art collection on Society6.
Note that we also have a selection of illustrations from our games available.
And if you are interested in Ludovic's work, we strongly suggest you have a look at his ArtStation profile:
https://www.artstation.com/ludopanda
What have we been up to?
Well, as you may imagine, we've been pretty busy with the launch. However, we didn't forget to celebrate! Here's a couple of snapshots from the release party we had last Friday at Nova-box's headquarters.
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
Celtic Western-ish visual novel "Seers Isle" has been released.
Help young shamans overcome the trials of their initiatory journey in narrative game Seers Isle.
Were are happy to release our new narrative game Seers Isle for Windows, Mac and Linux!
Throughout your adventures in the game Seers Isle, your choices impact the fate of a group of characters.
Dreams, fantasy, magic and shamanism are central to every decision: your choices will influence the various story paths and endings, depending on your favorites characters, for a high replayability of the game. More than 600 illustrations have been drawn for the game, in a splendid graphic style inspired by the European Franco-Belge comics.
A group of shaman apprentices land on the shores of a sacred island to be initiated to magic. As they progress through the wilderness, looking for the “Seers”, their spirit-guides, they realize they’re not alone. Who is this strange horned woman they are seeing in their dreams?
A story full of the magical spirit of Northern European myth.
“The island… It was my prison.
For ages, I roamed the land, helpless,
looking for a way out...
And then, they arrived.”
Hello everyone!
So, it's official, we're in the final stretch.
Seers Isle Release
Let's start by the big news, shall we?
Three weeks from now, on Tuesday, September 18th 2018, we'll be releasing Seers Isle.
The game will be available for PC, Mac & Linux for 12.99€ / $12.99.
Nova-box will publish the game on Steam and itch.io, and, thanks to our partner Plug In Digital, it will also be distributed on a myriad of other stores (such as Amazon, Gameplanet, etc.).
We made a trailer video to celebrate and spread the word (feel free to share it to your heart's content):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_vvZDXNSg
Original Soundtrack
Once again, Julien and Camille have gone above and beyond all expectations and delivered an excellent album, with a whopping almost one hour and forty minutes run time of music from the game.
However, I admit I may not be the most reliable witness, but fortunately, you don't have to take my word for it. You can already stream a couple of tracks on Bandcamp.
The album will also be available at release on Steam, bundled with the game, as well as on the streaming platform of your choice (Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.).
Well, as you can imagine, we've been full time on Seers Isle, polishing and ironing out all the bugs and typos we could find, while Nico and Ambre have been putting the last coat of paint on the hundreds of images that are in the game.
We ran two closed beta during August, and we would like to take this opportunity, the team and I, to warmly thank our testers for their time, their patience and their dedication.
Before we see you on release day, here's the last batch of Seers Isle in-production pictures:
Thank you again for your support, and see you next month!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register on Seers Isle website:
http://www.seersisle.com/contact/
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
After working for the few last months in complete secrecy, we're very proud to announce our next narrative game: Seers Isle.
This new project is both a continuation and a departure from Along the Edge. We kept the same gameplay (or lack thereof) and, like its predecessor, Seers Isle is first and foremost an interactive story where all your choices shape the relationships and personalities of the main characters, but we tried to innovate on every other fronts.
The fact that I talk about the "main characters" (plural) is not innocent, of course. We did things a bit differently this time around, and you'll discover the storytelling evolves from chapter to chapter from an hidden narrator with a "choral" approach to a more classic "first person" point of view.
Also, As you'll notice in the screenshot here above, the presentation of the game is much more reminiscent of a European comic-book, with speech balloons freely moving above the gorgeous artworks of Nicolas Fouqué.
We also have some surprises on the soundtrack side, but I'll make a special blog post about it (yes, I do believe it deserves its own blog post indeed).
For the story in itself, we went for a fantasy setting, a dreamlike version of medieval Northern Europe, mixed with some South American influences, where shamans seek the guidance of strange horned spirits, the eponymous "Seers", on a mystic island.
So, without further ado, here's a short writeup of the scenario, hoping it would spark up your palate:
“The island… It was my prison.
For ages, I roamed the land, helpless, looking for a way out…
… And then, they arrived.”
A group of shaman apprentices set foot on the shores of a sacred island to be initiated to magic. As they progress through the wilderness, looking for the “Seers”, their spirit-guides, they realize they’re not alone.
Who is this strange horned woman they are seeing in their dreams?
If this new venture picked your interest, please take a look at the official website: seersisle.com, or follow us on social networks, either Seers Isle's Facebook Page or Nova-box's Twitter.
And, of course, you can add it to wishlist to be notified about the release.
The game is now fully compatible with Xbox and Steam controllers.
Full patch notes :
- engine improvements for better performance (animations, texts loading, assets management),
- the game is now fully compatible with game-pads (Xbox controllers, Steam controller),
- added a "fast skip" feature: long press on "space" on keyboard or the "A" button on game-pad now quickly skips texts and dialog (thanks for everyone who suggested it),
- launching a save in the "game over" state now shows you the achievements you've unlocked during your play-through instead of bringing you back to the main menu,
- fixed several minor bugs and glitches.
Enjoy,
Geoffroy.
Patch Notes (1.5.0 Beta)
Hello everyone,
we've just released the version 1.5.0 of Along the Edge in the beta channel.
We've rebuilt a lot of stuff under the hood to improve performance and added new features to address some quality of life issues.
Here are the patch notes:
- engine improvements for better performance (animations, texts loading, assets management),
- the game is now fully compatible with game-pads (Xbox controllers, Steam controller),
- added a "fast skip" feature: long press on "space" on keyboard or the "A" button on game-pad now quickly skips texts and dialog (thanks for everyone who suggested it),
- launching a save in the "game over" state now shows you the achievements you've unlocked during your play-through instead of bringing you back to the main menu,
- fixed several minor bugs and glitches.
Since we've changed so much things on the engine side, we feel like it's safer to let the update for a couple of weeks in beta before releasing it for everyone.
In theory, everything should work without any hiccups.
The team would like to thank anyone who may want to opt-in for testing the release. If you find any bug, we would really appreciate if you contact us either via the form on alongtheedge-game.com/contact or here, in the Steam Forums.
How to opt-in for the beta:
- go to your Steam Library,
- right-click on "Along the Edge" in the list of game on the left and choose "Properties",
- click on the "BETA" tab on the top of the pop-up window that appeared,
- select "beta - Beta Branch" in the drop-down menu (no password is required),
- the game should start updating immediately.
To opt-out and go back to the release branch, go back to the "BETA" tab in properties and choose "NONE - opt out of all beta programs".
Thanks,
Geoffroy.
Patch Notes (1.4.0)
Along the Edge is now available in simplified Chinese!
The team would like to warmly thank indienova.com / The Gutemberg Project who made this possible.
We also fixed a couple of issues :
- fixed an issue where some of the UI wouldn’t correctly change language when
the language was changed on an existing save,
- fixes an issue where the language of the options menu wouldn’t automatically change when language was changed.
