The Steam Next Fest is now in full swing and we're very happy with the warm welcome End of Lines has received so far. If you haven't had the chance to check out the entire first chapter of the game yet, don’t worry, there’s still time, so please do go and download and play the free demo on our Steam page!
Thank you so much to everyone who has played the demo so far, and to everyone who has given us feedback, it means so much to us. If you haven't done so yet, don't hesitate to reach us on our Steam Community Forums or via Twitter, we'll be glad to answer any questions you may have about our new story.
On Tuesday, our friend and streamer extraordinaire AceTheSoul hosted a special broadcast of the game here on Steam and on Twitch, including doing a first playthrough of the demo with his lovely guests and followed this up with a Q&A session with the dev team: Nico (author, art director and illustrator) and I, Geoffroy (co-author).
In case you missed the livestream, we've scheduled a rerun on Friday, June 17th at 2PM CEST / 8AM EDT which will be broadcast here on the End of Lines Steam page.
AceTheSoul is the voice actor who lent his voice to Camille for our teaser video and he had a blast voicing our characters with his guests (and let me tell you that Giana made an incredible child voice impression for Sam).
Please go and follow the wonderful AceTheSoul on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/acethesoul
As always, wishlisting End of Lines and following us on Steam are the best ways you can support us and the development before launch. We’d really appreciate it!
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks: https://twitter.com/novabox http://facebook.com/novabox.studio https://instagram.com/novabox
Art Live Stream
This afternoon, until 4:00PM CET, our Art director, Nico, will be live on Steam, creating a new image for the game.
You can take this opportunity to ask him anything in the chat!
End of Lines Demo Livestream
Hello everyone!
We are very happy to announce that Nova-box will be participating in the Steam Next Fest for the very first time!
This summer’s Steam Next Fest begins on June 13th and runs until June 20th. During this week the first ever demo of End of Lines, our next interactive graphic novel about a family trying to survive in a post-climate meltdown world, will be made available for everyone on our Steam page.
We’re so excited for you to be able to play for yourselves for the first time. The demo consists of the game’s introduction and the first chapter, out of five that will make up the full game.
We’re so proud of End of Lines, but we’d love your feedback too! Please do reach out to us on our Steam Community Forums or via Twitter, if you have any questions or feedback for us.
Also, on Tuesday 14th at 11 AM, Pacific Time / 20 PM CET (Paris) Time, we invite you to join us on a special broadcast: our friend and streamer AceTheSoul will play the demo live with his guests, followed up by a Q&A with the dev team: Nico (author, art director and illustrator) and I, Geoffroy (co-author).
AceTheSoul is also the voice actor who lent his voice to Camille for our teaser video here above!
We hope you can join us on the livestream, and we’re excited to chat with you about End of Lines!
As always, wishlisting End of Lines and following us on Steam are the best ways you can support us and the development before launch. We’d really appreciate it!
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks: http://twitter.com/novabox http://facebook.com/novabox.studio https://instagram.com/novabox
Newsletter #24 — April 2022
Hello everyone!
Do you remember that time when I promised you more frequent newsletters? Well, it turns out I skipped March, sorry about that. A classic case of "too much to do and too little time to do it", I'm afraid. I'll try to do better next month (but no promises).
Since last time, we've updated all our games to make sure they play great on the new Steam Deck device, and we've also made progress on End of Lines development (you'll get an update at the end of this newsletter, as always).
Also, we took part in a couple of events, online of course, but also IRL for a change!
Nova-box is Steam Deck ready
If you own one of our games on Steam, you might have already seen the news pop up in your library's news feed: we've made all our catalog compatible with the device requirements for the Steam Deck..
We really believe this new handheld console is a great fit for our games, giving you another way to play them on the go or in the comfort of your favorite reading nook.
In terms of features, you won't see any big changes, as most of the upgrades took place under the hood. We took this opportunity to upgrade to the long term support version of Unity 2019 which should provide some optimizations. We also support the new "Dynamic Cloud Save" feature on Steam, which means saves are synchronized automatically over the internet whenever you put the Steam Deck to sleep, and synchronize back when it wakes up.
Seers Isle running on the Steam Deck. Our other games play great as well.
End of Lines was featured in a pair of online events
First, we took part in the "Earth Appreciation Day" Sale on Steam as an upcoming game. We were very glad to be part of this, alongside great ecologically aware titles. As you may imagine, it aligns with our ethos in general and with End of Lines in particular, and the fact that it helped our wishlists number is a nice cherry on the top.
End of Lines was also featured in the "Mini Indie Showcase" hosted by Six One Indie during the Pax East. You can watch the replay here below. There are some great upcoming titles to discover there too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdAq_B2eAjI
Demo at the Flora Tristan Library
Our friend Leslie Tabourdeau invited us to talk about End of Lines at the Flora Tristan Library in Bordeaux a couple of weeks ago. We were, of course, happy to oblige. We hosted a demo session and talked about the game alongside a team of students from the Epitech computer school, who were working on a non-profit project with the aim to help detect and chart ocean pollution. It was a joy to have a chat with young professionals trying to make a difference. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors.
What have we been up to?
If you're wondering, yes, most of our attention has been focused on End of Lines. We're still late, but we managed to reduce our lateness quite a bit without crunching so far. Nico is currently working on an updated feedback system / iconography. If all goes well, you might see big cats on the top of the screen on the next iteration of the game.
Meanwhile, the rest of the text is progressing rapidly towards completion. Hopefully we'll have a first version by the end of the month. English translation and music/sound design just started too, and it's real a pleasure to see how Rachel, Camille and Julien were enthusiastic about the project and eager to start working on it!
That’s all for now, see you next month!
Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox
Best,
Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.
Newsletter #23 — February 2022
Hello everyone!
So, it's official: last month we finally announced "End of Lines", our next interactive graphic novel!
End of Lines
So, what is "End of Lines" exactly? Well, first off, it's an interactive graphic novel, like its predecessors: a novel size adventure, illustrated with hundreds of hand-painted pictures, where your choices will decide the fate of our protagonists, a family of travelers wandering northward in a post climate meltdown Southern Europe, in search of a hospitable place to settle.
This time around, Nico, in addition to his usual role of artistic director and illustrator, also takes the helm of "creative director" (like on "Seers Isle"), with the full support of the rest of the team, of course. He really wanted to use our creative output to speak out about climate change, to explore the way it might affect the next generations if we continue on our path towards self-annihilation.
It is quite a change of pace from our usual mysticism, occultism, and identity exploration, and we really hope you will enjoy this new endeavor!
Hereabove, the main cast of "End of Lines" takes a moment of respite in a flooded village of the Galician coast.
Handing the pen over to Nico, here's what he has to say about the game, in his own words:
"I've been busy with this project for a while. Mélanie and I were working on concept arts while producing Across the Grooves and I was already writing some first drafts. I'm very happy to be able to start sharing this with you.
Like many people of my generation, eco-anxiety is part of my life. I know it's not very original, but with this project, I hope to do something not only entertaining, but also, maybe, a bit useful. At least as "useful" as a work of fiction can be...
It's also a very personal universe that I'm trying to build, based on meaningful personal experiences, with the simple objective of sharing these emotions. And I hope it will be good enough."
"Nuit de la lecture"
The opportunities for public events have been rather less frequent with the pandemic, but we had the opportunity to present our games during 2022 edition of "La Nuit de la Lecture" ("the night of reading") in the public media library of Mérignac, near Bordeaux. We had the pleasure of having a lot of people showing up to discover interactive fiction via our games. Big thanks to Baptiste Normand and the rest of the team at the library for their hospitality, we had a great time!
What have we been up to?
As you can imagine, we're currently working full time, all steam ahead, on End of Lines. Nico and Alix are busy writing the last chapter while Julie is working on the storyboards of chapter 3 (out of 5). For my part, I give a hand wherever I can while working on text and scripts integration.
We're on a tight schedule, but we should be ready for our release date later this year without over-exhausting ourselves.
That’s all for now, see you next month!
Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox
