Do you love narrative video games? LudoNarraCon is a global, digital convention celebrating narrative video games, the talented people who make them, and the fans who love them, hosted on Steam.
Play the free Prologue and get 70% off on our Lacuna!
Taking the journey into a time unknown must begin with a single step. We're inviting you to take that step, with our first playable demo for Between Horizons.
A gripping sci-fi mystery, Between Horizons invites you to take the first step into a multi-branching sci-fi world, where every decision casts out a ripple effect that lasts for generations.
About the Between Horizons Demo
Between Horizons is a 2.5D pixel art detective adventure which puts you in control of a passenger aboard a massive spaceship known as the Zephyr. This brief demo will give you an opportunity to experience the enriching atmosphere of the Zephyr as a member of the ship's middle generation, a crew tasked with ensuring that the ship will reach its destination, but will tragically not live to see it reach there. This taste of gameplay is just the tip of the iceberg of a grand conspiracy that threatens to derail the flight of the Zephyr, and doom its crew.
Check out the Between Horizons announcement trailer
Between Horizons is coming to PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 4|5 later in 2023.
In case a captivating taste of sci-fi goodness isn’t enough, perhaps scooping up a handful of titles from Assemble Entertainment's outstanding indie game library is of order. With many new upcoming indie games to discover, lots of free demos, and if this isn't enough even some sweet savings to come across!
Check out Assemble’s publisher Steam page for more details: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/AssembleEntertainment/#browse
DigiTales Livestream @ Storyteller's Festival!
The Storyteller's Festival is a celebration of the art of storytelling, featuring a wide range of visual novels and narrative games that showcase the best in interactive fiction. We are grateful to be part of this great event and are going to hold a one-hour livestream on the event page later today, March 26, at 7 PM CEST. Come watch us play and chat live, and feel free to ask us questions in the chat. See you all later!
Do you have what it takes to crack the case? - Lacuna at the Steam Mystery Fest!
Steam Mystery Fest celebrates the spirit of investigation and solving mysteries—both big and small—with free demos, discounts, and more, on current and upcoming mystery and detective games of all kinds!
Play the free Prologue and get 60% off on our Lacuna!
Next Sci-Fi Detective Adventure From The Creators of Lacuna!
Hey, everybody!
This is DigiTales Interactive, creators of Lacuna. If you liked our first game, we thought you might be interested in this announcement: Today, we and our publisher Assemble Entertainment proudly announce our upcoming second title, Between Horizons!
What Is It?
Between Horizons is a story-driven detective game set aboard the semi-open world of a generation ship en route to another star. You assume the role of Stella, the ship's young Chief of Security, who is faced with multiple problems threatening to jeopardize the mission. You will have to make some tough moral choices and think hard to unravel the complex conspiracies on the ship if you want things to end well for Stella and the mission. That's right: Just like in Lacuna, the story branches and ends based on your decisions and performance as an investigator.
The gameplay will feel familiar to fans of our first title: direct platformer-style controls, non-repeating branching dialogs, automatic saving (no going back!), collecting clues, submitting solutions to cases. However, we made some major improvements to the formula! In the next few paragraphs, we'd like to provide insights into our thinking behind some aspects of Between Horizons. If you want more marketing speak instead (and of course add the game to your wishlist <3), just check out its store page!
Refined Detective Gameplay
At its very core, Between Horizons is a detective game. We learned a lot about investigation mechanics while working on Lacuna, and we kept around some of the things that worked well:
Cases are solved by filling in gaps in case sheets: you must complete sentences using names of people, places, and other clues you found.
You can always drive the plot forward by submitting a case, even if your solution is wrong. If that happens, you may not know until later, when the consequences manifest themselves.
Instead of alternating cutscenes with self-contained mini games, all the puzzles you solve are directly connected to what's happening in the story.
Good detective games usually give the player a great amount of freedom to come up with the solution on their own. Hence, after a lot of trials and discussions, we landed on some improvements to the formula that aim to maximize player agency:
You can submit the solution to a case at any point in time. You have to decide whether or not you know enough to crack it yet. This also makes it much easier to quickly replay content if you know the solution already.
Any evidence you find (in the entire game!) can be assigned to any case (in the entire game!).
Instead of being presented with a linear string of levels, you can freely move around parts of the ship to investigate. New areas unlock in a Metroidvania fashion as you progress through the story.
You can present characters with evidence, and oftentimes you need to show someone the right clue to make them talk.
Between The Lines
Finally, Between Horizons is also very focused on its story, characters, and dialogs.
The idea for its premise originated back in 2020. We wanted to explore the concept of one generation setting out to do something and the next generation being presented with the consequences of that (unfinished) journey. We believe it's a relatable topic to many people especially nowadays, with the younger generation inheriting a host of different crises. The responsibility generations bear for one another is a complex and nuanced problem for which we believe to have found the perfect setting.
We can't wait to show you more of the game over the coming months. For now, we hope that you like what you see and that you enjoyed this little write-up of our thoughts behind the game. Follow us on Steam for more updates and most importantly, add Between Horizons to your wishlist! Both would help us out a great deal.
Thanks a lot for reading, have a nice week!
Much love, Everybody at DigiTales Interactive & Assemble Entertainment
Let's party! Lacuna Anniversary Update now available!
Hello, everyone!
Precisely a year ago, Lacuna launched on PC. It was DigiTales' first ever release, and we had no idea how it would go. Thankfully, its reception from both critics and players alike has been very positive.
Thank you so much for your support, your reviews, appreciative messages, guides, achievement hunting, social media follows, and all the other nice things you've done as a community! It means the world to us.
Today, we want to show our appreciation by bringing you Community Items, Steam Deck support, and a big anniversary update!
Community Items
We sat down and created some neat Steam Community Items for you to show off to your friends. Here's how they work in a nutshell: You earn Lacuna-themed trading cards by playing the game and by trading them on the community market with other players. Once your collection of six cards is complete, you can use them to craft a Lacuna-themed badge to show off on your Steam profile. Repeating the process levels up your badge to a maximum level of 5 (and there's a special foil badge you can earn by collecting all six rare foil cards). Crafting a badge also earns you additional Lacuna-themed random drops each time, like emojis and profile backgrounds.
In a nutshell:
Collect the six trading cards representing some of Lacuna's main characters.
Craft up to six badges to rise through the ranks at the CDI.
Express yourself using the six new Lacuna emojis (including a super rare Horace)!
Spice up your Steam profile using one of five Lacuna backgrounds.
Steam Deck support
Valve already rated Lacuna as "Playable" on Steam Deck a while ago, which is the second-best achievable rating. Having tested it ourselves, we can confirm that the game could already be played comfortably from start to finish on the Steam Deck. However, a mouse cursor would occasionally show up, which denied us the coveted "Deck Verified" rating. We have patched this and received the Verified rating just last night! It should become visible on Lacuna's page any moment now.
Anniversary update
Over the past year, we received a number of bug reports and other requests for improvements, the more severe of which we usually patched in right away. However, the backlog of minor changes kept growing, and we took a few weeks out of our schedule this month to address them. These are no major content additions or new features, but the game is getting a little shinier, faster, and more robust. You can find the full list of changes at the bottom.
We want to thank you again for your support, and we hope you keep enjoying the game. As always, let us know your thoughts!
Much love, DigiTales Interactive & Assemble Entertainment
Changelog
Polishing
Added more camera shake & controller vibration throughout the scenes
Moved away flying cars that were distracting in some scenes
Stairs in Lower Precinct apartments are now opened up after finding the apartment
Mitigated brief FPS drop in prologue panic sequence
Adjusted volume of some music tracks
Implemented a few missing sounds
Various other small fixes & improvements
UI
Investigatable texts now scale with camera zoom
Investigatable UI canvas now scales with text length
Outline Mode tooltip is no longer truncated by screen border
Pulse on Cell's home tab is now set more frequently & accurately
Weather icon in Cell's home tab now reflects actual weather
Added Assemble news widget to main menu
Improved legibility of Asian fonts using drop shadows
Added missing color-coding of bank statements in Chinese
Walked distance in Cell home tab no longer causes a line break when long
Added Malaysian translation company to rolling credits
Fixed some typos in German and English localization
New art assets
Added a number of new commercials (incl. sound design)
Flying cars now have a variety of colors (used to be all blue)
Added proper benches to CDI HQ rooftop
Thompson now holds up contract when referring to it
Implemented dedicated 'get shot in the back' animation for Williams
Improved animations when Rattlesnake Farms door is blown open
Neil now leans against the wall in appropriate places
Computer screen in Drovia is now animated (+ new portrait)
Corion Church guard is now seen coming out of hiding
Added various 'get tied up' & 'tie up' animations throughout scenes
News & cigarette machines now have their own frames in the levels
Visually improved various static & animated sprites
Fixed rare/minor bugs
Train acceleration & deceleration are no longer FPS-dependent
Player can no longer get stuck by sitting down in train right before scene change
Player can no longer get soft-stuck on the stairs to Catherine's roof
Fixed incorrect render order of an agent in Corion Church
Added animations for Receptionist handing Neil the universal key card
Assigned a missing portrait for agent Kumar during Handover scene
Added new kneel animations for Laura in Handover scene
Fixed jittering of sprites during (most) slow camera movements
Fixed a bug where player could clip out of Mrs. Moore's apartment
Fixed a bug where camera would zoom incorrectly outside Lila's apartment
Fixed a bug where Neil wouldn't put away his badge properly sometimes
Fixed a bug where player was able to get up from bed early before Gary's call
Fixed a bug where Matuna Harbor door would not visibly open up
Corrected a line being said by the wrong person in Matuna Harbor
1-hour LIVE chat with the Lacuna devs (#theBAE)
Jasmin and Julian, founders of DigiTales Interactive, the indie studio that brought you Lacuna, will be chatting with and taking questions from the audience during this one-hour livestream.
We are featured in the ‚Big Adventure Event 2022‘ by Hitcents and Jordan Taylor
Thanks to Publisher Hitcents and Host Jordan Taylor, we’ll kick off the year with a celebration singularly dedicated to the Adventure genre, and we are happy being part of this amazing event!
🧭 ‚The Big Adventure Event‘ will take place starting January 20th until January 24th on Steam!
Exclusive Developer Livestream during the Big Adventure Event 2022!
Among the many games being featured, Lacuna will also have an exclusive developer livestream hosted by developer DigiTales Interactive during the event!
Additionally, our Lacuna will get amazing company by Assemble Entertainment! You can also find the following Assemble games being featured during this year's BAE:
Cyberpunk adventure ENCODYA
The upcoming text-based RPG Roadwarden
And never missing any party: Larry Laffer and both of his recent Wet Dreams adventures Leisure Suit Larry – Wet Dreams Don’t Dry and Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Dry Twice
Mark the date:
The BAE will start January 20 at 7pm CET and end on January 24!
SciFi Noir Adventure Lacuna is out now for consoles!
Together with developer DigiTales Interactive we wish you happy holidays and are thrilled to announce that our critically acclaimed Sci-Fi Noir adventure game Lacuna launches today for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 4/5!
Nintendo Switch version will release digitally on 28th December.
The story and decision-driven adventure is available in the Xbox and PlayStation digital stores. In addition, there is a 20% launch discount in the Microsoft Store and will be along the Nintendo Switch launch on December 28 in the Nintendo eShop.
Watch the Console Launch Trailer on YouTube now:
[previewyoutube="cFBNYh8y2Yo;full"]
About Lacuna
Lacuna is a pixel art adventure in a beautiful 2D sci-fi noir universe, which challenges the player to utilize extensive dialogue options to make decisions with potentially serious consequences. In the game, you'll step into the shoes of CDI agent Neil Conrad. Awoken by the news of a murder, you rush into a case that will soon turn your life and the whole solar system upside down. Players must use their moral compass to navigate an emotionally intense experience that may or may not stimulate some critical self-reflection. Ask questions, collect evidence, and put the pieces together until the ugly truth reveals itself... or not.
You want to see and learn more about Lacuna, and you have missed any Lacuna Trailer?
Find them all here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEM2iueadJ3Klskv1WdlD2uew01TMX6KB
