There are plenty more Fellow Traveller titles on sale to choose from - so whether you're looking for something new, a bargain, some cool soundtracks and bundles, or even something to play on Steam Deck, we're sure to have something just for you.
We're also thrilled to announce that three new games are joining the Fellow Traveller family; Scrabdackle, Wander Stars and Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo - read up on each of them below!
Wander Stars: Follow the story of Ringo and Wolfe as they join forces to collect the pieces of the Wanderstar Map in this turn-based RPG with roguelite elements! Use words to create your own fighting techniques, befriend your rivals, and explore the universe in an adventure inspired by 90s anime.
Scrabdackle: As a novice wizard, discover the intricate world of Scrabdackle and experience the impact wizardkind has unknowingly had upon it. Scrabdackle is a hand-drawn, non-linear adventure with a vast, intricate overworld, tight and responsive combat, cheeky banter, and pages of lore to discover.
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo: A 3D adventure where you play as Kulebra, a dead snake with a heart of gold that wakes up in Limbo. Use your wits and keen eye to gather clues from the residents and find items that will help uncover the mystery of Limbo and its curse that traps souls into repeating the same day on loop.
The Church in the Darkness - 90% Off For LudoNarraCon
We're proud to once again have The Church in the darkness participating in this year’s LudoNarraCon sale which kicks off today and lasts until May 11th. Perfect time for you or a friend to venture deep into the cult jungles of The Church in the Darkness for 90% off.
And I (project director Richard Rouse) will also be participating in the panel Game Stories Told in Most Unexpected & Surprising Ways which first appears Friday May 5th at 10am US Pacific Time.
Be sure to check out LudoNarraCon, where you can find everything about the fifth annual digital festival held exclusively on Steam to find some other dark and interesting narrative video games, including talks and streams from the developers that make them. Or check out some narrative game demos - there's always some new hidden jems to be found at LudoNarraCon.
Not all the games features will all promise cults in the jungle, but there's more to life than joining the Collective Justice Mission. Right? Right?
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
LudoNarraCon: Shocking Developments panel + On Sale!
LudoNarraCon - the Steam festival dedicated to narrative games - is taking place right now, May 5th-9th, and you can get The Church in the Darkness for 80% off, or complete your cult experience by picking up the True Believer Special Edition soundtrack & extra videos for the same discount which makes it quite a deal indeed.
As part of this LNC I am hosting the "Shocking Developments: Subverting Expectations with Game Stories" panel. I'm sure Church and other games I've worked on will come up, and I'm sharing the stage with some great writers: Antony Johnston (Resident Evil Village and many more), Heather Albano (A Study in Steampunk: Choice by Gaslight and many more), and Xalavier Nelson (Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator and many more). Catch it when it loops on the LudoNarraCon page.
[UPDATE]: Or watch the video right here on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNz70KC4ij8
Find all the LudoNarraCon games and such right here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/LudoNarraCon
We've been in LudoNarraCon before - if you missed them, check out some of our favorite videos from past conferences:
That's plenty of high quality convention talks for you to enjoy - and all for free and from the comfort of your Steam platform of choice.
Thanks to Fellow Traveller for running LudoNarraCon and supporting the narrative game scene. They've got their own cult following...
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
On Sale for LudoNarraCon + "Telling Dark Stories with Games" Panel
LudoNarraCon - the Steam festival dedicated to narrative games - is taking place right now, April 23 - 26. The Church in the Darkness has exhibited at all the previous LNC events, and right now we're going to be on sale for this one! A good time to head to the jungle if you yet come to join us.
As part of this LNC I hosted the "Telling Dark Stories with Games" panel. I talk about Church on there, and share the stage with some great dark storytelling panelists: Emily Short (Sunless Skies, Sunless Seas, Fallen London), Marta Fijak (Frostpunk) and Thomas Grip (Amnesia series, SOMA). Catch it when it loops on the LudoNarraCon page, or watch the video recording whenever you want (on demand) right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osBN80_AhNo
Or you can check out all the great panels and LudoNarraCon content over here:
That's a lot of talking about the game! I think there's some really fun and fascinating discussions in there.
Thanks to our publisher Fellow Traveller who created LudoNarraCon and keeps championing weird narrative games like ours.
And remember, we're on sale for the duration of the event! When better to come to come join/escape our cult.
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
Version 1.42 + True Believer DLC Update + Sale!
This dark December brings several updates that we've combined into one, and this week it's all on sale. Come, listen.
Version 1.42
We've just published our version 1.42 which adds some more functionality and polishes our "Notes" feature that we introduced in v1.4. To recap, our last updated added a Notes menu item, letting players review all of the documents they have unlocked in their many journeys through Freedom Town, letting you review notes you have collected over multiple playthroughs. We like how this showcases all the different narrative pieces our writers and artists came up with for the game's collectable documents, and lets you read them in the calm between playthroughs. Read more about the feature in our last update: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/339830/view/2907598989583047897
This 1.42 version adds a "Total Collected" counter in the top left of the screen so you can track your progress in collecting all the many documents you might find in Freedom Town. V1.42 also improves the interface on the menu, adds Japanese translation to the new screen, and fixes some other UI and polish items.
Update to the True Believer Special Edition
Our True Believer Special Edition is our DLC that includes our soundtrack and a number of Behind the Scenes videos, and we've just expanded it with two new videos! These were clips we had in the vault that we thought people would really enjoy checking out - we've edited them and synced them up with the best sound.
The videos are live in studio recordings of songs by our cult leaders and voice actors extraordinaire Ellen McLain and John Patrick Lowrie. One of the new videos features Ellen doing a spirited alternate take on that ultimate cult tune "The Working Song," a fan favorite of our players. In the second John does a perfect one-take performance of "Flee As a Bird" which he sings while simultaneously finger picking his guitar.
If you already purchased the True Believer edition, you will automatically get these files added to your collection. And if you haven't become a True Believer yet, now's a perfect time to pick it up, because it's on sale too!
Fellow Traveller Sale
And to cap off this announcement, this week we're on sale along with a bunch of friend titles from our publisher Fellow Traveller. If you've already played us, take a look at Fellow Traveller's other titles for some uniquely rich narrative experiences.
Or return to us. Get back into the jungle and use our new feature to see if you can locate all the journals, newspaper clippings, inter-cult memos, stained Polaroids, postcards, and cries for help that are tucked away in some footlocker in Freedom Town... The story they tell is the story of all of us.
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
Update V1.4 Now Available
We've now rolled out our new version our new version 1.4, featuring our note tracker, available via the Notes entry on the main menu. This tracks all the notes & documents you find in your playthroughs of the game and lets you read or re-read them whenever you want.
After a few revisions and polish we're happy to bring this new feature out of Beta and make it part of the main build for everyone to play. Your game should automatically update to this version.
As you travel through Freedom Town, in desks, trunks, and other searchable spots you'll collect documents that you can read in game. But some people have mentioned reading them during gameplay can be stressful given how intense the game can be. Plus, since not every document is in every playthrough, it was previously impossible to read all the notes in one place.
So we made the new "Notes" menu. We love this feature because now you can explore the full narrative of the game across multiple playthroughs, and to read the notes not during stressful gameplay but from the calm between games. Our writers and artists put a bunch of work into these, and we wanted to shine an extra spotlight on them through this new menu. You can even explore how these documents and the story change between different versions of the cult, because we show you all the different versions of a specific document you might find in different playthroughs. And you can also see what notes you haven't found yet, giving you a good reason to venture back into the jungle again and see if you can find what you're missing.
Want to know how to find one you're missing? Keep searching those desks, the bulletin boards, and also the red chests in the chapels. The more you search in a single play-through, the more obscure the documents you will start to find... And remember, you can never find them all in a single playthrough.
We're looking forward to seeing who will be first to collect all the notes. We should remind you that we have only been tracking your Notes/Document collection since our 1.3 patch, so if you're a long time player not everything you've found will be displayed. Good reason to go hunting in Freedom Town for those missing documents. And thanks again to folks who tested this out in Beta!
The Collective Justice Mission has so many different stories to share with you - to find them all, you'll have to spend a good amount of time in the jungle. Let us know when you think you've found them all.
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
New Beta: "Notes" Tracker on the Main Menu
We've been working on a new feature that we'd love for you to try out before we set it live in the main branch/build - it's a new Notes tracker/collector, accessible from the main menu!
This is something we've been wanting to get in the game for a while, and it helps you explore the full narrative of the game across multiple playthroughs. We also think it shines a light on an area of the game we think deserves more attention: the many notes and documents you can collect over repeated playthroughs of the game.
As you travel through Freedom Town, in desks, trunks, and other searchable spots you'll be able to collect documents that you can read in game. But some people have mentioned reading them during gameplay can be stressful given how intense the game can be. Plus, since not every document is in every playthrough, it was previously impossible to read all the notes in one place.
FIRST, to access it you'll need to download our Beta build. To do that, select the game in your Steam library list, Right Click on it and select "Properties", go to the "Betas" tab, and select "publicbeta - Public Beta w Notes Menu" (no password required). It should immediately download.
Once you have that downloaded, from the main menu just select the item "Notes (Beta)" and try it out.
Note that this beta should be fully compatible with the main game, and you won't lose any save data for trying it out.
In it's beta form, not all notes are tracked, but we're working on that. Also we have only been tracking your Note/Document collection since our 1.3 patch, so if you're a long time player not everything will be displayed. Good reason to go hunting in Freedom Town for those missing documents.
Much thanks if you do try it out! Let us know what you think, or if you encounter any issues/bugs.
Or sit back and wait for it to hit the main branch once we've got it all finished...
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
True Believer DLC Update + Sale + Vinyl Announcement
Hi everyone,
We just did an update to our build last week, but in addition to being on a week long sale right now (through Monday), I wanted mention a different kind of update we just did...
True Believer DLC Update
If you've picked up The Church in the Darkness you may have seen we also have our True Believer DLC which includes our soundtrack and behind the scenes videos featuring voice over sessions, music recording, some interesting monologues that didn't make it in the game, and various other interesting items.
We've just added another video to our True Believer collection! We recently dug up this unreleased raw video, edited it together, and thought it would make a good addition to the DLC. It features our cult leaders Rebecca and Isaac Walker (played of course by Ellen McLain and John Patrick Lowrie) singing "Where We'll Never Grow Old" from the soundtrack. You may have heard the song already if you got that particular ending, but now you can enjoy seeing them perform it.
If you have the DLC already, it should just pop up in your library along with the rest of the files.
If you don't have the True Believer DLC, it's also on a good sale right now! But also, not to despair, we've also posted this new video up on YouTube: [previewyoutube="uzro_A7Zjv4;full"]
Adding materials to the True Believer edition is something we'll be doing more of later this year, partly because we just like looking through our archives, but also because we like to think of the True Believer videos as an evolving record of what went into making the game.
Vinyl Soundtrack Pre-Orders Available
For those who are really into the soundtrack, today we also announced that our soundtrack is coming out on limited double vinyl! This has all new artwork that was done to make it look like a real 1970s record, and we're proud to have worked on it with our good friends at Minimum Records. This includes both the 10 songs John & Ellen did on disc 1, but then also Andre Maguire's 18 track soundtrack on disc 2.
To learn more about it, check out one of the links below.
Now we've had our music fun, back to work updating the game itself...
- Richard Director/Designer/Writer on The Church in the Darkness
Inventory Fix Update + More
Hey everybody,
Wanted to let everyone know that we did a small patch this weekend that also sets up our next update.
Update 1.3 Live
First up, we just did a small update where we fixed some bugs in the inventory when using mouse control which sometimes resulted in lost items, or using items at the wrong time. Steam should have auto-updated you to version 1.3 to get this patch. This was something rare and that had been eluding us for a while, but we were able to finally pin down how to reproduce it and got it fixed. Now using the mouse with the inventory should work well, let us know if you see any other issues inventory-wise.
But also in this build is the wiring for something you won't actually SEE until our next patch. We've introduced a new system that tracks and saves what you collect in each game playthrough, and we're working on a cool way to display that in game, both so you can review it when you're not in the middle of a difficult infiltration but also to help you track how much of the game you've uncovered. We'll be introducing that patch in September, but slipped some of the infrastructure for it into this build, so it'll start tracking what you've collected in games as of now. I'm being a little nebulous here because I want to have it be a bit of a surprise when you release the feature later, but I think you'll like it.
And as always, if you see anything weird or buggy in this build or any build, let us know in the comments below!
LudoNarraCon Swag Sent & Received
As I mentioned in our last update, we had a great time showing at LudoNarraCon - if you signed up to receive some swag as part of that you should have received your little care package in the mail by now. We know at least one fan in Sweden got theirs:
We've also got one more secret in our cult, which will be cool for people who have purchased the True Believer special edition (which comes with our soundtrack and some nice Behind the Scenes videos). We're hoping to share something about that in the next few weeks.
For now, remember to let us know in the comments below what you think, or if you spot any issues in the new build. And check back for more updates soon and good luck in the jungle!
- Richard Director/Designer/Programmer/etc on The Church in the Darkness
