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! Thats all for now, see you next month! Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/ 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.

[ 2022-04-28 09:30:30 CET ] [ Original post ]