Freedom is control. And bread is pain. What?

BOSSGARD

Bossgard, Sand Sailor Studios latest project, has just been released!

Key Features

HERE

Just as promised, Black The Fall is out now on the Nintendo Switch eShop for Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, available for purchase at 10% discount, after a successful launch in December for United States, Canada and Mexico. Grab your Joy-Con™ controllers and prepare for some emotional time travel into a dark world inspired by Romanian Communism and 90’s Sci-fi universe, as you take control of an old machinist who manipulates his way out of The System.

Just as promised, Black The Fall is out now on the Nintendo Switch eShop for Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, available for purchase at 10% discount, after a successful launch in December for United States, Canada and Mexico. Grab your Joy-Con controllers and prepare for some emotional time travel into a dark world inspired by Romanian Communism and 90s Sci-fi universe, as you take control of an old machinist who manipulates his way out of The System.

After a short debate, The Party has unanimously agreed to open a new branch this Winter, in order to enable more workers to serve the country. After being successfully launched earlier this year on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Black The Fall is coming to the Nintendo Switch system on December 14th in United States, Canada and Mexico and, in early January, in Europe. Grab your Joy-Con™ controllers and prepare for some emotional time travel into a dark world inspired by Romanian Communism and 90’s Sci-fi universe, as you take control of an old machinist who manipulates his way out of The System. Check out the trailer HERE and the Nintendo Switch™ game page HERE.

After a short debate, The Party has unanimously agreed to open a new branch this Winter, in order to enable more workers to serve the country. After being successfully launched earlier this year on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Black The Fall is coming to the Nintendo Switch system on December 14th in United States, Canada and Mexico and, in early January, in Europe. Grab your Joy-Con controllers and prepare for some emotional time travel into a dark world inspired by Romanian Communism and 90s Sci-fi universe, as you take control of an old machinist who manipulates his way out of The System. Check out the trailer HERE and the Nintendo Switch game page HERE.

We are thrilled to let you know that, starting today, Black The Fall makes your RAZER Chroma devices light up! The RAZER Chroma integration for Black The Fall centres around offering hints regarding what controls to use when and marking occasional challenges in a celebratory way.
Get ready for some red, white and yellow lights to dance on your desk when playing as Black. Black The Fall Patch 2.0 notes: Updates: - Razer Chroma integration for keyboard, mouse and mouse pad - The Halloween mini-game is included in the Main Menu under Extras. Fixes: - Having multiple controllers plugged in works now - additional key mapping for playing with the arrows and surrounding keys (press 0 / Insert to interact)

We are thrilled to let you know that, starting today, Black The Fall makes your RAZER Chroma devices light up! The RAZER Chroma integration for Black The Fall centres around offering hints regarding what controls to use when and marking occasional challenges in a celebratory way.
Get ready for some red, white and yellow lights to dance on your desk when playing as Black. Black The Fall Patch 2.0 notes: Updates: - Razer Chroma integration for keyboard, mouse and mouse pad - The Halloween mini-game is included in the Main Menu under Extras. Fixes: - Having multiple controllers plugged in works now - additional key mapping for playing with the arrows and surrounding keys (press 0 / Insert to interact)

My name is Cristian Diaconescu. I'm a 3D artist, game designer, motorcycle rider, and the creative director at Sand Sailor Studio, with over 15 years of experience and university studies in both programming and graphic design. My game Black The Fall, a communist-inspired puzzle-platformer title, was funded on Kickstarter and backed by Execution Labs. The award-winning title was published on July 11, 2017, by Square Enix Collective on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One. Black The Fall was born in 2014 as an art project: a black and white stealth-platformer set in an alienated world. The game concept came as a means to illustrate and express rebellion against the mechanisms of a heavily corrupted system, rooted in the decades of communism Romania has endured. In the months that followed, myself and co-founder Nicoleta Iordanescu discovered that there's much to envisage about the communist mentality: distrust, dehumanizing work environment, and uniformity. We chose to enter the arena of puzzle genre, using it to illustrate what it means to cope with a restrictive regime. We lived in times where there was no freedom of speech, intellectuals were thrown into prisons and tortured, food was subject to rationing, there was no access to contraception. Access to western culture was minimal. It sounds Orwellian, but unfortunately, this was the reality in most communist countries. The worst part is that it's still happening in some parts of the world. Additionally, as we explored this path we realized that the oppressive mechanics apply to the western world today, where a lot of people feel forced to conforming to a system they don’t believe in. The journey from conception to release was a crazy ride, with ups and downs. We learned so much, made a few mistakes, and scored a lot of successes:
WHAT WENT RIGHT 1. Cohesive Team The development of Black The Fall as a puzzle-platformer inspired by Communism began at the end of 2014, after the Kickstarter campaign, with five team members: two programmers and one artist who joined myself and Nicoleta, both artists and founders. After almost a year, two more artists and a community manager joined. Then, almost a year later, one last and much-needed team member joined: a programmer dedicated to console porting. This little piece of studio history shows that we began our journey as a heterogeneous group that, in time, after tens of Jira sprints, daily stand-ups, weekly meetings and tens of ad-hoc brainstorming sessions, built a dynamic together. Two of the most important parts of the development dynamic were: 1. the designer-friendly interface created by Razvan, one of the programmers, in order for level designers to be able to create diagrams easily, and 2. the scene ownership rotation approach we opted for, in favor of the specialization on broad activities. For example, rather than having one person dedicated to environment art, we’d have one person responsible for a scene in terms of environment, puzzle mechanic, light, camera angle, readability etc. This would give a type of work autonomy which moved things along faster. Then the scenes would be tested by the others, and eventually be moved into someone else’s queue for a fresh view. As we neared the final stage of polishing, our team was already on a roll and we realized that, for the next project, everything would run much smoother, from planning and forecasting to role assignation and collaboration.
2. Independent game concept under Square Enix Collective publishing deal We were lucky to sign a publishing deal with Square Enix Collective which gave us complete creative freedom, but with much needed fixed milestones. On top of that, Square Enix offered high-quality QA which got us through the pains of consoles TRC (we'll talk more about this in challenges below).
3. Getting the story out there This is an area where we really can’t complain. Around launch, we had pretty much every big publication we ever dreamt of covering Black The Fall. A big thank you goes to our PR experts: Craig (Kartridge), Stefano and Keith (both from Renaissance PR); and Square Enix’s lovely community managers Amy, Cat and Ria, with whom we had a nice and smooth collaboration. A couple of months before launch we created a long brief on the game concept so they could pitch it to people interested in the topic. The requests coming their way together with all the review requests coming directly to us made for a nice mix to keep everyone busy day and night for a couple of weeks. As well as that, in 2016 we showcased Black The Fall at more than ten events in US, Europe and Asia, getting to meet many of our players and introduce our game to puzzle aficionados all over the world.
4. Brainstorming and brushing up For every game character and new game chapter we had a brainstorming process that worked really well for us (thoroughly described here). This helped us choose, in a democratic and meritocratic manner, the winning concept and throw away the useless ones. This is vital, especially when you’re working on your first game and you want your all-time favorite game elements to be included. Talking about keeping clean, we also developed a system that would help us brush-up the scenes to get the best possible player experience.
WHAT WENT WRONG 1. Early Access is not for everyone When you’re new in the development and the publishing business, you feel like trying it all, but some actions have long-lasting consequences. For example, launching your game on Early Access as a way of testing it out and see how the audience receives it. But we didn’t consider the game’s replayability, the prospect of completely changing the initial prototype after a couple of months or that we might launch the final game three years after Early Access. Our Early Access ran for about three months, but we had to close it as we were about to launch our Kickstarter campaign, which doesn’t fit in at all with the idea behind Early Access. Additionally, a bug we couldn’t have anticipated is that somewhere in the Steam back-end the game is recorded to have launched on July 4, 2014, rather than July 11, 2017. This severely affected the game showing up on any Steam chart or list. That was a worry because a lot of websites pull their data directly from Steam, and it also meant the game showed up as having launched in 2014 on Humble Bundle as well. We slowly figured all of this out after the launch and got it fixed, but the visibility you get on Steam for clean launching the game was forever lost to us. However, there’s plenty of documentation on Steam visibility and strategies to adopt, so there’s still work that to be done.
2. Launch Timing The perfect launch date is something of a mythical sweet spot: it doesn’t actually exist, but you can plan to get as close to it as possible. Common sense is to avoid launching shortly before or immediately after competitors, or around triple-A games that are everyone’s sweethearts like Overwatch or Battlefield. Another obvious one is to avoid winter holidays and end of November, but a sneaky one is avoiding spring and summer sales. If you want to launch on three platforms at the same time, then you’ll need to make sure you find a date when all platforms can support your launch with a banner on the homepage, a blog post, or some sort of promotion.
3. Console port planning Speaking of consoles, even though Unity is our best friend when it comes to porting, do bear in mind the TRC’s you need to meet for each platform. Complying with this thick set of rules can take longer than polishing to get a decent frame rate on Xbox One. Porting to consoles took us around four months -- double the anticipated two-month window we’d allocated for it -- though we had two strong allies: Adrian, our programmer dedicated to working on porting the game, and our second ally: Square Enix’s QA team, based in Canada. I can also dare to assume that if Square Enix Collective hadn’t been our publisher, somehow this TRC compliance thing would’ve taken even longer.
4. Steam marketing strategy Steam is not something you can tackle overnight, nor is it a platform that you can trust will work to your advantage. It’s a brilliant, dynamic creature that can act as either your ally or your enemy -- it really depends on how well you read the documentation. Try and build a strategy and use it to your advantage, and bear in mind the algorithm changed significantly once Steam dropped Greenlight. One key takeaway is that Steam tends to push games that sell well and/or have raving reviews. These are the two main indicators that indicate to Steam that the audience loves you -- an important measure, given Steam wants its customers to be happy. So encouraging your community to leave a positive review if they enjoyed the experience around launch is an excellent idea that will help you in the long run.
Conclusion Overall, our biggest takeaway is that we should’ve followed Little Finger’s advice to Sansa: Fight every battle everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events are happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before. Final pieces of advice to have in mind, both in business and indeed in your daily life if you can: 1. Hope is not a strategy Whenever you draft a plan, be it development or communication, if the word ‘hope’ sneaks in, that should serve as a big red flag. Hope is just an indicator of our inner desires and it has nothing to do with real-world factors that can and will influence the outcome. 2. Always ask, never assume Any collaboration you have, from a device acquisition to closing contracts, always try to anticipate gray areas and ask the right questions just to rain check if things can go as you expect them to. More often than not we have expectations based on best-case scenarios, and real live development of events can leave us disappointed. Also, never assume you’re the first person in the world that’s had a particular issue or need. Anything can be Googled and there’s a nice indie community online that will share recommendations or give a piece of advice if they’ve encountered something similar. 3. Waiting is not an action If you need something from someone else, don’t expect them to drop everything and make you their priority. You don’t know what their agenda is and sometimes our initial messages can get lost. If you urgently need something from someone else, don’t be ashamed to follow up with them, or their colleagues, by email or phone. Or ultimately look for alternate solutions. Too many people are opting for silence instead of a clear cut answer like “I can’t”, or “I’d like to, but I don’t have time” or something. So, please, don’t wait! Waiting just causes frustration when the stakes are high.
All in all, it was a glorious adventure; we’ve met creative-kind people, we learned a lot professionally and, boy, we laughed so hard during these thousands of hours of game development. We’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Actually, this summer we’ve wrapped our heads around a new project. Can’t wait to share more about it in a future article.

My name is Cristian Diaconescu. I'm a 3D artist, game designer, motorcycle rider, and the creative director at Sand Sailor Studio, with over 15 years of experience and university studies in both programming and graphic design. My game Black The Fall, a communist-inspired puzzle-platformer title, was funded on Kickstarter and backed by Execution Labs. The award-winning title was published on July 11, 2017, by Square Enix Collective on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One. Black The Fall was born in 2014 as an art project: a black and white stealth-platformer set in an alienated world. The game concept came as a means to illustrate and express rebellion against the mechanisms of a heavily corrupted system, rooted in the decades of communism Romania has endured. In the months that followed, myself and co-founder Nicoleta Iordanescu discovered that there's much to envisage about the communist mentality: distrust, dehumanizing work environment, and uniformity. We chose to enter the arena of puzzle genre, using it to illustrate what it means to cope with a restrictive regime. We lived in times where there was no freedom of speech, intellectuals were thrown into prisons and tortured, food was subject to rationing, there was no access to contraception. Access to western culture was minimal. It sounds Orwellian, but unfortunately, this was the reality in most communist countries. The worst part is that it's still happening in some parts of the world. Additionally, as we explored this path we realized that the oppressive mechanics apply to the western world today, where a lot of people feel forced to conforming to a system they dont believe in. The journey from conception to release was a crazy ride, with ups and downs. We learned so much, made a few mistakes, and scored a lot of successes:
WHAT WENT RIGHT 1. Cohesive Team The development of Black The Fall as a puzzle-platformer inspired by Communism began at the end of 2014, after the Kickstarter campaign, with five team members: two programmers and one artist who joined myself and Nicoleta, both artists and founders. After almost a year, two more artists and a community manager joined. Then, almost a year later, one last and much-needed team member joined: a programmer dedicated to console porting. This little piece of studio history shows that we began our journey as a heterogeneous group that, in time, after tens of Jira sprints, daily stand-ups, weekly meetings and tens of ad-hoc brainstorming sessions, built a dynamic together. Two of the most important parts of the development dynamic were: 1. the designer-friendly interface created by Razvan, one of the programmers, in order for level designers to be able to create diagrams easily, and 2. the scene ownership rotation approach we opted for, in favor of the specialization on broad activities. For example, rather than having one person dedicated to environment art, wed have one person responsible for a scene in terms of environment, puzzle mechanic, light, camera angle, readability etc. This would give a type of work autonomy which moved things along faster. Then the scenes would be tested by the others, and eventually be moved into someone elses queue for a fresh view. As we neared the final stage of polishing, our team was already on a roll and we realized that, for the next project, everything would run much smoother, from planning and forecasting to role assignation and collaboration.
2. Independent game concept under Square Enix Collective publishing deal We were lucky to sign a publishing deal with Square Enix Collective which gave us complete creative freedom, but with much needed fixed milestones. On top of that, Square Enix offered high-quality QA which got us through the pains of consoles TRC (we'll talk more about this in challenges below).
3. Getting the story out there This is an area where we really cant complain. Around launch, we had pretty much every big publication we ever dreamt of covering Black The Fall. A big thank you goes to our PR experts: Craig (Kartridge), Stefano and Keith (both from Renaissance PR); and Square Enixs lovely community managers Amy, Cat and Ria, with whom we had a nice and smooth collaboration. A couple of months before launch we created a long brief on the game concept so they could pitch it to people interested in the topic. The requests coming their way together with all the review requests coming directly to us made for a nice mix to keep everyone busy day and night for a couple of weeks. As well as that, in 2016 we showcased Black The Fall at more than ten events in US, Europe and Asia, getting to meet many of our players and introduce our game to puzzle aficionados all over the world.
4. Brainstorming and brushing up For every game character and new game chapter we had a brainstorming process that worked really well for us (thoroughly described here). This helped us choose, in a democratic and meritocratic manner, the winning concept and throw away the useless ones. This is vital, especially when youre working on your first game and you want your all-time favorite game elements to be included. Talking about keeping clean, we also developed a system that would help us brush-up the scenes to get the best possible player experience.
WHAT WENT WRONG 1. Early Access is not for everyone When youre new in the development and the publishing business, you feel like trying it all, but some actions have long-lasting consequences. For example, launching your game on Early Access as a way of testing it out and see how the audience receives it. But we didnt consider the games replayability, the prospect of completely changing the initial prototype after a couple of months or that we might launch the final game three years after Early Access. Our Early Access ran for about three months, but we had to close it as we were about to launch our Kickstarter campaign, which doesnt fit in at all with the idea behind Early Access. Additionally, a bug we couldnt have anticipated is that somewhere in the Steam back-end the game is recorded to have launched on July 4, 2014, rather than July 11, 2017. This severely affected the game showing up on any Steam chart or list. That was a worry because a lot of websites pull their data directly from Steam, and it also meant the game showed up as having launched in 2014 on Humble Bundle as well. We slowly figured all of this out after the launch and got it fixed, but the visibility you get on Steam for clean launching the game was forever lost to us. However, theres plenty of documentation on Steam visibility and strategies to adopt, so theres still work that to be done.
2. Launch Timing The perfect launch date is something of a mythical sweet spot: it doesnt actually exist, but you can plan to get as close to it as possible. Common sense is to avoid launching shortly before or immediately after competitors, or around triple-A games that are everyones sweethearts like Overwatch or Battlefield. Another obvious one is to avoid winter holidays and end of November, but a sneaky one is avoiding spring and summer sales. If you want to launch on three platforms at the same time, then youll need to make sure you find a date when all platforms can support your launch with a banner on the homepage, a blog post, or some sort of promotion.
3. Console port planning Speaking of consoles, even though Unity is our best friend when it comes to porting, do bear in mind the TRCs you need to meet for each platform. Complying with this thick set of rules can take longer than polishing to get a decent frame rate on Xbox One. Porting to consoles took us around four months -- double the anticipated two-month window wed allocated for it -- though we had two strong allies: Adrian, our programmer dedicated to working on porting the game, and our second ally: Square Enixs QA team, based in Canada. I can also dare to assume that if Square Enix Collective hadnt been our publisher, somehow this TRC compliance thing wouldve taken even longer.
4. Steam marketing strategy Steam is not something you can tackle overnight, nor is it a platform that you can trust will work to your advantage. Its a brilliant, dynamic creature that can act as either your ally or your enemy -- it really depends on how well you read the documentation. Try and build a strategy and use it to your advantage, and bear in mind the algorithm changed significantly once Steam dropped Greenlight. One key takeaway is that Steam tends to push games that sell well and/or have raving reviews. These are the two main indicators that indicate to Steam that the audience loves you -- an important measure, given Steam wants its customers to be happy. So encouraging your community to leave a positive review if they enjoyed the experience around launch is an excellent idea that will help you in the long run.
Conclusion Overall, our biggest takeaway is that we shouldve followed Little Fingers advice to Sansa: Fight every battle everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events are happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that youve seen before. Final pieces of advice to have in mind, both in business and indeed in your daily life if you can: 1. Hope is not a strategy Whenever you draft a plan, be it development or communication, if the word hope sneaks in, that should serve as a big red flag. Hope is just an indicator of our inner desires and it has nothing to do with real-world factors that can and will influence the outcome. 2. Always ask, never assume Any collaboration you have, from a device acquisition to closing contracts, always try to anticipate gray areas and ask the right questions just to rain check if things can go as you expect them to. More often than not we have expectations based on best-case scenarios, and real live development of events can leave us disappointed. Also, never assume youre the first person in the world thats had a particular issue or need. Anything can be Googled and theres a nice indie community online that will share recommendations or give a piece of advice if theyve encountered something similar. 3. Waiting is not an action If you need something from someone else, dont expect them to drop everything and make you their priority. You dont know what their agenda is and sometimes our initial messages can get lost. If you urgently need something from someone else, dont be ashamed to follow up with them, or their colleagues, by email or phone. Or ultimately look for alternate solutions. Too many people are opting for silence instead of a clear cut answer like I cant, or Id like to, but I dont have time or something. So, please, dont wait! Waiting just causes frustration when the stakes are high.
All in all, it was a glorious adventure; weve met creative-kind people, we learned a lot professionally and, boy, we laughed so hard during these thousands of hours of game development. Wed do it all over again in a heartbeat. Actually, this summer weve wrapped our heads around a new project. Cant wait to share more about it in a future article.

To spice things up a bit for October’s sake, The Party has decided to pay its respects to Halloweeners by efficiently preparing some pumpkins for export. However, it seems that not everyone is on board with the decision and a sabotage is being planned among the workers. Destroying the pumpkins would act as an SOS message sent to the other countries, that things are not as happy and bright as presented by the Party to the outside world. Will you join the movement and help destroy some Halloween pumpkins? If you already own Black The Fall, just check the game menu for the Halloween mini-game. If you don’t own it, you might reconsider that, given the 33% discount. And, you know, if you’re happy with Black The Fall, it would help us tremendously if you’d leave a review. May you have a Black Halloween!

To spice things up a bit for Octobers sake, The Party has decided to pay its respects to Halloweeners by efficiently preparing some pumpkins for export. However, it seems that not everyone is on board with the decision and a sabotage is being planned among the workers. Destroying the pumpkins would act as an SOS message sent to the other countries, that things are not as happy and bright as presented by the Party to the outside world. Will you join the movement and help destroy some Halloween pumpkins?
If you already own Black The Fall, just check the game menu for the Halloween mini-game. If you dont own it, you might reconsider that, given the 33% discount. And, you know, if youre happy with Black The Fall, it would help us tremendously if youd leave a review. May you have a Black Halloween!

To wrap up the melancholic journey we started with in the FAQ section and continued with the Communism related blog posts. shaping the context of the real life events that inspired some game scenes, characters and mechanisms, we thought of sharing with you a couple of real life photos, that served as inspiration for some game scenes. Communism intended to be the religion of efficiency, pragmatism and equality through hard work and community values; the ideal sharing economy. Within this paradigm, the individual, the soul, the mind, the spiritual, were all considered distractions from the path they drafted for humanity: progress through physical work and equality for everyone. Sounds awesome? Well, perspectives: consider being equal to the ones on top for a few seconds. Lovely right? How about being equal to the less fortunate? This is a question we usually forget to ask ourselves when we think of equality, thanks to our illusory superiority & friends. The Church With this purpose in mind, progress through hard work, factories were built in the urban areas and farmers were brought to the cities. Old houses and churches were wiped out and blocks of flats were built instead. And this is pretty much where the Romanian story breaks apart from how religion and the regime got together in the Communist bloc. Although the Roman-Catholic church was severely persecuted by the regime (churches demolished, priests thrown in prisons and tortured), the Orthodox Church was quite a strong ally of The State (lots of priests were agents of The Securitate). It was a win-win deal: the submissive Church would continue to keep their lands and exert power, while also supporting the Communist doctrine, like a bad-ass marketing agency that has the best influencers, and an audience reach the size of internet access market in developed countries. [WARNING: spoilers ahead! If you’re the type who likes to be surprised, you’d better stop reading.] There’s still a romanticized view of how Communism persecuted the Church in Romania, but there's also the harsh reality of the snitches. Some confessions went directly to the files of The Securitate acting like an ancestor of web cookies. For such a a sneaky maneuver we just had to allocate a secret room and an achievement in Black The Fall.
The Queues The State had monopoly over any type of production and distribution, that was the rule and it was ok-ish for a while, but in the ‘80s the sugar hit the fan. Rationing made everyone’s life about survival. The rations for one portion were: half a bread a day, one kg of sugar/flour/rice and oil a month. On Christmas each person could have one kg of oranges and half a kg of chocolates. Store clerks had real power through their direct access to food, so the exchange network grew very strong among them. In the 80's offering bread to get some darn eggs was a victory for you and your family.
Besides the lack in food variety; electricity, hot water and heating were also scarce. Moreover, each family could have the gas tank refilled once a month. You’d have to wake up at 2-3 am and queue for that as well. Queue can sometimes be fun. Look at Gamescom queues: fun! However, the ones I’m talking about didn't involve weather chit-chat, nor celebrity gossiping, but lots of quarrels, especially around Christmas when the pressure bringing your family together for a warm meal in a heated room was so high.
Public transportation was not breezy either. In this frenzy of saving money through resources scarcity, people had to hang on the trams or buses on their way to work. Just like modern Japan, without the fancy people pushing you inside the train.
The Revolution The Romanian Revolution is a mystery not yet entirely solved in terms of who was shooting who and why. It’s maybe an event too recent and to hurtful to be openly discussed. I mean not out of shyness, but for safety reasons for those involved.
Anyway, there are a few undeniable facts: the high number of injured and killed, the burning of the National Library and consequent loss of thousands of books and manuscripts, the confusion, the hasty trial and shooting of the Ceausescu couple and the high hopes of the Romanian people for a normal life: abuse free and independent.
And just like any high quality set of expectations, this one was filled with all the positive aspects of the new happy life to come. Some people were ready to take on the responsibilities that come with the power of choice. While others became melancholic for the times when the state used to provide some food, a job and shelter, like a conscientious authoritative parental figure that always knows what's best for you. #FreedomIsControl

To wrap up the melancholic journey we started with in the FAQ section and continued with the Communism related blog posts. shaping the context of the real life events that inspired some game scenes, characters and mechanisms, we thought of sharing with you a couple of real life photos, that served as inspiration for some game scenes. Communism intended to be the religion of efficiency, pragmatism and equality through hard work and community values; the ideal sharing economy. Within this paradigm, the individual, the soul, the mind, the spiritual, were all considered distractions from the path they drafted for humanity: progress through physical work and equality for everyone. Sounds awesome? Well, perspectives: consider being equal to the ones on top for a few seconds. Lovely right? How about being equal to the less fortunate? This is a question we usually forget to ask ourselves when we think of equality, thanks to our illusory superiority & friends. The Church With this purpose in mind, progress through hard work, factories were built in the urban areas and farmers were brought to the cities. Old houses and churches were wiped out and blocks of flats were built instead. And this is pretty much where the Romanian story breaks apart from how religion and the regime got together in the Communist bloc. Although the Roman-Catholic church was severely persecuted by the regime (churches demolished, priests thrown in prisons and tortured), the Orthodox Church was quite a strong ally of The State (lots of priests were agents of The Securitate). It was a win-win deal: the submissive Church would continue to keep their lands and exert power, while also supporting the Communist doctrine, like a bad-ass marketing agency that has the best influencers, and an audience reach the size of internet access market in developed countries. [WARNING: spoilers ahead! If youre the type who likes to be surprised, youd better stop reading.] Theres still a romanticized view of how Communism persecuted the Church in Romania, but there's also the harsh reality of the snitches. Some confessions went directly to the files of The Securitate acting like an ancestor of web cookies. For such a a sneaky maneuver we just had to allocate a secret room and an achievement in Black The Fall.
The Queues The State had monopoly over any type of production and distribution, that was the rule and it was ok-ish for a while, but in the 80s the sugar hit the fan. Rationing made everyones life about survival. The rations for one portion were: half a bread a day, one kg of sugar/flour/rice and oil a month. On Christmas each person could have one kg of oranges and half a kg of chocolates. Store clerks had real power through their direct access to food, so the exchange network grew very strong among them. In the 80's offering bread to get some darn eggs was a victory for you and your family.
Besides the lack in food variety; electricity, hot water and heating were also scarce. Moreover, each family could have the gas tank refilled once a month. Youd have to wake up at 2-3 am and queue for that as well. Queue can sometimes be fun. Look at Gamescom queues: fun! However, the ones Im talking about didn't involve weather chit-chat, nor celebrity gossiping, but lots of quarrels, especially around Christmas when the pressure bringing your family together for a warm meal in a heated room was so high.
Public transportation was not breezy either. In this frenzy of saving money through resources scarcity, people had to hang on the trams or buses on their way to work. Just like modern Japan, without the fancy people pushing you inside the train.
The Revolution The Romanian Revolution is a mystery not yet entirely solved in terms of who was shooting who and why. Its maybe an event too recent and to hurtful to be openly discussed. I mean not out of shyness, but for safety reasons for those involved.
Anyway, there are a few undeniable facts: the high number of injured and killed, the burning of the National Library and consequent loss of thousands of books and manuscripts, the confusion, the hasty trial and shooting of the Ceausescu couple and the high hopes of the Romanian people for a normal life: abuse free and independent.
And just like any high quality set of expectations, this one was filled with all the positive aspects of the new happy life to come. Some people were ready to take on the responsibilities that come with the power of choice. While others became melancholic for the times when the state used to provide some food, a job and shelter, like a conscientious authoritative parental figure that always knows what's best for you. #FreedomIsControl

We're happy to let you know that we're bringing Black The Fall again at Gamescom 2017, which this year takes place on 22-26 August, in Cologne. We'll showcase the game as part of the amazing Indie Arena Booth (Hall 10.1, Booth A-030), the world’s largest shared game developer showcase. We'll be close to our friends, the creators of Oh My God Heads, FAR: Lone Sails, Orwell or Frost Punk. But there will be so many more fun, quirky, artsy games worth checking out (full list here). If you plan to be at Gamescom this year, we'd really love to see you, so do stop by our booth to say hi or try the demo we prepare especially for Gamescom, together with a little surprise. PS: If you're into Romanian games or you just want to see what we've got, do check out the Romanian Game Developers Association booth (Hall 10.1, Booth D-061) where you can meet Killhouse Games, Rikodu, Angry Mob, White Pond, Carbon Incubator and Holotech. See you there!

We're happy to let you know that we're bringing Black The Fall again at Gamescom 2017, which this year takes place on 22-26 August, in Cologne. We'll showcase the game as part of the amazing Indie Arena Booth (Hall 10.1, Booth A-030), the worlds largest shared game developer showcase. We'll be close to our friends, the creators of Oh My God Heads, FAR: Lone Sails, Orwell or Frost Punk. But there will be so many more fun, quirky, artsy games worth checking out (full list here). If you plan to be at Gamescom this year, we'd really love to see you, so do stop by our booth to say hi or try the demo we prepare especially for Gamescom, together with a little surprise. PS: If you're into Romanian games or you just want to see what we've got, do check out the Romanian Game Developers Association booth (Hall 10.1, Booth D-061) where you can meet Killhouse Games, Rikodu, Angry Mob, White Pond, Carbon Incubator and Holotech. See you there!

Hi all, Its been two weeks since the launch of Black The Fall, thank you so much for taking the time to give us consistent feedback during this time. We have been listening and working hard on the first patch for Black The Fall, and although most of the feedback has been positive we wanted to make the experience as smooth as possible for players and address some of the minor gripes youve been having with the game, so this introduces us to our first patch. Patch 1.0 Settings options:

• Added Vsync option in Settings.
• Additional keyboard mappings: CONTROL for crouch, Left SHIFT for running.

• Fix for player letting go of the ledge if pause menu is deactivated (via keyboard - Escape key or controller back button).
• Fix for game menus appearing off-screen on ultra-wide monitors.
• Fix for the resolution not changing when selecting a new value with the same width but different height.
• Fix for the resolution values displaying incorrectly if closing the game (Alt-F4) while in the settings menu and then restarting the game.
• Fix for input not being received from additional connected controllers.
• Fix for the EyeSentry getting stuck on the player when running rapidly in and out of cover.
• Fix for the EyeSentry in Revolution, when you bypass the bus sequence by breaking the EyeSentries with the designator

Hi all, It’s been two weeks since the launch of Black The Fall, thank you so much for taking the time to give us consistent feedback during this time. We have been listening and working hard on the first patch for Black The Fall, and although most of the feedback has been positive we wanted to make the experience as smooth as possible for players and address some of the minor gripes you’ve been having with the game, so this introduces us to our first patch. Patch 1.0 Settings options:

• Added Vsync option in Settings.
• Additional keyboard mappings: CONTROL for crouch, Left SHIFT for running.

• Fix for player letting go of the ledge if pause menu is deactivated (via keyboard - Escape key or controller back button).
• Fix for game menus appearing off-screen on ultra-wide monitors.
• Fix for the resolution not changing when selecting a new value with the same width but different height.
• Fix for the resolution values displaying incorrectly if closing the game (Alt-F4) while in the settings menu and then restarting the game.
• Fix for input not being received from additional connected controllers.
• Fix for the EyeSentry getting stuck on the player when running rapidly in and out of cover.
• Fix for the EyeSentry in Revolution, when you bypass the bus sequence by breaking the EyeSentries with the designator

July 11th will be remembered in history as the day The Party has launched Black The Fall. There will be yearly parades with people cheering and walking synchronously. Some will dance and sing about the greatness of Black. But until then you can watch the launch trailer Black The Fall is out, but Black is still trapped, help him break the chains of oppression today! We’d love to hear your thoughts! For game feedback, gamers all over the world, are invited to unite here. If you encounter any proletarian bugs, please report them here.

July 11th will be remembered in history as the day The Party has launched Black The Fall. There will be yearly parades with people cheering and walking synchronously. Some will dance and sing about the greatness of Black. But until then you can watch the launch trailer Black The Fall is out, but Black is still trapped, help him break the chains of oppression today! Wed love to hear your thoughts! For game feedback, gamers all over the world, are invited to unite here. If you encounter any proletarian bugs, please report them here.

The Party is reasonably happy to announce that BLACK THE FALL is coming to PC, PS4 & Xbox One on July 11th. In less than 5 weeks, that is, you'll get a chance to manipulate Black, who'll manipulate other workers, who only know how to manipulate machines, to eventually, maybe, escape The System. If it sounds complicated, that's how it's supposed to be. This is a puzzle game and rebelling against oppressive political systems was never straight forward...


The Party approves sharing the love (the trailer and the news) wherever.

• Add Black The Fall to your Steam Wishlist
• Share the news on Facebook
• Tweet the news #freedomiscontrol
  
  [ 2017-06-09 09:02:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the past decades surveillance evolved a lot, as both Orwell and Huxley have envisioned at the beginning of the century. Our safety used to lie in the hands of the local police officer, the personal guard, the handmaiden or the Communist neighbor, while today it’s in the hands of a modern Big Brother feeding on Big Data.
For our safety and comfort there are CCTVs, GPS tracking, Wi-fi, listening capabilities on mobile phones, laptops and even routers. Online behavior tracking is delivering us the ultimate personalized experience, but with every social media login it is also recording our every move in order for our profiles to be as accurate as possible for commercial use or political manipulation. That is for ads and news to be delivered in a way we’d buy without knowing we’re sold to – easily and willingly. The only problem with (over)protection is that there’s a fine line between useful and abusive. We’d love to know that criminals can be tracked down by GPS or recorded phone conversations, recognized in CCTV footage and have their plans uncovered, before they even happen. And sometimes this actually happens, while other times surveillance is intentionally misused.
Living in a world thorn between Orwellian fear and Huxleyan pleasure, we need to throw a clear-eyed look at mass surveillance and define the lines of when surveillance is appropriate. For more updates you can:

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One of the key components of the Communist Oppression was the fabricated reality that was pushed forward as news in newspapers, on TV, on national radio, billboards and school handbooks.
On one hand, it was the leader himself who wanted to keep up appearances. One time Ceausescu had taken his hat off for a meeting with another country leader, but in an official picture that would make him look like a weaker person, so he asked that his hat would be photoshopped back on before being published in the newspaper. And it’s not just the things he’d ask for, he’d just expect for his employees to anticipate his quirky needs and avoid putting him in a less than great picture. Smart, I know! On the other hand, any activity the leader would have was announced. So the institutions would put forward the best rooms, most docile personnel dressed in Sunday clothes, they'd bring forward the best products (even if they were created especially for the occasion). Some say Ceausescu had no clue of what was really happening in the country because everyone kept on putting up a show for him.
(Scott Edelman (an employee of the US State Department and currently an instructor at the US Air Force Academy) took this photo while he was posted in Romania during the mid-1980's.) Now this looks like a distant crazy past, in a distant Eastern country, but propaganda is a powerful tool that has shapeshifted into fake news, thanks to internet and social media. We used to rely on news to find out about the world we can’t reach for ourselves, and we trusted that. There were fewer outlets and the distribution was under control. But now, anything can be published anywhere and fake news are omnipresent. But then again, anyone who lives a regular life doesn’t have the time to check any information. So pick your sources wisely, question everything and always keep in mind that for the truth you hold dear right now, there is someone, somewhere, equally in love with their truth. Never forget about the backfire effect and if this is your first encounter with the concept, here are some resources to on the matter:

• the neuroscience of changing your mind
• how motivated skepticism strengthens incorrect beliefs
• how to fight back against the backfire effect

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Some years back, the western civilization was experiencing the cultural, industrial and economic climax. The middle class was expanding, the arts were flourishing and the scientific discoveries were popping like popcorn, significantly improving the quality of life. The traditional was slowly fading away, being replaced by the new, the western, the eccentric, by that which aligns to a new order. It was shallow, I know, the poor continued to be exploited and there was still famine in the world, but at least some of us were moving forward. Yet the laws of Geo-politics, were not dormant. It was the perfect environment to strike and strive. Bloody actions were inevitable if you looked from the top downwards, yet doubtful if you looked around. These events had made a few people rich, retraced some borders, then left a world in financial decay and emotional ache. The perfect playground for authoritarian leaders to arise and thrive. Visionaries were hoping they’re dealing with isolated cases, yet these sugar-daddies were a growing trend. Loved by the majority and even supported by some intellectuals, it was high time for the masses to be seduced into the arms of an authoritarian father figure who'd impose rules and would have solutions for a world that seemed to have gone mad. One by one, some iconic nations elected the leaders they believed in. They voted for a better life, for safety, for common sense, for respect, with all the good intentions. If right now, you feel like saying Erdogan, Putin, Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, Assad, well, your thoughts, not mine. I was hinting more towards Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Ceausescu, but you got the picture. As an indie studio, we assumed a stance against any totalitarian / authoritarian / egalitarian regime by creating Black The Fall: the journey of an old machinist whose only purpose is to survive, by escaping Communism. We find it to be our duty to address our daily concerns through our work. When Black The Fall was just an idea, it was about here are bits and pieces of how we lived . But now it becomes more and more about here are bits and pieces of how we might live again. And we are not the only ones in the industry standing up. Our brothers here have done a brilliant job at putting indie games in the service of sociopolitical wake-up calls. And this is just to name a few titles:

• Papers Please - Play as an immigration inspector who controls the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists.
• Orwell - play as the one and only Big Brother.
• Beholder - Play as a State-installed Landlord in a totalitarian State.
• We Happy Few - an action/adventure game set in a drug-fuelled, retrofuturistic city in an alternative 1960s England.
• 1979 Revolution: Black Friday - a choice driven, narrative game that brings players into the brooding world of a nation on the verge of collapse.
• Kommissar -a political prosecution simulator in a totalitarian regime.

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Dear players, There is more than two years since we’ve met you and we couldn’t be more grateful. On July 2014 we have enthusiastically shared our project and vision and you’ve supported us fully. Since then, the scope of the project grew and our vision enlarged. We now have a Beta version of Black The Fall, with a compelling story, an original game mechanic,thrilling visuals and unique sound. We think it is much better than our initial prototype and we are confident we did the right choice in deciding to improve our original idea. But this came with a price, which eventually everyone had to pay: time. We needed more time to rise to the level of our ambitions. And for your patience of bearing with us, we want to thank you. As our journey might look confusing from the outside, here is a timeline we’d like to share with you.
YOU are part of our story and this will always be of great value to us. Thank you for your support and especially for your patience in the past two years! PS: As there might be questions left unanswered, here is our FAQ section .

Yesterday evening, Black and The Pet insisted to go out in the backyard and take a picture for the Christmas postcard. They even took the time to build a snow-sentinel, to keep up appearances and avoid any suspicion related to confronting the state-controlled status. Also, the sooty snow helped with creating such a realistic Sentinel...we're impressed! Always thankful to Comrade Nature. Anyway, what they'd really want to tell you, on behalf of everyone here, is that we're grateful for all the amazing people we've met in the past years. We're sending you all our best, prosperous and well-structured thoughts, as approved by The Party. Wishing you the very best for 2017!!! Oh, and talking about 2017, that's when we'll release Black The Fall on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One. We hope that this will be one of the hundreds of smile-bringers next year :)

Beginning of this month we started revealing a series of visuals from the Beta version of our very own puzzle: Black The Fall. After getting a sore throat in the dusty Factory, surviving the shadows Into The Dark and taking a breath of The Mire's fresh air, Black is now getting his share of civilization in The City. Or is he? Abandoned control rooms, active guards, windows closing and fear is what a communist city has in store for him. Looks like hope is slowly fading away for him. But you can't know for sure unless you walk in Black's shoes. Black The Fall, the communist puzzle game, will be released end of Q1, 2017 on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One. Don't miss the date:

• add Black The Fall to your Wishlist on Steam
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Last month, we began a visual journey within Black The Fall's bleak world by sharing with you the latest sneak peeks from The Factory and Into The Dark . While you might have been familiar with the first two chapters thanks to the trailer and the the myriad of screenshots we have shared this year, the last two chapters will be rather surprising. This week we present you The Mire. Below are some visual hints of what and whom Black will encounter outside the factory. Finally out, now what?
Black and The Pet at crossroads
Sea of slaves
In the heat of the moment
Export production
Together in this, for better or worse
Bridge of slaves
Abandoned amusement park
Black, The Pet, The Gate, The City
Next stop? The City. But until then IndieDB is looking for the Indie Game of the Year 2016. If you feel like nominating us, just leave your vote here. Thank you! *** Black The Fall is the communist puzzle game, developed by Sand Sailor Studio and published by Square Enix. It will be released in the first quarter of 2017 on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One, so beware and prepare. For more updates you can:

• add Black The Fall to your Wishlist on Steam
• read our blog
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• Subscribe to our newsletter (we only send major announcements on email).

If playing our demo got you saying “I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award", then please vote us on Steam.

As the story unravels, more and more it's revealed of Black The Fall's distopyan world. The story begins as Black finds the opportunity to escape from the factory and try to run away from the oppressive system. Below are some sneak-peek images of this breaking-out-of-the-factory odyssey. This is where it all begins...
The world is uncovered through the breaking glass...
The voice of the Party must go far, they said...
The story of a flag...
A factory dormitory
Where propaganda is made...
Man against machine
Behind the bars...
For more updates you can:

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This summer was prosperous for The Party, as Black The Fall was recognized by our international comrades as being one of the best indie games. We are yet to organize a parade to celebrate the occasion in the genuine communist style. But in the meantime, we'd like to take the time to hug every team member who's dedicated each day in the past months/years to this project: Cristi + Nico, Razvan + Licu, Andreea + Marius and Andrei+. And also thank all the organizations who recognized our creative efforts by nominating or awarding us: BIG Festival , Gamescom , Spawn and [http://bicfest.org/] BIC Festival . The Party feels awkwardly humble, grateful, hopeful and proud at the same time. And here is a token of appreciation (souvenir from BIC Festival) to always remind us of these mixed feelings. Thank YOU for playing!

There are decades since The Party has forbidden imagination. Wandering minds are dangerous. They create free worlds, they love and disobey. They challenge the status quo and fancy changes. Anyway, we know you'd rather risk it than submit to The Party, so you've probably already imagined how the world outside The Factory looks like. So did we. And we've created it for Black. This outside world is much needed in his journey. As a thought prisoner Black has to gradually unlearn how to be a worker and learn how to be a survivor. As he discovers how to cope with his surroundings, he might even take part in revolutions bigger than himself. Up until now, if you played the demo, watched the trailer, watched a game-play or just stumbled upon Black The Fall screenshots, you must be acquainted with The Factory - the place where Black worked for the past years and the very subject of his escape. You might have also noticed some darker areas where work is done by machines mainly and shadows are reigning. That's what we call Into The Dark - the unfriendly area that separates the Factory from the outside world. Now, considering the harsh conditions from the communist factory what should Black expect when getting out? He might have hoped for a colorful happy place, but the communist reality can only be painted in shades of black.
Black first sees the sky in The Mire. But as he explores the area he'll discover there's only polluted air to breathe and rusty water to drink. Exploited workers and killing machines. Sentinels or guards, their only purpose is to eliminate anyone who doesn't serve The Party anymore. In a world where humans can't be trusted with empathy, he finds a friend. A robot helper. A pet. Now, his Pet.
As Black continues his journey of resilience, he reaches The City. Not that he remembers so much about how it should be. He used to live in a village and to visit the city only once or twice a year. However, he can tell that The City has something unsettling about it, it feels strange and more dangerous than anything he's seen until now. Pushed by courage or plain necessity, he continues his journey. And so, he's up for a bitter-sweet discovery. But that's another story. We are pretty thrilled about the outside world and The Pet, so can't wait to share more of Black's universe with you soon.
For more updates you can:

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Not sure if you were aware, but the Party allows us only 12 seconds of excitement per day as part of the controlled distribution of scarce resources. Ergo, we are dedicating today's excitement allocated time to the world tour we are planning. That's right, we are making our best to meet most of you. If you happen to attend any of these events, we would love to meet you. Here is when and were we can meet for sure in the upcoming days:

• 14-16 June - E3, Los Angeles (US), at the Square Enix and Xbox booths + The Mix Showcase

• 25 June - 2 July - BIG Festival, Sao Paolo (BR) - So proud, to have Black The Fall nominated for Best Art. We won't be there, but Black will ;)
• 15-16 August - GDC Europe, Cologne (DE)
• 17-21 August - Gamescom, Cologne (DE) - you can't miss us here, but we'll let you know the details as we come closer to the date.
• 1-5 September - Brasil Games Show , Sao Paolo (BR) - within the indie
• 29 September - 2 October - IgroMir, Moscow (RU) - within the indie area
• 27-31 October - Paris Games Week, Paris (FR)

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We are very excited to let you know that Black The Fall is fully playable. All puzzles are in place and working, all scenes are set-up, the ending is there – all of it. Black The Fall is alive and kicking! We are now pushing for the full Alpha version, due in a month (without deadlines one would still be improving the first playrooms). This means there’s still some work to be done starting with a lot of in-house testing, as we need to scrub it of all obvious bugs, before we call our friends over for an outsider opinion. Nico is our testing queen and she needs a spa week, a city-break or just a break from playing, bug spotting and trying not to fix things on the spot (no matter how tempting this is). Point being that testing can be very stressful. By the way, if you happen to be in Bucharest in the following weeks and want to play any parts of it, just drop us a note. We'd love to have you testing it! Fun fact: Licu actually advised Nico to be bad at it, this way nobody would want her to test. But I guess she can’t go against her nature of being such a merciless observant of what can be improved. The game looks great and we're now adding the final Communist touches. We're aiming for excellence here - Party's orders. So we're currently working on:

• Dressing – suitable scenery to render the atmosphere (on our artists’ to-do list Nico, Marius, Andrei and Andreea).
• Animations - how Black, the Guard, the Worker and our jazzy Sentinel move around (it's on Cristi for design & Licu for functionality)
• Navigation – how the characters navigate individually and together (Razvan is the lucky responsible for this one)
• Designator – how our laser pointer, used to designate, works (pinkie swear from Razvan on this one)

Hi everyone, We are excited to let you know that the new build is up and running. Actually Black is the one running, solving puzzles, fighting the system and making a revolution all together - wanna help him out? To start anew hit NEW GAME in the main menu :). Here are the release notes: Dynamic loading 0.1 ● our dynamic loading system is in place at its first iteration ● stalls will occur and we are aware of that. Things will be much smoother when we reach 1.0 A.I. system ● added the first version of the AI system ● guards react to you now (don’t make too much noise) Character movement & animation ● black has a new face (and body :) ) ● we have improved the controls and animations ● we have smoothed out the transitions ● the designator (laser pointer) was improved - just move the cursor over the selectable objects to use them with the designator. Level Design ● we have revisited the first part: we have improved the puzzles, the world is more coherent, improved the feedback ● we have added a new area (The Shadow Area) - here you can experiment what living in the shadows was like ● the new area has new types of puzzles that prey on the player’s perception ● we have improved the sound design and added new music bits

Release Notes Dynamic loading 0.1 ● our dynamic loading system is in place at its first iteration ● stalls will occur and we are aware of that. Things will be much smoother when we reach 1.0 A.I. system ● added the first version of the AI system ● guards react to you now (don’t make too much noise) Character movement & animation ● black has a new face (and body :) ) ● we have improved the controls and animations ● we have smoothed out the transitions ● the designator (laser pointer) was improved - just move the cursor over the selectable objects to use them with the designator. Level Design ● we have revisited the first part: we have improved the puzzles, the world is more coherent, improved the feedback ● we have added a new area (The Shadow Area) - here you can experiment what living in the shadows was like ● the new area has new types of puzzles that prey on the player’s perception ● we have improved the sound design and added new music bits

Hello everyone, We've been hard at work on our communist baby game, making sure that he'll grow up into meaningful and awesome experience. I'm super excited to share these new shots with you: http://www.blackthefall.com/images/blackthefall_shot1.jpg http://www.blackthefall.com/images/blackthefall_shot02.jpg Form more info on Black the Fall, follow us on: facebook https://www.facebook.com/blackthefall twitter https://twitter.com/BlackTheFall More coming soon!

Hey everyone, we have a big and exciting announcement to make. We have been working for a couple of months on the first episode of Black The Fall. We have listened and learned from the community and we decided to release the game in in fully playable episodes. This way the experience is stronger and the game is as good and polished as we desire and you deserve. We want to thank all the players that have supported us through Early Access and to all that have provided interest and feedback for Black The Fall. We'll make sure we'll put this feedback to good use in our next build. New images and information will be available soon (in the next few days). You'll love them. They are testament about how much your involvement in the project helped us shape the game. Given the fact that the old build is "too old" :) and it doesn't represent the game as it is today we'll make multiple adjustments and will move on working solely on the next build till is ready. We hope to achieve that till December. When you'll see what's coming you'll see that it was worth it. We promise. Thanks again for all your support. We love you! BTF Team

We're now working on a whole new chapter. Lot's of new cool stuff, aesthetics and gameplay. We'll have one big level for this chapter. It will be longer than all the levels that we have now put together. You will be able to climb and thus the level will grow vertically too. We're also working on a lot of new movement features like jumping, crouching, turning, wall climbing, hanging ... We'll have new NPC's like the Proletar: http://youtu.be/fGhF8-ghdlk and new NPC behaviour. For the latest news please visit our fb page: https://www.facebook.com/blackthefall

Hey everyone we have uploaded our first Linux build. Enjoy!

You can now play Black The Fall on Mac! Enjoy!

We're having technical difficulties with our latest build. We're working to solve these issues asap. Thank you for your patience.