Hello everyone! As usual, weve missed quite a few monthly newsletters (sorry you should be used to that by now). But there is some new stuff coming around for you guys!

New Intern!

Hi everyone, Im the new intern at Nova-Box! My name is Ophlie, and I will be the one writing to you from now on. I'm thrilled to be joining the team and bringing something new to our communications. Youll be seeing more of me around the New Year!

What's new with End of Lines?

So whats happening with End of Lines? The avid readers of our newsletters are already aware of the challenges we've faced putting our game out there, in the public eye. Well, Nico and the team are putting together some brand-new content for you guys! I cant reveal any details just yet, but you can expect more information around December/January. Weve also decided to reopen our demo in the coming months. Steam seems to boost games with demos through its algorithm, and we're hoping it will have a similar effect on our game. If you play it, you'll be able to save your progress for the final version of End of Lines! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/

What have we been up to?

The start of the autumn term means welcome back to our co-working space in Bordeaux. We were thrilled to catch up with our friends from other studios after some well-deserved reconnecting with Mother Nature. As you can imagine, when were not taking care of our one-year-old baby (End of Lines), were in full creation mode with our next game or we're attending events.

HORIZON(S), Bordeaux Videogames Forum!

Our writer, Geoffroy, was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on how to manage the transition between different projects at HORIZON(S), a two-day event for game industry decision-makers. He was with Sabrina Alessandri of Tower Five from La Rochelle and David Duriot of LA POULE NOIRE from Angoulme. Now the question is, how does this relate to our studio? Well, you see, we have two creative directors, Geoffroy and Nico, who switch roles for each new project. For instance, Nico served as the creative director for End of Lines, while Geoffroy is currently leading our new project. This means we have shorter waiting times between productions, allowing for a smoother transition and providing our studio with greater artistic diversity.

To Hell With the Ugly

To Hell With the Ugly is a point-and-click adventure game based on the novel of the same name by Boris Vian. You play Rock Bailey, a young man who's strikingly handsome and rather shallow, who gets kidnapped after leaving a jazz club. Navigate through bar brawls and a police investigation to assist Rocky https://store.steampowered.com/app/1455450/To_Hell_With_The_Ugly/

Empire of the Ants

Empire of the Ants set out on an epic adventure into the microscopic world in this photorealistic strategy game. Play as a brave ant and lead your colony through the perils of the forest and its diverse wildlife. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287330/Empire_of_the_Ants/

The Six One Indie Showcase !

Hey, if you're on our socials, you might have seen that we were in the alumni section of the Six One Indie Showcase! We thank them again for that selection.

Let's conclude with our usual exclusive artwork!

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/ 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). Best, Ophlie, on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

End of Lines Sale

End of Lines, our 2023 interactive graphic novel about climate change is currently on sale on Steam. For the rest of the week, you can get it for half the price, our biggest discount yet. We still think End of Lines is one of our best works, and it pains us that it didn't find as large of an audience as our other titles, so we hope this exceptional sale might help attract some visibility it sorely lacks. And of course, if you already played an liked the game, any of the usual stuff: sharing, liking, telling your friends about it or leaving a positive recommendation on Steam would help immensely (and would be greatly appreciated). The message we tried to articulate with End of Lines is very close to our hearts, especially during a year where global average temperatures records are broken repeatedly (source: copernicus.eu). So if the game is languishing at the bottom of your wishlist, now is the great time to buy it! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/

What have we been up to?

Now that Echoes is released (no, it didn't went well; we'll wait for the dust to settle and we'll talk about it in detail in a future newsletter), we're full steam ahead on our next game, taking advantage of the summer to finish pre-production. It's still too early to talk about it at length, but we can already reveal that it will be a new installment of the series we started with Along the Edge and Across the Grooves. As it's become customary for the studio for the last few years, we left the scorching temperatures of the summer in the city for a more pastoral setting, so here's a shot of Nico (with Pauline, a dancer) and I (Geoffroy, with Twiggy, a dog) at work from Carcans and la Creuse, respectively.
Thats all for now, and see you next month! And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/ 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). Best, Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone! I know we promised you more regular updates, but I'm afraid March came and went with no news from us due to Nico being very busy with his teaching gigs and I (Geoffroy) battling a nasty pulmonary infection. So, here we are, fashionably late, but bearing important news, as you'll discover if you keep on scrolling towards the bottom end of this digital missive.

SPAWN! Festival 2024

A couple of weeks ago, we had the joy of going to Angoulme for the second edition of the Spawn festival, which showcases indie games that are either local to Nouvelle-Aquitaine, eco-responsible, progressive, or all of the above, which, as you can imagine, is right up our alley. As always, the hospitality of our peers from Angoulme was incredible, we had such a great time!
A wild writer is hiding somewhere in the picture, can you spot him? Photo credit: Capucine Chauffourier.

Announcing our next game: Echoes

The name "Echoes" may sound familiar to the ears of our most devoted readers, since it was indeed the first game we ever released as an independent studio, even before Along the Edge, back in 2013. Being released in the very early days of the iPhone AppStore, we were a bit sad to see this piece our history slowly withering away, sadly destined to one day become completely incompatible with the current version of the Apple hardware and software. It ended bothering us so much that, I (Geoffroy) started working on this side project on and off from September 2021, having a little bit of time to spare during the production of End of Lines. Fortunately, we had the foresight to prepare for an eventual PC release, so we already had high-resolution visual assets at hand. Less fortunately, the scripts for the game were completely incompatible after a decade of evolution of "Teckel", our in-house narrative game engine.
Also, diving back into the project, we quickly realized the gigantic gap of quality between our first attempt at a narrative game and our later, very obviously superior, work. So, we decided that we might as well take this opportunity to do justice to these characters we loved, and I re-wrote the totality of the text, dialogs, and choices from the ground up, keeping only the twists and turns of the original story (as imagined by Frdric "Ekmule" Lignac) as a guideline. After the release of End of Lines last year, Nico retouched the illustrations that were in the most dire need of an upgrade, and we asked our friends and regular collaborators Camille and Julien from Illustrason to expand and remaster the soundtrack and the sound effects of the game for good measure. As usual, Rachel translated this new version of the text into English and Alix made sure everything was free of any typos or mistakes. That brings us to today, proud and ready to unveil this heavily remade edition of Echoes. If you want learn more about the game, please, have a look at our Steam page, and please consider adding it to your wishlist, as an offering to the mighty algorithm gods, if nothing else. We'll appreciate it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1775220/Echoes/ The game is set to release soon (probably sooner than you think) for PC, Mac, Linux and the Nintendo Switch. As always, the game has been tested and optimized for the Steam Deck or any potato capable of running Windows 10 (as it is now required to launch Steam).

What have we been up to?

As you can imagine, Echoes has been taking up most of our attention recently, but we're also making progress on our next game. Stay tuned for more on that front soon. To conclude, here's our traditional monthly illustration. This one shows the evolution of the art style of Echoes from one episode to the next, following and depicting the gradual degradation of the narrator's psyche, one of the most original features of the game.
Thats all for now, and see you next month! And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/ 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). Best, Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.