Hey everyone, Happy 20 Years of Half-Life! As announced this past weekend, today we are releasing another content pack for A Place in the West! The app has been updated to include the Russian Translation of Chapter 5 (Thanks to Vsevolod Stepanov and Pavel Lapinsky), as well as adding Containment, our new interlude that takes us back to Black Mesa, to the place where it all began. Theres also a new Extra involving Containment, for which we give thanks to Rikki "Marphy Black" D'Angelo, that Ill let you explore for yourself Containment and the Chapter 5 Russian translation are both available in PDF form as well. Finally, were releasing Volume 2 of our soundtrack today, with 9 new tracks from Chris Jolley!

Celebrating Half-Life

This past weekend we did a Twitch Stream, where Ross played through Half-Life and we laughed at how many times he died (it was a LOT). If you didnt catch it and are interested, its still available on Twitch until it expires - http://twitch.tv/halflifecomic. I will also be uploading the original to our YouTube channel, as well as cutting together a shorter Highlights reel for someone who wants to laugh at Rosss deaths, and hear us talk about the comic, but not sit through 6 hours of gameplay. Were talking about going through Opposing Force and Blue Shift next, followed by Half-Life 2 and both of its Episodes, so if this is something that you like or would like to see more of, please do let us know! And thank you to everyone who came to hang out and chat, it was a lot of fun. Speaking of celebrating Half-Life, Digg.com did a write-up about the 20th Anniversary, and Ross and I both talked a bit about our experiences with the franchise. You can read that here - http://digg.com/2018/half-life-20th-anniversary

What's Next?

So many things. Since its the end of the year and we havent been as transparent during the course of it as Id have liked us to have been, lets take full stock, shall we?

• Chapter 6 is going into Production in December! We werent able to produce nearly as much this year as I would have liked because of financial reasons, and its great to be getting back to it. My hope is that we can have multiple chapters release next year.
• Weve also been working on getting everything down on paper. Often when were producing, we have the next chapter or two written, but now were extending our lens further. Ross has been hard at work over the last few months forging ahead into the later chapters. As production is approaching the storys halfway point(!), were spending a lot of time looking at wrapping up threads and character arcs. Currently we have up through Chapter 11 written (at least as rough drafts), with the plan being to finish the remaining chapters by the end of the year.
• Over the next month, I have some homework to do myself: Im going to rewrite the APW App to try and solve the Windows 10 problems that have been plaguing us for quite some time. Im also going to be getting back into the world of video editing - cutting the Stream Highlights video together for YouTube and getting back into making the Commentary Tracks. We have commentary audio for Chapters 2, 3, and 4 recorded, and the audio mixing for all of them nearly done, I just need to finish the videos themselves (and add subtitles, which was a popular request with the last Commentary video).
• Finally, Translations! These are something that I really dropped the ball on this year. We have translations for Chapter 2 that have been sitting around (largely due to financial strains) so the plan will be to get those lettered and shipped out, and then to do more prep with the published chapters and try to get the translators to help us out some more. I dont want to make any promises about how much will or wont be done, but I am going to make it much more of a priority than I have so far. Stay tuned for hearing more about that in early 2019.

As ever, making Half-Life: A Place in the West is an experience that we are endlessly grateful for, and wish to say thank you to everyone who has been with us on the journey so far, and to everyone new who is joining us along the way. I am so excited to share with you all of the exciting things we have in store for the next year.