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.

[h2]SPAWN! Festival 2024[/h2]

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.

[h2]Announcing our next game: Echoes[/h2]

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).

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

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.

Hello everyone!

While we're secretly working on our upcoming release (you'll get a sneak peak at the end of this newsletter), let's talk a bit about carbon emissions.

[h2]JYROS[/h2]

Last year, Nova-box was one of the pilot studios in France to set up a tool for calculating greenhouse gas emissions for video games. This collaborative effort led to the deployment of the JYROS platform, now available to all.

We've been striving to make low-tech games for over ten years, and we're aware of our environmental impact, but we've always refrained from communicating about it, because we didn't have any figures to back up our intentions, however virtuous they may be. The cost of a personalized carbon footprint was unfortunately prohibitive for a small structure like ours.

We're delighted to now be able to share our figures with you:



Of course, we'd love to be able to compare these figures with the industry average, but it's difficult to find reliable, anonymized data at this stage. We'll be happy to update you when we have more data to share. Until then, we think we can agree that our consumption is indeed very low, and not at all representative of the cost of IT in general.

To find out more, we invite you to visit the Jyros website:
https://jyros-jeuvideo.com/
(The "resource" page contains numerous documents, guides and reports on the subject).

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

We're very glad to report that our next release has been submitted and validated by Steam. Hopefully, we'll be able to tell you a lot more soon.

In the meantime, here's the soundtrack cover of our mysterious next project (though our most faithful followers might already have figured out what we've been working on *wink wink*).



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 and Happy New Year 2024 everyone!

Spring is in the air, and the Nova-box premises are bursting with color and activity. The seasons just don't seem to count for anything anymore, do they?




[h2]Steam Storyteller's Festival 2024[/h2]


We're delighted to be part of the Steam Storyteller's Festival again this year. You can catch End of Lines with 30% off this week alongside a great selection of narrative gems.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/

[h2]Nova-box was featured in a French broadcast TV show![/h2]
Last Sunday, France 3 broadcast a program about ecology in the video game industry. We were delighted to be invited to express our views on the subject.
You can watch the replay here (in French).

On a more Nova-box-focused note, Geoffroy took part in the "La culture du carry" radio emission hosted by Julie Langlois on Radio Campus Besanon. You'll also hear some delightful musical extracts from Julien and Camille's work on Seers Isle, End of Lines and Across the Grooves.
The podcast is available here (also in French).



[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
As usual, we leave you with a mysterious screenshot of one of our current projects.



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,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

Despite a very mild (and particularly rainy) month of December in Bordeaux, the Nova-box premises have quietly gone into winter mood as everyone prepares to join their loved ones for the end of the year. Desks and instruments have been prepared for this short (but necessary) period of hibernation.

[h2]Dreamhack Beyond Indies / Winter Sale[/h2]

We're delighted to announce that End of Lines was selected to be featured at the Dreamhack Beyond Indie 2023 Sales. This was a great opportunity to showcase our latest interactive graphic novel on Steam, from December 15th to 21st. End of Lines was on sale with 25% off for the occasion, but don't worry if you missed it since, right on the heels of this event, the Steam Winter Sale has just started.

It will be the last time you'll be able to get our titles at these attractive prices for a while. As always, there's our nifty "complete your collection" bundle for you to get an extra 10% off on our game you don't already own. The link is here below.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/



[h2]Game Updates[/h2]

As you may have noticed, all Nova-box games have recently been updated. We've added support for DualSense controllers (PlayStation 5). We've also taken the opportunity to push some minor bug fixes to End of Lines and Across the Grooves. All of this is detailed in the most recent patch notes of each game.

[h2]Servers migration[/h2]

It's a bit technical and you won't notice any difference on your end since our games are fully offline experiences, but we're pretty proud that Nova-box development servers are now managed locally, thanks to our friends at Zaka Services, a small company in Bordeaux to whom we entrust our data management.


Zaka Services are very much aligned with us on carbon reduction and sobriety measures. For example, they only use refurbished hardware for their servers.

Here's a link to their website (in French): www.zaka-services.com

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

We're now fully committed to the pre-production of our next graphic novel, and can't wait to tell you all about it. We can't tell you much about it for now, but the story will revolve around a couple of iconic places. One of them is a strange cabaret tentatively called The Outpost (the name might change, but don't hesitate to tell us what you think of it).

Here's the first concept art of this whimsical albeit a tad creepy place.




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,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Dear Friends,

here are the patch notes for v2.1.1 of Seers Isle:
Dual Sense Gamepad support. Your PlayStation 5 gamepads should now work correctly both via USB and Bluetooth.
Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor was disabled when playing on a touchscreen equipped Windows device.

Please note that our Twitch integration beta has been disabled. Unfortunately, Twitch completely changed its token system, rendering the feature unusable for the time being.

If you're interested in Twitch integration, please reach out to us, we will consider devoting some of humble resources to make it work again if there's enough demand.

Thank you and kind regards,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

Let's talk about some nice events we've attended and the yearly Black Friday stuff.

[h2]Black Friday / Autumn Sales[/h2]

Firstly, all Nova-box games will be on sale on Steam from November 21 to 28!
If you want to complete your collection, you can opt for the bundle for an extra 10% off plus the sale discount. The games you already own will be deducted from the price.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/



[h2]Hypermondes[/h2]

We attended the Hypermonde literary festival at Mrignac last month. Nova-box's text-based narrative games are always in the spotlight there and we appreciate this extraordinary opportunity to meet and greet numerous authors from all over the world.
Amongst my little discoveries this year, I was able to get dedicated copies of:

• Le Premier jour de paix by Elisa Beiram. An excellent futuristic novel. Its a bit like End of Lines but with some brighter sides (warning: with no interactivity, you're in for an incredible rollercoaster ride).


• L'Empire s'effondre by Sbastien Coville. The "speculative fiction" genre is known to often present insightful, sometimes disturbing, reflections of reality. I particularly appreciate the intelligence and accessibility of this one.

Hello everyone!

This month, we're diving deep into the launch of End of Lines and its aftermath.

[h2]End of Lines is OUT![/h2]
Our latest interactive graphic novel was released on May 25th, 2023, just a few days after Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and at the very moment the press was receiving advance copies of Street Fighter 6 and Diablo 4 with only a few days for them to complete their reviews before their embargo was lifted (spoiler alert: it didn't go well for us).

But let's start with the good news: we've had some very good feedback. We'd like to thank everyone who has supported us despite all the big releases coming one right after another this year.

Here are a few samples of the reviews the game received over the web and in the press:

• "If you like visual novel-style games, don't pass up End of Lines. It's really great!", yunicia.fr (18/20),


• "Moving play of impressions, sublime in its sense of detail.", Les Inrockuptibles,


• "End of Lines is an experience that dares to carry a difficult theme perfectly suited to the visual novel theme.", Canard PC (8/10),


• I enjoyed End of Lines take on the consequences of neglecting the climate crisis, as shown via the intimate stories and daily struggles of individuals living those very consequences in the future. Its a warning!, Switchaboo (7/10),


• End of Lines gets down to the nitty-gritty, naming those responsible for a coming catastrophe and showing the ecological and human consequences in the clearest terms. The result leaves nobody unscathed, and is as unsettling for its climatic anxieties as for its human dramas., The Pixel Post,


• "End of Lines is a remarkable game both in terms of storytelling and direction, taking on all the strengths of the developers' previous games.", Loutre Perfide for veuillezparlapresente.com,


• End of Lines brings us a new visual novel in which we get a glimpse at a potential future that can hit us if we dont act on the effects of climate change and global warming before its too late., PS4blog.net (9/10).

• on Mastodon:


• or on Bluesky (the account is handled by Geoffroy): @nova-box.com


• and why not my personal toot box?

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
While we're going through the trials and tribulations of releasing End of Lines, we've started to work on at least two projects that we're sure to announce shortly. In the meantime, here's a mysterious concept for one of them (we're keeping the other one exclusive to the subscribers of this newsletter so, please subscribe!).



Thats all for now, and see you next month! (we really mean it this time).

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,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

It's official, after three years in the making, we're finally ready to release our next interactive graphic novel, End of Lines.

Continue reading for an abundance of details.



[h2]Coming Thursday, May 25th[/h2]

Mark your calendars: End of Lines will be available worldwide on PC/Mac/Linux via Steam and a selection of trustworthy online retailers across the Internet on Thursday, May 25th.

In this new interactive graphic novel, you'll be following a family trying to survive in a post climate meltdown Europe. To achieve that, you'll have to manage their resources and the people who travel alongside them, while, of course, making choices that will shape their journey across the continent.

In other words, we decided to explore one of the possible outcomes of an important contemporary issue in this game. Perhaps the greatest challenge of our time.

We really hope it will resonate with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_FP8IPv9hs

Of course. we have scheduled a release discount over on the Steam Store (If you haven't done so already, please be kind enough to add End of Lines to your wishlist it really helps with discovery algorithms and will let you know when the game is out).

And for those who are wondering, well yes: the original soundtrack, which consists of nearly 2 hours of instrumental music and ambient sounds from the game, masterfully crafted by our friends Julien and Camille from Illustrason will be available as a DLC on Steam, as a downloadable album on Bandcamp, and on streaming platforms such as Spotify or Deezer.



[h2]Release party at la Librairie du Basilic in Bordeaux[/h2]

The team will be at the Librairie du Basilic on Saturday, June 3rd from 2PM to 4PM (and possibly later). You'll be able to test the game, and meet and greet us. We're also planning a couple of surprises for the afternoon.

The Librarie du Basilic is a very nice place, specialized in speculative fiction and fantasy literature, with a great selection of books and lovely people who will happily point you towards your next favorite author.

And if you are itching to pay them a visit before the party, note that they've set up a demo of Seers Isle in the store. They also have some Steam keys for this game to sell from a limited run of beautiful ex libris we made back in 2018.

The address: Librairie du Basilic 20 rue du Mirail, 33000 Bordeaux



[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

Once again, I have to apologize for the lack of news these last few months, but as you may imagine, finishing the game has been quite a hectic endeavor for everyone involved, to say the least.

Still a lot to do before we cross the finishing line, but we're definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at last.

As always, let's conclude with this month's new illustration, the last you'll get for End of Lines. Soon, we'll be switching gears and we can't wait to tease you about our upcoming interactive graphic novels.



Thats all for now, and we hope we'll see you on release day!

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.

Hello everyone!

First of all, we would like extend our best holiday wishes to all of you, dear readers.

In this month's issue, we're talking about the awards received at Indie X, our ongoing winter sale and the price adjustments that are coming up early next year.

As always, we'll finish with an update on End of Lines production, along with a new illustration from the game, so keep on scrolling!



[h2]End of Lines won an award at Indie X 2022![/h2]

So, last month, we had the chance to take part in Indie X, the biggest indie games festival in Portugal, where End of Lines received a nomination for "Best Art Direction" and won the award for "Games for Good". We're very proud to have received both those distinctions.


And if you missed it, our IndieX livestream is available for replay on Youtube, where we go in depth into the artistic statement and game development of End of Lines. Big thanks to Patricia Casaca who was a wonderful host!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWaHn6uI3RA




[h2]Price adjustments are coming in January[/h2]

Let's do the classic "I have good news and bad news" routine, shall we?

Let's get the "bad" news out of the way first: Steam adjusted the recommended prices conversion earlier this year, and we haven't applied them on our catalogue yet, but we're planning on doing it early next year, once the current Winter Sale ends. That means that the prices of our games will go up in certain regions.

Also, as you may have noticed, two-digits inflation has made a nasty comeback in Europe. That means each sale we make returns less value than it did in the past. To give you an example, if we only needed to sell six copies of Across the Grooves to pay for a kebab for each member of our team in the past (these are not real-life numbers, just an example), we willnow need to sell seven or even eight copies of the game for same number of kebabs, because the price of kebabs went up with inflation, while the price of our games did not (yet).

That's why we're also planning on updating the base price of our games from 12.99/$ to 13.99/$ on Steam and other resellers.

We know that this may seem like a very peculiar decision, but we really hope you'll understand why we're trying to approach things differently.

[h2]Winter Sales[/h2]

I can hear you asking me "okay, we get it" (and we really hope you do), "but what's the good news, then?"

Well, the good news is that we're making our the biggest discount to date on our full back catalogue, with 35% off on all our titles. So if you're on the fence about diving into a Nova-box game, now would be a great time to do so.

On top of that, you can get an extra 10% off with our permanent "complete your collection" bundle on Steam. Follow the nifty link here below, it will point you in the right direction:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

[h2]TL;DR[/h2]

So, to sum it up:
the base price of our games will go up 1/$ next month to counter inflation,
but:
we're currently running our biggest sale to date, with 35% off across the catalogue.

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

We're currently in the midst of our "friends & family" closed beta, and the first waves of feedback we've received are quite encouraging. We're very grateful to our testers for their time. Thanks to them we will have a lot of adjustments and improvements to implement into the game next month, once the beta session is concluded.

On the art side, Nico and Julie are still upgrading all the illustrations from placeholders to finished art pieces, and they will be doing that for the next couple of months, since there's a lot of images to behold in End of Lines (we've passed the 1000 visual assets for the first time, and by a good margin). All in all, we're still on track for an early-ish 2023 release, and we'll keep you posted once we know more, of course.

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.

Hello everyone!

This month, we're talking about the Indie X festival and the new demo for End of Lines that you can try out on Steam.

Have a look below for the details on the new demo, as well as a look at new art from the game.



[h2]Indie X Online Festival 2022[/h2]

We're very happy to take part in the Indie X Festival this year!
End of Lines was selected in the top 50 finalists out of more 500 entries, which is quite an achievement.

We won't attend the physical festival in Lisbon, however, we'll be part of the online part of the festival with a special Q&A live stream on November 7th at 2PM CET.

We'll relay the news on our social channels so please keep your eyes peeled. In the mean time, you can go and visit the Indie X Online festival website, lots of great games are attending!

Also, the festival comes with a special event on Steam. To celebrate, we decided to update our demo and to make it public for the duration of the festival, starting right now!



[h2]Try End of Lines updated demo on Steam now[/h2]

To properly celebrate our participation in the Indie X festival, the demo of our upcoming interactive novel End of Lines will be available on Steam starting right now until November 15th.

The demo showcases the first chapter of the game. We made several tweaks to the art and to the story, but the most striking upgrade is the music and sound design which went through final recordings with live musicians since our last demo during June's Steam Next Fest.

We really hope you will enjoy it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/


[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

Since our last issue, we made a lot of progress on End of Lines and crossed a big milestone: the game is now playable in its entirety from start to finish in all variations of the story. We still have some adjustments to make on the texts and the scripts, but we're quickly approaching the "beta" state, to the joy of the team.

On the art side, Nico and Julie are now busy on upgrading all the illustrations from placeholder images to release-ready art. We also had the joy to welcome a new art intern last week: Liannesoa Farge, who will be with us until the end of the year. You can check out her portfolio on Artstation.

Thats all for now, see you next month!

Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!

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.

Hello everyone!

Looks like summer's come and gone in a heartbeat! In this month's issue, we'll talk about End of Lines (and its lateness) and the upcoming events we'll be attending.

[h2]End of Lines is late (again)[/h2]
Let's get the the bad news out the way first: as we were telling you last time, we've accumulated a fair amount of lateness. Unfortunately, it means that we may not find a release frame for 2022.

As you might know, releasing a small indie game is quite akin to crossing the Strait of Gibraltar on a small sailboat. You have to navigate around big tankers and other large boats while being extra careful not to be crushed by the mastodons surrounding you.

Since we're quickly approaching the holiday season, it might not be advisable to release our tiny and delicate vessel of a game with all the AAA titles that usually get the attention of everyone at this time of the year, so we'll take advantage of this extra time to polish End of Lines further.

We're still considering our options, but the most likely scenario is that we're going to aim for a February or March 2023 release spot, to give the End of Lines its best chance to get some attention from the press, the influencers, and most and foremost the players.

We really hope you won't be too disappointed if you've been waiting for our next game, and we, as a team, would like to extend our apologies for that state of affairs. On the other hand, we're really excited to be able to devote this extra time to make the best game we can, and hope you will enjoy it once we eventually release it. In any case, we'll keep you posted about any further development.



[h2]Events around Bordeaux this Fall[/h2]

Mark your calendars! If you're in the Bordeaux area on the weekend of September 24/25th, you will be able to test End of Lines on the second edition of the Hypermondes Festival at the Multimedia Library of Mrignac. It is a free Sci-Fi convention and we warmly recommend you to check it out.

I (Geoffroy) will also have the honor to participate on a panel about video games and utopia during the event (on Sunday, 09/25 at 11:50 AM).

All relevant information is available over there, on the event's website:
http://hypermondes.fr/



Geoffroy (left) and Nico (right) showing End of Lines during the Union St. Jean playtest in June.

Later in the month, Nico and I will also be present at the GameConf in Angoulme, where I'll participate in a panel about self-funding. If you're an attending member of the industry, don't hesitate to say hi to us, and if you're not, chances are the recording of my panel will be made available after the event. If that's the case, I'll give you the link in a future issue of this newsletter.


[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

As you might guess, we've been hard at work on End of Lines all summer, and we've made tremendous progress. The French text is complete, English localization is almost done. We can already tell you that End of Lines will be the longest game in our catalogue, text-wise: almost twice the size of Seers Isle and a good quarter longer than Across the Grooves.

On the Art side, the storyboard is almost complete and we should officially be in the "beta" phase at the end of the month. Still a lot to do, but we're finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

If you're wondering what our storyboards look like, here's a sample here below:



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.

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!


[h2]Nova-box is Steam Deck ready[/h2]
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.


[h2]End of Lines was featured in a pair of online events[/h2]
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


[h2]Demo at the Flora Tristan Library[/h2]
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.



[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
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.

Hello everyone!

We're very glad to announce that Seers Isle is now ready for the Steam Deck!

We implemented the requirements and recommendations for the new device, and we now support the new "Dynamic Cloud Save", allowing the players to suspend their game and pick it up where they left off on another device.

Here are the patch notes:

• Dynamic Cloud Save support,
  
• Support of Xbox One / Xbox Series controller icons on all platforms,
  
• Overall performance optimizations and under the hood upgrades,
  
• Various bug fixes.

Hello everyone!

So, it's official: last month we finally announced "End of Lines", our next interactive graphic novel!

[h2]End of Lines[/h2]

So, what is "End of Lines" exactly? Well, first off, it's an interactive graphic novel, like its predecessors: a novel size adventure, illustrated with hundreds of hand-painted pictures, where your choices will decide the fate of our protagonists, a family of travelers wandering northward in a post climate meltdown Southern Europe, in search of a hospitable place to settle.

This time around, Nico, in addition to his usual role of artistic director and illustrator, also takes the helm of "creative director" (like on "Seers Isle"), with the full support of the rest of the team, of course. He really wanted to use our creative output to speak out about climate change, to explore the way it might affect the next generations if we continue on our path towards self-annihilation.

It is quite a change of pace from our usual mysticism, occultism, and identity exploration, and we really hope you will enjoy this new endeavor!


Hereabove, the main cast of "End of Lines" takes a moment of respite in a flooded village of the Galician coast.

Handing the pen over to Nico, here's what he has to say about the game, in his own words:

"I've been busy with this project for a while. Mlanie and I were working on concept arts while producing Across the Grooves and I was already writing some first drafts. I'm very happy to be able to start sharing this with you.[/u]

Like many people of my generation, eco-anxiety is part of my life. I know it's not very original, but with this project, I hope to do something not only entertaining, but also, maybe, a bit useful. At least as "useful" as a work of fiction can be...

It's also a very personal universe that I'm trying to build, based on meaningful personal experiences, with the simple objective of sharing these emotions. And I hope it will be good enough."

Hello everyone!

The team and I would like to wish you all the best for this year's holiday season!
We know we've been extra quiet this year, but there's a lot to look forward to.

[h2]Across the Grooves was featured in an art book![/h2]
Last month, the book "Imaginaires du Jeu Vido, les concept-artistes franais" by Marine Macq was released by Third Edition and Le Cercle d'Art, with a whole chapter dedicated to Nova-box (in French only, I'm afraid). We're super proud to be featured in this superb artbook.

Here's a link if you're interested in checking it out.


(Picture taken by Marine Macq)

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
We may have been quiet, but we stayed quite busy behind the scenes. Our next game is progressing well, you can expect to hear a lot more about it in a few weeks! (in case you're wondering, yes: the header image is indeed a concept for this new game).

2022 is going to be an eventful year. We may also have a surprise for our longtime fans, but it's way too early to talk about that. Consider yourselves teased.


Thats all for now, see you next year, and once again, happy holidays!

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.

Hello everyone!

This month, we released not one, but two games on the Nintendo Switch!
We also have a couple of nice announcements coming up, so please, read on.


[h2]New praise on Along the Edge and Seers Isle![/h2]

We received a fresh round of great critiques on both Along the Edge and Seers Isle! Here comes a selection of noteworthy quotes and evaluations:

"A visual novel that stands shoulder to shoulder with the giants of the genre, Along the Edge is a fantastic and fantastical story thats delivered eloquently and masterfully. 9/10." Sean Davies, Along the Edge Review A Beautiful, Mature & Engrossing Tale, Finger Guns.

"I could recommend Seers Isle to any lover of story and European myths and legends. If you enjoyed Across the Grooves or other visual novels such as Cinders and Doki Doki Literature Club, I would recommend giving Seers Isle a chance. 9/10", Lainey Penzer, Seers Isle Review, Bonus Stage.



To round this up, Across the Grooves just received a very nice review from a young and promising French website, Pod' Culture. You can read it here: "Across the Grooves : heureux, qui comme Alice, a fait un beau voyage" (in French).

Last but not least, we were very proud to get a very nice article about our work in the print version of "Les Inrockuptibles", a French culture magazine, penned by Erwan Higuinen (as depicted/teased in the photograph here below). An online version is also available here for subscribers: "Nova-box, le franais qui plie le game des jeux vido narratifs" (in French).





[h2]Paris Games Week / Games "Made in France"[/h2]
We have the pleasure to participate to the Paris Games Week, which will be fully digital this year.

For the occasion, all our catalogue will be on sale during the weekend, so now might be a great time to complete your collection of Nova-box games! Keep an eye on our developer page on Steam, or get our "Nova-box Collection" bundle for an extra 10% off on top of the Paris Games Week discount.

Make a note in your diaries, because we will also be live on Twitch this Sunday, November 1st at 3:45 PM (Paris time) for the Games "Made in France" event organized by Capital Games (in French).

You can catch the program and the stream here on the official website:
jeuxmadeinfrance.fr


[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
Well, as you can see, we've kept ourselves quite busy. We've also started working on our next title, currently in the pre-production phase, which means lots of designing and budget--crunching, but also some new visual art. It's way too early to talk in detail about this new project, but let us share one of the first concept arts with you, hoping it will catch your eyes and your curiosity.



Also, we welcomed our new art intern, Julie Vidal, earlier this month. You can check out her impressive portfolio on ArtStation.

Please note that our communications might be a bit more infrequent for a while, until we're ready to properly unveil the ins and outs of our next endeavor.




Thats all for now, see you next time!

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.

[h2]What is this Twitch chat feature?[/h2]
Our Twitch integration feature is now available in open beta for all streamers!

It allows the Twitch chat to interact with the game, allowing the viewers to vote with chat commands each time a choice has to be made during the story.

To set it up, you'll need :
- the Steam version of one our games,
- a Twitch.tv account.
[h2]How to set it up[/h2]

Here are the instructions:
[h3]1. Update the game to Twitch beta:[/h3]
- Go to your Steam Library,
- Right-click on the name of the game in the list, then choose properties,
- Navigate to the betas tab,
- Choose "twitch" in the drop-down list,



- Steam should then start updating the game to the beta version.


[h3]2. Link the game to your Twitch account:[/h3]
- Launch the game,
- Go to options, then click "Configure" in the "Twitch" section,



- Under "User Name", enter your Twitch username,
- In the section "Token", click on "Get",



- Your browser will open, asking you to authorize our TwitchApp,
- Click on "authorize",
- Your browser will now redirect you to the web page "nova-box.com/twitch",
- Copy the token (it is a series of numbers and characters),



- Go back to the game, paste the token in the token field, click on "connect",
- The "Disconnected" label should change to "Connected!",



- Optional: You can set up the duration of the timer (the time given to the viewers to choose in chat) by changing the value of "Viewer choosing time". If you set it to "unlimited", you'll have to click the choices to progress in the game, otherwise, the most voted choice will be automatically selected at the end of the timer,

- When you go back to the main menu, a label indicating "Connected to Twitch" should appear to the top right corner of the screen,



- You can launch and start a game normally. The game will now write the corresponding commands in the Twitch chat for each new choice. The most voted choice will be highlighted in game.



- Enjoy !


[h3]Notes[/h3]
- This feature is only available for the Windows version of the game (not compatible with MacOS or Linux),
- Chat commands for voting are either "!choose " or the shortcut "!c ".

[h3]Special Thanks[/h3]
We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to AceXSoul and FuncleJ for beta testing this feature and providing us with very detailed and helpful feedback.

Thank you! <3

Hello everyone !

Here comes a small patch fixing a couple of small issues in Seers Isle:
- Fixing a wrongly attributed bubble in Chapter 2,
- Fixing Alistair's bubble from displaying incorrectly his name as "Luther" in Chapter 5.

Big thanks to FuncleJ and AJ-Soul for pointing these out to us during their recent streams of the game!

Enjoy,
all the best,

Geoffroy.

Hello everyone!

Geoffroy here, back on pen duty since Cyndie finished her internship at the end of July. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank her, on behalf of the team, for the wonderful work she's done for us, and I'm very happy to announce that she got recruited by our friends from Goblinz Studio and will be starting to work with them very soon. We wish her all the best for the future!

This month, we published our biggest patch yet for Along the Edge and Seers Isle. We also had a party and we have a couple of surprises coming up before the end of the year!


[h2]Seers Isle & Along the Edge: Version 2.0[/h2]
If you're a subscriber to this newsletter, you probably own at least one of our games, so chances are you already heard this piece of news through other channels: earlier this month, we published a major update for both Seers Isle and Along the Edge.

I won't transcribe the whole list of patches here, but here's a few highlights:
- Along the Edge received an extensive proofreading of the English version by Rachel, a German fan-translation (thank you Kim!), and got a full interface overhaul to make it on par with our later releases,
- we switched to the Unity engine under the hood, which should greatly improve stability and performance, as well as providing a substantially better support for Linux,
- both games received a myriad of bug and typo fixes and several quality of life improvements.

Patch notes are available on the related game pages here on Steam (library and store), so head there if you want to skim through the full details. Also, please note that this upgrade breaks the back-compatibility of save files, but you still have the possibility of going back to the previous version if you have a story to finish with your current save file (a step-by-step walkthrough on how to do so can be found in the patch notes).


[h2]Across the Grooves release party[/h2]
[/b] 2020 has been quite a strange year so far, to say the least. We've been working remotely for the most part since mid-March, so [b]we couldn't properly celebrate the release of Across the Grooves when the game shipped. With the COVID situation still not resolved and the safety of everyone in mind, we decided not to go overboard. So, we did throw a small party earlier this month.

Here's a picture of yours truly doing an impromptu speech in front of the team, courtesy of Charly Martin.



[h2]One more thing: Twitch integration[/h2]
I did tell you I had a couple of surprises coming up, didn't I?

These last few weeks, Daniel has been working on the Twitch API integration. What does it do? Well, imagine you're playing one of Nova-box's games live on Twitch and you would enjoy including your viewers more in your storytelling and your decision-making during your live session: with this feature you can let them vote in the chat (using a "!choose [x]" command), and either keep control on which dialog option to pursue or let your viewers take full control of the game by automatically choosing the most voted option at the end of a customizable timer.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's what it looks like for Across the Grooves:



The feature is in beta right now, but we did a couple of test runs last week and it already works pretty well, so it should be available "soon".

However, if you're a streamer and you'd be interested to test this feature with your community, we'll gladly send you a build and make improvements where needed based your feedback. Just send us an email at contact@nova-box.com and we'll set this up with you!

Last but not least, please allow me tease you a little bit about what's in store for Seers Isle and Along the Edge. We have a big announcement coming by the end of September! I don't want to spoil the surprise, but keep your eyes peeled, because we'll have to "switch gears in order to maneuver in the port" (*wink* *wink*).



Thats all for now, see you next time!

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.

Hello Everyone!

We just released v2.0.0 of Seers Isle which is a big milestone for the game.

Here are the patch notes:

• Unity engine integration: better performances, optimisation, and stability,
  
• Better gamepad support,
  
• Discord "rich presence" integration,
  
• Music and SFX: higher quality sound files,
  
• Gamepad vibrations integration,
  
• Option UI: changed from sound "on/off" to volume "0 to 10",
  
• Various bug fixes.
  

• Go to your Steam Library,
  
• Right-click on the name of the game in the list, then choose properties,
  
• Navigate to the betas tab,
  
• Choose "Electron" in the drop-down list,
  
• Steam should then restore the older version of the game.
  

Hello everyone!
Across the Grooves was released last month, and we are very happy with the positive feedback we have received.
It is time to keep you up to date with the latest news about the game and the studio!

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
Thanks to the Indie Game Factory's partnership with the CCG expo, visitors were able to play Across the Grooves on a dedicated booth during the event which took place from July 16th to 20th in Shanghai.



Thanks to the Indie Game Factory for this opportunity!

[h2]Across the Grooves is available in South American Spanish[/h2]
Good news for Spanish speakers: the latest update is live and allows you to play the game in South American Spanish!



This is a fan translation by Ariel Alejandro Muoz. Thanks to him, more people will be able to enjoy the game across the world, so many thanks to him for his time and dedication!

[h2]More feedback on our game[/h2]
Since the release of the game, more reviews have been written.
Here is a selection of English press quotes:

If youre after a mature tale with interesting characters and solid writing, you may want to check this one out. - Ollie Reynolds for Nintendo Life
Full article here.

Without exaggeration, I would recommend this game to anyone (any adult!) who is eager for a good story that could entertain for hours. - Milaina Penzer for Bonus stage
Full article here.

It has been a while since a game was able to take me somewhere the way this one does. - Dillon Sickels for FULLSYNC
Full article here.

Its definitely worth playing through for music nerds, time travel fanatics, and just fans of good stories. - Niranjan Raju for Gameffine
Full article here.

Once again, many thanks to them for their kind words, encouragement and constructive criticism from all around the world!

[h2]Some news from our dev friends[/h2]
As you may know, we share our co-working space with our friends Adrien and Maxime from Studio Black Flag and Loc a.k.a Ukioq.

Adrien and Maxime are still working on their upcoming game Orphan Age which is currently in alpha. It is a dystopian life sim game where you play not as the soldiers of war, but as the children left behind.

There is not a release date yet, but they are planning to release the game in Early Access.



As for Loc, hes still working on his first commercial video game, Purple Noise Echo. This is a tactical game with a dark neon ambiance in which you play Node, an amnesiac entity waking up in an unknown place made of hexagonal tiles.

The game is currently in Early Access, but all the features are in the game, and the lights and post-effects are much better!



For more info, please take a look at their websites:

• Orphan Age


• Purple Noise Echo

Hello everyone!
Finally, that's it! Across the Grooves has been in the wild since June 17th!
This month, we tell you everything you need to know about the game!

[h2]Across the Grooves is out now[/h2]
It's time to follow Alice's footsteps into parallel realities!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okU2NKPVtJY

Across the Grooves is now available here on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/957820/Across_the_Grooves/

If you like the games soundtrack, you can preview the album on Bandcamp, or even get the bundle game + soundtrack on Steam!

And since good news never comes alone, the game's OST is also available on streaming platforms, such as Spotify or Deezer!

[h2]The first feedback on our game[/h2]
Amongst all Across the Grooves reviews, some have blown our minds. We had to share them with you!

Heres a quote from Ross Kenistons review for The Finger Guns.

"Narrative driven video games have seen a real golden age this generation, now we can place Across The Grooves next to the likes of Everybodys Gone to the Rapture, Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch as essential representations of a genre that constantly surprises me."

You can read the entire article here.

Also, Get Indie Gaming made an excellent video review on his YouTube channel. You can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C8e2LDsrr4
As for the gaming sites WayTooManyGames and The Indie Game Website, they gave Across the Grooves the final score of 8/10!

Thanks to all the reviewers and streamers for giving us their first impressions and making our game accessible to as many people as possible!

[h2]A new Unity version for Along the Edge and Seers Isle[/h2]

• The Unity version is already available for Along the Edge and Seers Isle. To enable it, go to your Steam Library, right click the name of the game in the list, then choose properties, navigate to the betas tab and choose "Unity" in the drop-down list. The game should then update to the Unity version,


• Please note that save files are not compatible between versions, but the achievements will synchronize between each version and your save files (local and cloud) wont be deleted when you switch between each version of the game,


• Soon, we'll set the Unity version by default (we'll keep you informed on social networks and via Steam announcements),


• You can go back to the old version if you have a save in progress and you want to finish your playthrough. To do so, once again, navigate to the betas tab in the properties and choose "electron" in the drop-down list and wait for the update to complete.

[h2]Across the Grooves is now available on Steam![/h2]

It's time to embark on a journey across Europe and alternative realities!
Investigate a fate-altering vinyl record in our latest musical themed narrative adventure.

Get it now with the 10% launch discount:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/957820/Across_the_Grooves/

And if you already own a Nova-box game, you can complete your collection with an extra 10% off using this bundle link:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

We really hope you'll enjoy your time with Alice!
All the best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

After months of hard work and anticipation, weve finally revealed the launch trailer and the release date of the game!

[h2]Across the Grooves has a release date[/h2]

So here we are! We are very proud to announce that Across the Grooves will launch on Wednesday, June 17th 2020. Its almost time to join Alice on her adventure!

The game will be available on PC, Mac and Linux as soon as it comes out!
It should launch on Nintendo Switch at the same time, unless theres some unforeseen delay (after all, it is our first release on console since 2009).

Heres the launch trailer made by our good friend Guillaume Breton from Headbang Club.
We hope youll be as excited as we are!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okU2NKPVtJY
Weve also made a special version of the trailer for our French friends which you can watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrSNPczoNCI
Feel free to share it everywhere and tell us what you think about it!

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

As you can imagine, we've been busy finalizing and cross checking everything. It's been very exciting for us, and of course we've been trying to do the best work possible for our players.


Now, we are preparing the game release as best as we can, and we hope you'll be there on June 17th!

In the meantime, you can always add the game to your wishlist on Steam. You'll be notified as soon as it comes out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/957820/Across_the_Grooves/

Thats all for now! See you very soon for the official release, and thank you for your unfailing support!


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

See you next month!
Best,

Cyndie,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!

We're still confined, but we're making good progress. We hope you're doing well too!
This month, we talk about our progress on Across the Grooves and the game's musical references!


[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

Last month, we did a private beta and got some very cool feedback. Some testers loved it, some testers hated it, but no one was left indifferent!

Big thanks to the testers for their involvement and for their precious feedback that allows us to make better games.

After the tests, we made a lot of changes: improvements of the texts, the coherence of the scenario, the music

The games setting, rather obscure musical references and tone of "magic realism" may cause some divided opinions, but we hope with all our hearts that youll be seduced by the universe, which promises to be quite different from what most gamers are used to.

And lastly, were still moving forward. We're in the polishing phase, so it's starting to feel like the end of production!

We're still working from home, but we're well organized and we're working hard. So we're staying the course to keep to a release in the first half of 2020!
I promise, we'll tell you more soon... A little more patience! ;-)

Also, Unwinnable talked about us in an article about Seers Isle in the Monthly Unwinnable category. Many thanks to them!

Check it out by clicking here: Rowan from Seers Isle by Deirdre Coyle


[h2]The music in Across the Grooves[/h2]

As you may know, music will have a major role in the game.
We've created a lot of songs, and we can already tell you that the OST is going to sound like a pop album!

We are very proud of the result and once again, wed like to thank Julien and Camille for the music and sound design, Christelle for lending us her beautiful voice, and Charles-Henry Martin who wrote and recorded the soundtrack of Along the Edge, and who is now the pianist for Across the Grooves!

We created a Spotify playlist with a mix of musical references sent to the musicians for inspiration, as well as other songs and artists referenced in game.

Listen to the playlist on Spotify!


Weve added a lexicon feature in the game for those who would like to learn more about the musical references of Across the Grooves.

This lexicon is not intended to replace wikipedia, but rather to be an invitation to discovery for the curious. Moreover, all the entries have recommendations of records or songs to discover... Your curiosity is the only limit!



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

See you next month!
Best,

Cyndie,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the Nova-box team is working from home until further notice. But don't worry, we're doing everything we can to meet deadlines.



This month, we have some exciting news to share about Across the Grooves. Weve also been working on Unity versions for Along the Edge and Seers Isle!

[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]

Since last month, the production of Across the Grooves has progressed well. Thus, were glad to announce the game is officially in beta stage!

Also, the music has been integrated and we can tell you the songs are amazing!
Camille and Julien did such a great job on the music and sound design, and so did Christelle on vocals!



Of course, we still have some images to finish, but the game begins to take shape and were very proud of it.

Get ready for some psychedelic moments!

[h2]A big update is coming soon for Along the Edge and Seers Isle[/h2]
Good news! Working on a Nintendo Switch version for Across the Grooves allowed us to build Unity versions for our two other games.

• Pros:

• Cons:

• Deployment in three phases:

Hello everyone!

Once again, we're sorry for the lack of communication these last few months. We've been pretty busy working hard on our next game, Across the Grooves.
But since I, Cyndie, joined the team as a communication intern, I'll keep you informed about the game more often!


[h2]What have we been up to?[/h2]
A lot of stuff has happened in the past seven months.

Besides working hard on Across the Grooves, we also went to two events in October: EGX in London and Indie Game Factory - Animasia in Bordeaux.

In London, we were selected for the prestigious Leftfield Collection curated by David Hayward from Eurogamer. It aims to bring light to interesting and creative games, so we are very proud to have been a part of it!

Also, we came back with the best game award, granted by a jury in Bordeaux during the Indie Game Factory Awards!

Here are some pictures from the team during the events:



Moreover, were very glad to announce the end of production is fast approaching! Soon, youll be able to embark on a journey with Alice, across Europe and alternative realities!

Also, in the last newsletter, we mentioned that Mlanie joined the team as an art intern to help Nico. Shes done such a great job we decided to hire her as a freelancer!
You can find her artstation here.

And heres an exclusive image taken from the third chapter of the game shes been working on:



[h2]They talked about our games[/h2]
In their last Visual Novel Review Digest, VNs Now! talked about Seers Isle and gave it the final score of 8/10!

"[Nova-box's] work is a consistent feast for the eyes and Seers Isle is no exception with stunning designs and backgrounds"

You can read the article by clicking here.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun mentioned Across the Grooves in the article 2020's most exciting new PC games. Our game shares the list with some of the most anticipated games of the year such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding, so thats pretty amazing!

You can read the article here (were in page 2).

We thank them for their kind words and we hope Across the Grooves will be up to your expectations!

For now, if you want to support us, please add the game to your wishlist on Steam to help us gain visibility!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/957820/Across_the_Grooves/

And last but not least...

[h2]Across the Grooves is coming to Nintendo Switch![/h2]
This is a piece of information we've been hanging onto for a long while, and we hope you will be as excited as we are about it now that we can finally talk about it: we're very proud to announce that Across the Grooves will be released on Nintendo Switch!

We've been big fans of the device ever since it was announced and we believe our games will be a perfect match for the Switch, especially in handheld mode.
This will allow the game to become your travel companion of course, whether you're commuting to work or going away for a weekend, but youll also be able experience the story in a format that will be the most akin to reading an actual comic book.

And since good news never comes alone, we're planning to release Across the Grooves on Switch and on PC, Mac, and Linux simultaneously!



Of course, all of this wouldn't be possible without the help of our friend Daniel Borges from Manufacture 43, who's been in charge of porting our home engine to Unity in order to make it compatible with the Switch.
By the way, his shootem up Pawarumi has just been released on PS4!
For more information about the game, please visit the website: pawarumi.com.

Thats all for now, but more information is coming soon, so stay tuned!

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:
twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio
instagram.com/novabox

See you next month!
Best,

Cyndie,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
Once again, I've let a couple of months lapse since our last newsletter. Sorry about that. Let's get back to a (hopefully) more steady schedule with a big announcement!

Announcing Across the Grooves
After all these months working in complete secrecy, we're super excited to finally be able to talk about our next interactive graphic novel!

It is called "Across the Grooves" and it will arrive early next year on PC, Mac and Linux. As usual, it is written in French and translated in English, with both languages available at launch.

The core team is the same as Seers Isle, with Nico as the lead artist, Raphal doing the code and me, Geoffroy, as the writer. We're also working again with Camille and Julien from Illustrason for the music and sound design. Christelle will once again lend us her voice for a couple of songs. To ensure the quality of the text, we're also working with the same editorial team as on Seers Isle, with Rachel in charge of the English localization and Alix (A.K.A. L'Oiseau Lecteur) on proofreading. Victoria has been helping us since April on our communication, so if there's been an upturn on our social networks, it's probably thanks to her.

Last but not least, we have the chance to work with two great art interns this year: Mlanie Ertaud and Aliz Giraud (we'll feature their work over the next couple of newsletters).



So, without further ado, let's dive into the story!

Alice lives an uneventful life. Shes in a long term relationship, has a stable office job and a nice apartment in the center of Bordeaux. One day, Ulysse, her ex-lover, comes back into her life through an old vinyl record she receives in the mail. When she puts it for a spin on turntable, she is thrown back into her own past, forced to relive old events. When she comes back to the present, her reality has changed.

Determined to bring her life back on track, Alice packs up and embarks on a hunt across Europe, following the tracks of Ulysse while trying to uncover the origins of the record. However, her journey gradually turns into a quest of self-discovery as she explores new parallel realities each time she puts the needle in the groove.

Here are some screenshots from the game:



Dear newsletter subscribers, you're amongst the first ones to hear about this, but later today, we'll be sharing this news with the world.

If it doesn't bother you too much, a retweet, a "share" on facebook or a "like" on instagram of our official announcement will go a long way. The team and I thank you in advance for your kindness.

Also, please add Across the Grooves to your wishlist on Steam, doing so boosts our visibility on the platform way more than you might think.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/957820/Across_the_Grooves





Our friends from Manufacture 43 released their game on console last month.

Turns out we're not the only ones who had a busy summer. Daniel, from Manufacture 43, one of the studios we share our co-working space with just released his shoot'em up (or "schmup", I don't know what the cool kids call this kind of game these days) PAWARUMI on Nintendo Switch and on Xbox One, to critical acclaim.

For more information, please come over to their website: pawarumi.com


What have we been up to?
Once again, it has been quite a busy couple of months!
Besides working on Across the Grooves, we went to London with our friends from Studio Black Flag to attend the Casual Connect convention in May. We had a great time and we even came back with two nominations (Best Art and Best Narrative), and the Best Audio trophy for Seers Isle.

Here's a couple of pictures from our trip:



Let's conclude with our usual exclusive image from the game.
This one happens in chapter one, just after Alice realises her world has been turned upside down:



If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://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:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio

You can also find us on instagram now:
https://instagram.com/novaboxstudio


See you next month!
Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
These last few months (sorry for the lack of communication, we've been quite busy), we came and went to San Francisco, we welcomed a new studio in our co-working space in "Les Chartrons", and we have a couple of events planned in the very near future.



We went to San Francisco
So, as you may already know, Seers Isle was nominated for "Excellence in Narrative" at the Independent Game Festival 2019's awards. The nomination came with an invitation to the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, California in March, where the awards ceremony was also taking place.

First, to remove any unnecessary suspense, let's start by saying that we didn't end up winning the award. After all, we were competing against Lucas Pope, who did a splendid job on Return of the Obra-Din and totally deserved it (he brought back home both the GDCA and the IGF narrative awards along with a couple more this year). However, being nominated was already a great mark of recognition from our peers and we spent an excellent time there: the conferences were very inspiring, and we met more cool people than we can count!

On the business side, we also made some interesting connections there. It's still a bit early to talk about it, but stay tuned, some nice things will certainly come to fruition in the next few months.

Here's a couple of pictures of Nico and I (Geoffroy) wandering in the streets of San Francisco.



Coming up: Casual Connect in London and Bordeaux Geek Festival
From May 27th to May 30th, we will be showing Seers Isle at the Casual Connect event in London, as finalists for the Indie Prize! As "it is dangerous to go alone", we'll be crossing the Channel with our friends and fellow officemates from Studio Black Flag, who were also selected for the Indie Prize.

So, if you're eager to meet us, have a chat, and test both of our games, you know what you need to do. Here's the link to the website of the event, where you should find answers to any of the questions you may have: http://europe.casualconnect.org/

Meanwhile, if you want to try Studio Black Flag game, Orphan Age, we've been told the demo has been recently updated on Steam. We warmly invite you to smash the button here below if you want learn more about it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/767660/Orphan_Age/

From June 8th to June 10th, we will be sharing a demo space with some local game studios on the Bordeaux Geek Festival in, well, Bordeaux. To find us, look for "Bordeaux Games" on the map of the event. We'll probably be there on Sunday afternoon.
Here's the website of the event for more information:
https://geek-festival.fr/



Loc A.K.A. "Ukioq" moved in with us!
Loc actually joined our co-working space back in January, but with the lack of newsletters (our fault), we didn't get the chance to introduce his studio and his project until now. So, let's correct that right away:

Loc has been working as a one-man team on a game named Purple Noise Echo for the last three years. This is a tactical game with a dark neon ambiance in which you play Node, an amnesiac entity waking up in an unknown place made of hexagonal tiles.

To survive, you will have to rely on several things: controlling hostile entities, managing your resources and exploring your environment.

Purple Noise Echo is about to be released on Steam in Early Access.

Dont hesitate to follow Ukioq on Twitter to get Purple Noise Echo latest news!
It's this way: @uki_lb


What have we been up to?
As you may have witnessed from the lack of newsletters since January, we've been quite busy!

When we're not globetrotting for events, we're still working on our next title, which is still coming along quite nicely, despite all the distractions. We'll officially announce this next game in the next couple of months, once we have ironed out some last details business-wise, so stay tuned!

We also have welcomed two interns who will work with us until the end of summer:
- Victoria, who's helping us on marketing stuff (if you noticed some changes in the frequency and the quality of our online communications recently, it's completely thanks to her),
- Mlanie, who just arrived monday morning and will be helping Nico with the art of our future projects (yeah, projects with an "s", we're already putting down the foundations of what will come after next, but don't expect to hear much about this one until next year).


If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://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:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio

See you next month!
Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

As you may have heard from our latest newsletter, Seers Isle has been nominated for the "Excellence in Narrative" award at the Independant Game Festival.

Thing is, there's also an "audience award" gathering online votes this week.
If you considered taking a few minutes to give us your vote, we would be very grateful.

Here's the link :
https://goo.gl/forms/ygwdhAlOGxYLnhVf1

And here's a short video of Nico and I (Geoffroy) to motivate you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5W8m5rKBnw
Have a great day,
all the best,

Geoffroy.

Hello everyone!
We wish you all a happy new year!
This month, we will talk about San Francisco and New York with two events coming up for Nova-box.

Animation First Festival in New-York this weekend
If you happen to be in New York this weekend, you'll have the chance to try out Seers Isle at the Animation First Festival, organized by the French Institute / Alliance Franaise (FIAF), as our game made it into the official selection along with other video games from Bordeaux, France.

It takes place on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th, and you can get all the information you may need directly on their website, over here.



Seers Isle got a nomination for the IGF Awards!
We're very proud to announce that Seers Isle has been nominated for the Independent Game Festival Award, for the category "Excellence in Narrative. It was chosen as one of the six finalists in a panel of over 500 entries. We're very proud and grateful for this distinction.

The consequence of that is that Nico and I (Geoffroy) will be in San Francisco from March 18th to March 22th to attend the awards ceremony that takes place during the Game Developer Conference. We will also have a kiosk on the expo floor, so don't hesitate to come meet us and try our games if you're going to this event.

Once again, you'll find all the information you need on the Game Developer Conference website.

We also answered some questions from Joel Couture for GamaSutra as a part of the "Road to the IGF 2019" series on GamaSutra:
Read Nova-box's interview on GamaSutra



New Prints on Society 6
We added new prints from Seers Isle on Society6!
You can check them out over there:
Seers Isle Prints

What have we been up to?
Well, January is always a month with a lot of administrative stuff to work through, and this year was no different. So it's been "paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork" for me (Geoffroy). I'm putting the final touches to the funding files for our next game that are due by the end of the month, and I've also turned into a small travel agency to get ready to come over to the USA for the Game Developer Conference in March.

In spite of all that, Nico, Raph and I found the time to build a first prototype of the next game, and it's coming along quite nicely. Julien and Camille (our musicians) will begin recording some music next month, and we're all eager to see what they will come up with impatiently, music being one of the main themes of this next project.

Speaking of this, here's an image of Alice with the headphones on for your viewing pleasure:



And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio

See you next month!
Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
Here comes the last newsletter of 2018. This month, we had a party, we did an interview, and the holiday season sales are in full swing.

We adopted a piano
So, last week, Studio Black Flag, Manufacture 43 and Nova-box held a party in our shared office of the 21 rue des Retaillons, with a double purpose. One was to hold the monthly after work meetup of the "Bordeaux Games" society that we all are part of, and another was to properly welcome an old German-made upright piano to our workplace.

We did this on an initiative from our friend Charly Martin (who you may remember from the music credits of Along the Edge and Echoes), who created a society called "Autour du Piano" ("Around the Piano"). One of its missions is to salvage forgotten pianos from mouldy basements and give them a second life in public or semi-public places.

So, we jammed and we chatted into the wee hours of the night. We would like to warmly thank everyone who came, we had such a great time in your company. Here below, some snapshots from the evening.



We talked in front of a camera
Right before the Animasia convention in October, Quentin, AKA "Soy Indies" had a chat with Nico and I (Geoffroy) about Seers Isle's release and our thoughts about narrative games in general.

You can watch it on Youtube, however, I'm afraid the whole interview is in French (and I apologize to our international friends for that). You can also follow Soy Indies on Twitter (@soyindies) and on Twitch (twitch.tv/soyindies).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8MCe6gA49c

Winter Sales
These are the last big sales of the season! You can get Along the Edge with 33% off and Seers Isle with 15% off on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738650/Seers_Isle/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/504390/Along_the_Edge/

What have we been up to?
Well, I must admit that December has been quite slow. 2018 was a rich and frantic year, and the team is looking forward to some well deserved rest (I'm currently battling a nasty cold as I'm writing these lines). We're still working on our next top secret (for now) project, and it's coming along nicely, so stay tuned for a great year in 2019!


And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio

See you next month!
Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!

This month, we welcomed a new housemate (again). Also, we wanted to tell you about Black Friday sales and share some tidbits about our next game.


Manufacture 43 moved in with us
So, a couple of weeks ago, we welcomed yet another indie game dev to our urban "commune" of the "21st Cobblestone Street" (well, to be honest, it's "21, rue des Retaillons", but it sounds way more like a "secret hideout" translated in English, don't you think?).

Daniel from Manufacture 43 has been working on his "Ikaruga meets rock-paper-scissors" shoot'em up Pawarumi for a couple of years, and he's in the midst of porting the game to console systems.

As you may already know, I'm personally not very good at this kind of demanding gameplay, but let me tell you that I've heard nothing but good words and praise for his title. It is a visually stunning piece of work set in a very original "Neo-Aztec" future. So, if you're into shooting at everything that moves from the pilot seat of your spaceship, you might want to check this one out.



An "in game" screenshot of Pawarumi. Beware of the nasty pink bullets!

Here's a link to Pawarumi's website if you want to learn more: pawarumi.com.
And, of course, you can get the game on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/610410/PAWARUMI/

Black Friday Steam Sale
So, the time of the year when people lose all sense of sanity and restraint over crazy deals on the internet is upon us.

To uphold the tradition, our games will be on sale at their usual discount on Steam (and other digital retailers) during the Autumn Sales, running until next Tuesday (November 27th):
Buy Seers Isle on Steam with 10% off,
Buy Along the Edge on Steam with 30% off.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738650/Seers_Isle/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/504390/Along_the_Edge/

What have we been up to?
We're making good progress on our next project. I (Geoffroy) have written the story outline while Nico has been painting some concept art to pin down the visual style of the game. Meanwhile, Raphal has been going quite deep under the hood, and if all goes according to plan, we might have a brand new game engine soon, opening up a whole new universe of possibilities, the sky being the limit and all (more on that later).

We're not ready to go into too much detail about the game, but we can safely say that we'll be visiting some familiar grounds, as you can witness for yourself in the concept art here below:


Concept Art: Alice at the balcony, thinking about her life.


And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
This month, we received an award, welcomed new housemates, and made Seers Isle available in a bookstore.

Studio Black Flag moved in with us

That's the cycle of life. The bad news is that our friends from Shinypix moved out of the 21 rue des Retaillons (Nova-box's batcave, where the magic happens) to rise up to new challenges and opportunities. We wish Fabrice, Ludo, Julien and Olivier all the best, happiness and success in their future endeavors. We will miss having them with us.

The good news is, our friends Adrien and Maxime from Studio Black Flag quickly filled in the vacant desks, moving in with us at the start of the month.

You may have heard about them and their incredible upcoming game, Orphan Age, in past issues of this column. If you haven't, I strongly suggest you take a look at it. In fact, we love their game so much we wrote a small interactive novella named Orphan Age: Diaries to go along with it. I can safely say that it's not the last you're hearing about them. Stay tuned.

Here's a link to their website if you want to learn more: studioblackflag.com


Black Flag is moving in. From left to right: Adrien, Maxime, and a tired writer.

Indie Game Factory and the Animasia convention

Last weekend, the team attended the "Indie Game Factory", a professional meetup of the French game industry, followed by the Animasia convention where we showed our games to visitors.

Seers Isle's music composers, Camille and Julien, gave a speech about music and video games while I (Geoffroy) participated in a panel about narrative design and writing for video games, sharing the stage with Sybil Collas and FibreTigre.

We're also very proud to announce that we received the "Best Game of 2018" award during the convention. Our friends from Howly Games got the "Best Art Direction" award for their upcoming platformer Unspoken Chronicles: Nora (they're doing a kickstarter campaign right now, go check it out) and Tako Studio received the "heart crush of the jury" award for their puzzle game Minimal Move.

Here's a couple of snapshots from the weekend.


(pictures #1, #2, and #3 courtesy of Yohann Minire, Lenno, and David Elahee)

Seers Isle Steam keys are available at "Krazy Kat", a comic book store in Bordeaux

We're thrilled to announce that you can buy Seers Isle Steam keys in a real brick and mortar shop. Our friends from Krazy Kat, a comic book store located 10 rue de la Merci in Bordeaux have a limited run of keys nestled in a nice and exclusive leaflet.

If you're in the Bordeaux area, we strongly suggest you go pay them a visit. Matthieu and his team are of great counsel, very friendly, and they even have a bar where you can drink a beer or a coffee in the shop.



Here's some directions to get there:

Krazy Kat
10 rue de la Merci
33 000 Bordeaux.
Website Facebook page

And if you're not in Bordeaux, you can still get the game here, on Steam :

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738650/Seers_Isle/

What have we been up to?
Well, this month has been quite hectic with post-launch frenzy following the release of Seers Isle. However, we found some time to start the pre-production of our next project. Everything is still under the seal of secrecy, of course, but since we love you best, here's a concept art picture, exclusive to you, newsletter subscribers.

And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/novabox.studio

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
In case you missed it, we released Seers Isle this month.

Seers Isle is available everywhere
And of course, you can get it on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738650/Seers_Isle/

We also have two bundles available:
Seers Isle + Soundtrack with 20% off
Seers Isle + Soundtrack + Along the Edge with 20% off

If you already have Along the Edge in your Steam library, you can "complete your collection" using the second bundle and have 20% off on Seers Isle without having to buy Along the Edge again (or the other way around). That way, we can reward your fidelity.

And to top things off, Along the Edge is also on sale with 30% off until Monday, October 1st!



Press reviews
We've been overwhelmed by great feedback from the players and the press. Here's a selection of quotes from the reviews we received (follow the links to read them in full).

In English:
— “Great art direction and an absolutely lovely score sets Seers Isle miles apart from the competition”, Visual Novel ‘Seers Isle’ Will Have You Unraveling Striking Mysteries, Thomas Faust, Indie Games Plus,

— “Seer Isle once again proves that Nova-box know how to make a visual novel with choices that matter. It’s rich, artistic, emotional and mysterious, and it draws you in quickly and holds your attention rapt. The twists are surprising, the characters are relatable and the environments are gorgeous. Seers Isle is about as perfect as visual novels can get if you ask me.”, Seers Isle Review, Jacob Wood, Indie Hangover.

In French:
— “Seers Isle est une histoire captivante et agréable à suivre grâce à ses personnages, ses illustrations et sa musique appuyant sur l’ambiance.”, Indie Review – Seers Isle, une dangereuse initiation chamanique, Seldell, IndieMag,

— “Seers Isle est bien plus captivant que j’aurais pu l’imaginer. Il réussit à rendre vivant et interactif un genre qui ne l’est pas. Il faut saluer sa bande-son de grande classe, et sa direction artistique magnifique.”, Seers Isle – Le cycle des chamans disparus, Veltar, The Pixel Post,

— “Si on aime ce genre de productions, cela vaut le coup de donner un peu pour passer quelques bonnes heures de lecture un peu interactive”, Test de Seers Isle, Zekkangel, Jeux OnLine.

Animasia Convention in Bordeaux, France
Put it in your diaries! If you want to come say "hello" to us or try your hand at our games, we'll be at the Animasia convention in Bordeaux. It happens on the weekend of the 13th & 14th of October.

If you are a video-game professional, there's a special day for us on Friday, October 12th with interesting keynotes by our fellow game devs, under the moniker "Indie Game Factory".

There will be two interventions from Seers Isle's team members:

• Camille and Julien from Illustrason will talk about music and video games,


• I (Geoffroy) will share my thoughts in a panel with Sybil Collas and Fibre Tigre about narrative design.

Hello everyone!
Here's the first post launch patch note.

We sent several updates over the course of the week to address issues some of you were experiencing.

Here's the list of the fixes:
- Fixing a bug where vertical lines appeared during the game on case sensitive file systems (such as Linux Fedora),
- Fixing a bug where the transition between two images might flicker on slower hard-drives or when the hard-drive was under stress (such as when streaming and video-recording the game),
- Adjusting the variables so that some endings are easier to obtain,
- Adding a text variant in Chapter III that was missing (when Freya takes the doll, the game assumed that Rowan woke her up the night before),
- Fixing a wrongly attributed text in Chapter VI.

Celtic Western-ish visual novel "Seers Isle" has been released.

Help young shamans overcome the trials of their initiatory journey in narrative game Seers Isle.

Were are happy to release our new narrative game Seers Isle for Windows, Mac and Linux!

Throughout your adventures in the game Seers Isle, your choices impact the fate of a group of characters.



Dreams, fantasy, magic and shamanism are central to every decision: your choices will influence the various story paths and endings, depending on your favorites characters, for a high replayability of the game. More than 600 illustrations have been drawn for the game, in a splendid graphic style inspired by the European Franco-Belge comics.

A group of shaman apprentices land on the shores of a sacred island to be initiated to magic. As they progress through the wilderness, looking for the “Seers”, their spirit-guides, they realize they’re not alone. Who is this strange horned woman they are seeing in their dreams?

A story full of the magical spirit of Northern European myth.



“The island… It was my prison.
For ages, I roamed the land, helpless,
looking for a way out...
And then, they arrived.”

Seers Isle is avalaible now on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738650/Seers_Isle/

You can also get the game + the soundtrack at a special price (26% off):

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8183/Game__Soundtrack/

Wonder how will Seers Isle sound like?

We just opened 7 new tracks for preview on Bandcamp!

You can stream them here:
https://nova-box.bandcamp.com

The soundtrack album, composed and produced by our friends Julien & Camille from Illustrason, will be released along with the game on September 18th.

Here's the link to the DLC page, feel free to add it to your wishlist to be notified when it goes live:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/924170/Seers_Isle__Original_Soundtrack/

We just shared a gameplay video with the first few minutes of the game.

If you want to see Seers Isle in action, please, head this way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGiEe0UiZ_s

Hello everyone!
So, it's official, we're in the final stretch.

 
Seers Isle Release
Let's start by the big news, shall we?

Three weeks from now, on Tuesday, September 18th 2018, we'll be releasing Seers Isle.

The game will be available for PC, Mac & Linux for 12.99€ / $12.99.

Nova-box will publish the game on Steam and itch.io, and, thanks to our partner Plug In Digital, it will also be distributed on a myriad of other stores (such as Amazon, Gameplanet, etc.).

We made a trailer video to celebrate and spread the word (feel free to share it to your heart's content):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk_vvZDXNSg 
 
Original Soundtrack
Once again, Julien and Camille have gone above and beyond all expectations and delivered an excellent album, with a whopping almost one hour and forty minutes run time of music from the game.

However, I admit I may not be the most reliable witness, but fortunately, you don't have to take my word for it. You can already stream a couple of tracks on Bandcamp.

The album will also be available at release on Steam, bundled with the game, as well as on the streaming platform of your choice (Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/924170/Seers_Isle__Original_Soundtrack/
 
What have we been up to?
Well, as you can imagine, we've been full time on Seers Isle, polishing and ironing out all the bugs and typos we could find, while Nico and Ambre have been putting the last coat of paint on the hundreds of images that are in the game.

We ran two closed beta during August, and we would like to take this opportunity, the team and I, to warmly thank our testers for their time, their patience and their dedication.


Before we see you on release day, here's the last batch of Seers Isle in-production pictures:




 

Thank you again for your support, and see you next month!

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register on Seers Isle website:

http://www.seersisle.com/contact/

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/seersisle
instagram.com/seersisle

Best,

Geoffroy,

Hello everyone!

It's summer but we're still working hard to meet our "summer 2018" release date.

The good news is, we should make it, just in time for the autumn equinox.

What have we been up to?
We're finally entering the "polishing" phase of development. The game has been fully playable for a while now, from start to finish, including all the endings (there will be eight of them, we can now say for sure), and each new internal beta version brings its share of improvements on all fronts.

Under the hood, Raph has been doing some debugging and optimization. We finally have a working save feature again! Camille and Julien have mixed and integrated all the music and sound effects and we're pretty excited about how it sounds (if you asked me, I would tell you that it sounds fantastic, but I'm probably biased).

There's still a lot of work to do on the art side, but we're getting there. Esther, who did an internship on the game this winter, has come back this month (remember the banquet scene from Freya's backstory?).

Also, Nico decided we will bring back chapter headings (like we had in Along the Edge). Here's a screenshot of the heading for the first chapter:



These chapter headings serve a triple purpose.

First, it allows us to have highly conceptual images in the game that wouldn't fit into the flow of the narrative, like the panoramic view of the island depicted here above. There will be some weird stuff too, such as Rowan holding a human-sized hourglass with another Rowan, or our main cast having their faces hidden behind wooden masks.

This allows me to jump to the second point: it's great marketing material. Brace yourselves, because it's safe to say that these images will pop up on our social accounts between now and release day.

And thirdly, it allows us to show to you how far you are into the story. When you're reading a book, it's easy to grasp if you're getting dangerously near to the epilogue by checking how close to the back cover your bookmark is (it always happens too fast, especially with good books).

Pages don't make a lot of sense in an interactive graphic novel, so we're showing the total number of chapters on the image (and the current one is lit up).

We also noticed that splicing the story into roughly equal sub-parts helped YouTubers and Twitchers have natural endpoints to split their videos, or their broadcasts, into episodes.

 
Bubbles, bubbles everywhere!
Fun fact: there are about 7500 lines of text and dialogue in Seers Isle. Each of these lines translates into a "bubble" onscreen (to borrow from comic books lingo), shown one after another during your playthrough.

And, well, each and every one of these bubbles has been carefully placed on the screen by yours truly, over the course of this month (I must tell you, I'm not disappointed to be done with it).

I had to take into account 16/10 and 16/9 aspect ratios for monitors, and two sizes of text (we have a "large text" feature in the options for visually impaired people).



"Why not automate that?" you may ask. Well, placing the text on screen is a great storytelling tool. Letterers in comic books have known that for a while, but we've been rediscovering and adapting this tool to our medium.

It enables us to make the readers to look at different parts of the image, to make them slow down (in order to track the next bubble), or read faster (if they want to), and even to help emphasize some emotions.

To give you an example, having a bubble cramped in the bottom right of the screen tells a different story than a description comfortably sprawled along the full width of the screen, to give you an example.

If you're wondering how I work, here's a screenshot of my computer screen on a regular day:



In yellow, in the text editor, there's the "localizable" file with all the texts in the game (we have one for each language). Below, in hues of red and grey, there's the script file I'm currently working on.



To properly round off this month's newsletter (it's becoming kind of a tradition, isn't it?), here's a couple of new images from Seers Isle:




 
Thank you again for your support, and see you next month!

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register on Seers Isle website:

http://www.seersisle.com/contact/

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/seersisle
instagram.com/seersisle

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
This month, we're talking about Orphan Age and Orphan Age: Diaries, sales and discounts, and, of course, we'll share our progress on Seers Isle!



Orphan Age
As you may have heard, our good friends and fellow game developers Adrien and Maxime from Studio Black Flag are doing a Kickstarter campaign to support their upcoming game Orphan Age.

Orphan Age is akin to The Sims series but transposed into a cyberpunk civil war where the children have been left behind to fend for themselves in a derelict part of a claustrophobic megalopolis. We think this game is really promising and we strongly suggest you take a look at it and, maybe, consider participating in the campaign.

In fact, we love the game so much that we made a companion storybook called Orphan Age: Diaries. It's a short interactive graphic novel that follows a group of orphans and tells you a bit more about the universe. Orphan Age: Diaries is available now for a limited time as one of the rewards for the Orphan Age Kickstarter.

Here's a couple of images from Orphan Age Diaries:



Before moving forward, I would like to give the pen over to Nico who has some personal things to say about Orphan Age, and why he decided to give some of his time and talent to this particular project:

I wish I could explain how I feel about Orphan Age.

At this time, people are suffering in wars, fleeing their very homes to survive. If they are lucky, they end up stuck in a boat or in a camp where they live in tents. While these tragedies happen, children are born and raised. What will their hopes and aspirations be? Between revenge, fear, and loss, can we guess what their world will be?

Orphan Age brings these questions to our western cities. It brings these questions to me. My kids are at the age of drawing. They draw animals and things... like snails, grass, sea, clouds, birds (lots of birds actually), bees and fish... Things that I can’t guarantee will still be around when they will be grown-ups. Mostly, they draw their home, the world as they see it. But I know there is a chance that their home will become an awful mess very soon. A mess with no birds, no bees, no Mom and Dad. The roof and walls replaced at best with a paper-thin tent cloth. This terrifying thought strikes me now and then when they bring me one of their colorful, innocent drawings.

At the same time, I can see how children are able to adapt. It’s fascinating. This is a very simple and profound joy in my everyday life. I watch them capture the world. I can almost feel it getting into their head, becoming thoughts, mental pictures. They take some time to acknowledge a situation and then, voilà: the whole thing is accepted and it’s now making sense! It’s like real mind-blowing magic every time.

Yep, children can be tough, maybe tougher than adults when it comes to adapting to a new situation, and at the same time, they are obviously very, very fragile. It’s a delicate, perilous edge. Orphan Age is a brave enough game to try a walk on this edge.

Hello everyone!
This month, we're talking about the GDPR, the events we attended, and, of course, the current state of the dev of Seers Isle!

Let's talk a bit about General Data Protection Regulation.

As you may certainly know from the gazillion emails you have probably received on this topic, a law has been passed in Europe, applicable since May, 25th, about privacy and internet data (commonly referred as "GDPR", a.k.a. "GRPD" for us French people).

Be aware that we don't collect any personal data from playing our games here at Nova-box. In other words, if you ever tampered with the black arts, or if you did some pretty questionable stuff with either Stan or Frank during your play-through of Along the Edge, we have no way of knowing (and we wouldn't judge if we knew).

Malagar, Bordeaux Geek Festival, and "Storycode"

This month was quite rich with public events, starting off with our presence at the literary festival "Des Livres et Moi" at the Domaine de Malagar, which was the home of the French writer François Mauriac and has been re-purposed as a public space for culture. It was the first (and probably only) time we had the chance to play-test our games in an authentic 19th-century stable.

There was also an exhibition of pictures from Along the Edge that we selected to compliment the atmosphere and the history of the place. The exhibition is still on display for a couple of months, so if by any chance you are around Langon, feel free to make a stop and check it out!

Here are some pictures from the event and from the talk we did there about our games, animated by our marketing expert extraordinaire, Yannick "Tavrox" Elahee, who lent us a helping hand, along with our musicians Camille and Julien, during the weekend.



Last weekend, we were on Bordeaux Games booth at the Bordeaux Geek Festival. We met and greeted regular patrons who we have the pleasure of seeing each and every year at this festival, as well as several new faces. Nico was also handed his first ever "fanart" from Calyss and Buddakhin (big shout out to both of you!)

Here's a couple of pics from the weekend:



To finish, last week, I (Geoffroy) made a talk at Cap Science about the narrative approach in our games. It was organized by "Le CATS" and Bordeaux Games for the third edition of the "StoryCode" seminar. I shared the stage with Sylvain from Big Bad Wolf ("The Council"), and Curtis, who's working on "Tau Station". It was very interesting to confront our vision with that of other fellow devs. If any of you attended the event, I hope you had as much of a good time as I did!



What have we been up to?

As always, let me conclude with a quick paragraph about what we've been doing this month. Seers Isle is still a couple of months away, and we're hard at work trying to chew down all the work that needs to get done to complete the game.

Nico has started doing some polish on the visuals on chapters 4 to 6, while I'm scripting everything, so we can get a feel of the flow of the story in its myriad of variants. Raph has spent some of his "spare time" (read: the time he has left when he's not working for our regular business clients) optimizing the sound engine and reworking the save feature. Camille and Julien have composed and integrated demos of all the themes of the characters in the game engine. They're hard at work writing everything down on music sheets and preparing for the final recordings (seems like I'm laying down the bouzouki tracks on June, 16th).

So, we'll be spending all of June with our heads down in order to churn out a hopefully decent beta version of the game for early July.

Last but not least, we're very glad to welcome Rachel Capie in the team. She's been working on the English localization of the game, and so far she's doing quite a stellar job!

Meanwhile, don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam. You'll be notified as soon as the game is released.

And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/seersisle
instagram.com/seersisle

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!
We have a nice surprise to share for this month's newsletter before I give the pen over to Camille Marcos from the Illustrason collective. Along with Julien Ponsoda, they're responsible for the music and sound design of our next game, Seers Isle.

Showcasing Seers Isle at Malagar, 5-6 May 2018
We're very proud to announce that we will be participating to the literature festival "Des Livres et Moi" at the Domaine de Malagar / Centre François Mauriac near Lagon (50km south of Bordeaux). If you're interested in testing the game, we'll be there Saturday, May 5th and Sunday, May 6th to meet and chat with you while showcasing the first couple of chapters of the game.

There will be also an exposition of a selection of paintings from Along the Edge at the domain, especially chosen to compliment the theme of the place, and printed for the event.

If you want the full program of the festival, it's here, on their website: .



Sound Design, Music and Storytelling
Hello, I'm Camille from Illustrason, a collective of music composers and sound designers that we've created soon after finishing our degree in movie soundtrack composition. On Seers Isle, we are in charge of all the audio aspects of the game: music, sound design, audio programming and audio integration.

The soundtrack is a very important aspect of this interactive graphic novel, as it contributes to build the universe of the game, by filling the gap between the images and the words, and by giving more substance to the story and the background of the characters. In fact, the music has a real focus on character building, instead of only trying to enhance the emotion of each scene.

After you've played through the game for the first time, you might want to explore the other branches of the story by doing different choices. That's why we wanted to link the music to the player's choices and really tune it to the multiple story paths you can get. Thus, depending on your choices, the music will never really be the same each time you play.

The Characters and their Instrumentarium
Each of the protagonists of the story has their own musical theme and instrumentarium (i.e. their set of different musical instruments), which have been carefully chosen according to their geographical roots and culture.

Several variations of these themes are being played depending on the scene and the emotions it should carry. However, the soundtrack of the pivotal scenes are composed specifically, using the same methods as in a motion picture. All this adds up to build the tension for dramatic and soul-stirring moments.

The Process of Creation
The first step we take when we start working on a new track is doing a demo on the computer while we gradually refine the composition. This step allows us to explore different tunes, chord progressions and rhythm patterns before submitting our idea to the creative team at Nova-box. At this stage, we mainly use digital instruments, which gives us more flexibility.


(visualization of one of the variations of Arlyn theme in Ableton Live, before its integration in the music engine)

Once we're satisfied by our demo track, having pushed it as close as we could to a final version, we slice it into several audio sample that we feed into the sound engine of the game, which will be able to bridge the audio instructions in the game and and the musical elements that should be played.


(the interface of fmod editor, the sound library we use in Seers Isle)
 

This crucial step allows us to make the music interactive. Once the track is sliced, the game engine can then transition between the themes seamlessly, while staying synced to the reading speed of the player and, of course, adapt the music according to the choices in the story. It also allow us to inject a pinch of randomness in the musical patterns to make the music appear less repetitive.

What's next?
Right now, we're writing and recording demos of the last missing variations. Once we get that done, we'll record the final versions of the tracks with the musicians who will make the music of Seers Isle come alive.

Then you'll be able to feast your ears with a string quartet, a bass clarinet, a slide trombone, a transverse flute, an Irish bouzouki, a piano, and several other mystery instruments.

If you want more info on Illustrason, you can check their website, at this address: illustrason.fr


(some pictures taken during the recording of the string quartet for the reveal trailer soundtrack, in november 2017)


Thank you again for support, and see you next month!

Meanwhile, don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam. You'll be notified as soon as the game is released.

And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/seersisle
instagram.com/seersisle

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

Hello everyone!

As you can see with the numbering, this is the first issue of many. We’re planning on telling you what we’re up to and, of course, we'll update you on our progress on Seers Isle on a monthly basis.
 
Union St. Jean Playtest
First of all, we would like to thank everyone who took the the time to come and check out Seers Isle for our playtest at the Union St. Jean last Friday. It was the first time we were showing the game outside of our circle of friends and family, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the warm reception we got.

We gathered a whooping total of 23 completed surveys. Thanks to the testers’ feedback, we could confirm we were on the right track with the new implementation of the tutorial and the UI (namely the feedback icons that appear on top of the screen during the game). The previous version (from the december closed alpha) was quite confusing and we’re glad we managed to improve on this feature.

We also made some surprising discoveries about the characters. It seemed that Duncan, one of the main characters, didn’t win the heart of most of you.


"Which character did you like the least?"
 
As you can see in the chart results here above, he came in the second place in the answers to the question “Which character did you like the least?”, right behind Erik (but it’s quite understandable and we were anticipating that response, Erik being the main antagonist and a short-fused arrogant misogynistic jerk). Of course, we’ll try to make Duncan a tad more sympathetic and/or charismatic for the next iterations of the game.

Here are some pictures from the evening:



We spent a wonderful time and we’ll be looking forward to doing this again in the future.

 
Current Progress
Last week, we said goodbye to our art intern, Esther. Having her in the team was quite a breath of fresh air for us and for the project!

Here’s a couple of images she made for us:



For the next month or so, Nico will be working on a special part of chapter 4, where you get to discover the backstory of your favorite character of your playthrough. Expect to go down the rabbit hole, as we’ve prepared a rollercoaster of wonders and grief mixed with some more upbeat moments for each of them.



As for me, I’ve been working on the integration of chapter 3 as well as planning and drafting the last three chapters (i.e. chapters 7 to 9). This part of the writing process is always the hardest, as I have to juggle between every story thread that have been opened up so far and delivering closure on every variation of the plot in a satisfying way.
 
Once again, thank you for support, and see you next month!

Meanwhile, don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam. You'll be notified as soon as the game is released.

And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:

twitter.com/novabox
facebook.com/seersisle
instagram.com/seersisle

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf on the team.

We love music, here at Nova-box.

However, being a music enthusiast is one thing, but understanding and creating an interactive soundtrack is quite another.

For Seers Isle, we decided to work with Camille Marcos and Julien Ponsoda from the Illustrason collective. Our goal was to get an original soundtrack that would really complement the interactivity of the narration. The music tracks for the game are no mere ambient pieces of composition, but complex samples that are weaved together and constantly morph to the rhythm of the choices made by the reader. Under the hood, our game engine is now capable of interfacing with Fmod, the music middleware that was recommended by our partners from Illustrason.

On the creative side, as you may have noticed with our first teaser video, we've been working hand in hand with the musicians to make the sonic universe of Seers Isle come to life.

In the early stages of the project inception, we asked Christelle Canot to lend us her voice. She was moved and inspired by the setting and the story, and she came back to us a couple of weeks later with an original composition. We were immediately thrilled by the atmosphere of the song, and we used it as the main theme for the teaser video.

Camille and Julien worked on arrangements and recorded the teaser soundtrack with Christelle, along with this longer version, that will be featured in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf_GPYhit4g

Of course, we'll share the highlights of this sonic adventure in picture and in video.

Stay tuned.

Nico.
 
We also created a Soundcloud account with some selected tracks from our game. Check it out here: soundcloud.com/novabox

After working for the few last months in complete secrecy, we're very proud to announce our next narrative game: Seers Isle.

This new project is both a continuation and a departure from Along the Edge. We kept the same gameplay (or lack thereof) and, like its predecessor, Seers Isle is first and foremost an interactive story where all your choices shape the relationships and personalities of the main characters, but we tried to innovate on every other fronts.

The fact that I talk about the "main characters" (plural) is not innocent, of course. We did things a bit differently this time around, and you'll discover the storytelling evolves from chapter to chapter from an hidden narrator with a "choral" approach to a more classic "first person" point of view.



Also, As you'll notice in the screenshot here above, the presentation of the game is much more reminiscent of a European comic-book, with speech balloons freely moving above the gorgeous artworks of Nicolas Fouqué.

We also have some surprises on the soundtrack side, but I'll make a special blog post about it (yes, I do believe it deserves its own blog post indeed).

For the story in itself, we went for a fantasy setting, a dreamlike version of medieval Northern Europe, mixed with some South American influences, where shamans seek the guidance of strange horned spirits, the eponymous "Seers", on a mystic island.



So, without further ado, here's a short writeup of the scenario, hoping it would spark up your palate:


“The island… It was my prison.
For ages, I roamed the land, helpless, looking for a way out…
… And then, they arrived.”


A group of shaman apprentices set foot on the shores of a sacred island to be initiated to magic. As they progress through the wilderness, looking for the “Seers”, their spirit-guides, they realize they’re not alone.

Who is this strange horned woman they are seeing in their dreams?



If this new venture picked your interest, please take a look at the official website: seersisle.com, or follow us on social networks, either Seers Isle's Facebook Page or Nova-box's Twitter.

And, of course, you can add it to wishlist to be notified about the release.

Yours,

Geoffroy.