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

SPAWN! Festival 2024

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

Announcing our next game: Echoes

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

What have we been up to?

As you can imagine, Echoes has been taking up most of our attention recently, but we're also making progress on our next game. Stay tuned for more on that front soon. To conclude, here's our traditional monthly illustration. This one shows the evolution of the art style of Echoes from one episode to the next, following and depicting the gradual degradation of the narrator's psyche, one of the most original features of the game.
Thats all for now, and see you next month! And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/ If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here: http://www.nova-box.com/signup You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime). Best, Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.