Tag Archives: detective

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Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament OUT NOW!

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Hey folks! It has been a long time coming, but we’re happy to announce that Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament is out now on Steam and itch.io! Join Sofya as she is recruited to protect the Emperor’s daughter, Katerina Lapidus, in Vodotsk…all while she’s being blackmailed into investigating the mysterious Krovakyn Church by one of Katerina’s political rivals.

The Last Sacrament is our longest and most ambitious game to date. We have worked hard to give you all a game with lots of drama, romance, and high quality storytelling. Thanks to the power of the UE4 engine, we’ve added 3D camera views and other cinematic effects to the traditional visual novel elements. You can also play the mini-game, RiftRealms, to get new insights on the world and its characters. We sincerely hope you enjoy this game, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

itch.io

 

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Echoes of the Fey – Episode 1: The Fox’s Trail

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Get game on Steam

Coming to PS4 July 11

For the first time in almost thirty years, the land of Oraz is at peace. For three decades, the Humans and Leshin of Oraz waged a brutal war over the right of Humans to power their cities and machines with magic. But the Leshin people have overthrown their theocratic leaders who pushed to extend the war and ushered in a new era of reconciliation and reconstruction.

This peace, however, is fragile and strained under the shared history of the two peoples. This is true nowhere more than the city of Vodotsk, a historically Human city that was occupied and ruled by the Leshin for years. Old grudges among the Humans have re-emerged. Leshin who lived there for years as rulers must decide whether to return beyond the Great Forest or stay as second-class citizens. And the wounds of the war threaten to re-open whenever the two peoples come into contact.

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Echoes of the Fey is a series of detective stories set in the high fantasy world of Oraz starring Sofya Rykov, a Human private investigator with a dangerous secret: following a near-death experience in the war, she spontaneously developed the ability to use magic. She is joined by her Leshin partner, Heremon ir-Caldy, a doctor fascinated by Sofya’s magic but fearful it will soon come at the cost of her life. Together, Sofya and Heremon navigate the mysteries and tensions of Vodotsk, the city they intend to make both their hiding place and their home.

Get Echoes of the Fey on itch.io

gameplay“The Fox’s Trail” is an English-language visual novel with multiple story variations. Will you uncover the truth behind the mystery on your own? And once you do, what will you do with that information? Your investigation will change the future of the city and its people. Over 100 individual choice points exist throughout “The Fox’s Trail.” Some will improve your relationship with the characters. Others will provide you critical information. And some will change the fate of the people you will come to know. Explore Vodotsk in side-scrolling segments and assist other characters in minor side-quests to uncover more about the history and lore of the realm.

You can find a full, detailed walk-through in the Steam community (may contain spoilers!)

Credits

Written by Malcolm Pierce and Jenny Gibbons
Art by Jenny Gibbons and Wendy Gram
Music by Jenny Gibbons
Programming by Jenny Gibbons with use of VN Edge Engine by ThinkBoxly
Sound design by Jenny Gibbons
Sound effects by: Drew Becker, Adobe Audition Library, Free SFX

“The Fox’s Trail” also features voice acting–fully performed critical scenes and expression lines throughout–by the following awesome voice actors:

SOFYA RYKOV – Amber Leigh

HEREMON IR-CALDY – David Dixon

ARKADY VANZIN – CJ Aulenbach

EDUARD GALKIN – Dillon Taylor

EMILIA OSBORN – Michelle Michaels

LUKA TETERIV – J.P. Daman

TIATHA IR-ADECH – Kristyn Mass

ANYA SAITOV – Helen Edgeworth

VIOLA ARISTOV – Olivia Steele

SIMION IR-SHEAF – Jacob Anderson

PRISONER: Isaac Lawson

Press Kit

Echoes of the Fey Greenlight Campaign and Update

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I’m happy to announce that yesterday we officially launched the Steam Greenlight campaign for Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail. If you want to check that out (and vote yes!) the page is here. We’re hoping to be able to release later this summer simultaneously on all PC platforms, but Greenlight is a mysterious black box so fingers crossed!

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We touched on our progress in the Greenlight page, but I thought I’d give a bit of a wider picture the current state of development. Our engine (the framework we use to put in scenes, GUI elements, items, and choices) was completed–except for some minor polish–several months ago. We’re using GameMaker Studio for the first time, so this was a fairly significant step. GameMaker can work for pretty much anything 2d, but it’s not hardwired for a lot of text input/drawing. Once that was done, we were basically just been working on content–writing, art, music, and the such–for a while. Of course, that’s what people come to visual novels for.

As of today, the script is basically done. And almost all of it is in the game. You can play through from beginning to end and pretty much the only thing you’ll miss out on is the end of one side quest and the optional epilogue scene with a character of your choice. The soundtrack is finished except for some polish on a few older songs and a vocal song that will play over the credits. We’ve received but haven’t processed/put in all of the voice acting (that’s actually a very late step in development because when we do that we have to fork off a new branch of development for the mobile version, which will have significantly less voice work).

All the character portraits are complete and in-game. The only thing left to do on them is optional dyes for Sofya’s outfit, which will be rewards for getting gold pieces from side quests. Backgrounds and the overworld are mostly complete. One building that’s part of a side quest isn’t fully interactive yet, but that’s about it. Several CGs are complete and in the game, but there are more to do. And of course there’s testing! With over 100 choices in the game, testing will be something of an ordeal but (of course) we’re going to do it to make sure we launch as bug-free as possible.

I also promised a short story prequel and that’s started but I definitely need to get to work when I have the time (thanks, Overwatch). We’re hoping to be ready in the next month, then take a couple weeks to focus on marketing and release in the very near future! Of course I’m being completely vague about release dates because (especially with a two person team) things happen and I really don’t want to set a date then miss it.

In the meantime, follow development over at the new official twitter for Woodsy Studio, and just in case you missed it before, vote for us on Greenlight!