The time is here to experience Serafina’s story unlike you ever have before! Now animated, voiced, and developed with lush 3D environments in UE4, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is now available for PC.
This project has been several years in the making, and I have faced a lot of challenges on the way. Thanks to all of you who have supported me on the journey, and I hope you enjoy this epic adventure!
Greetings everyone! Development on Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is still going strong. However, prior to digging into the latest progress I would like to remind you that the demo is currently available on both Steam and itch.io. Additionally, to whet your appetite, clips are now debuting every Thursday. The first four clips can be found on Woodsy Studio’s YouTube channel. Be on the lookout for a new clip this week!
A lot has happened since the last development update. Jezu Grandil’s path joins Reuben Jeridar’s as fully complete. Nikolaos Perin’s path is fully scripted as well. That just leaves Valerie’s path as far as writing goes and creator Jenny Gibbons is excited that Malcolm Pierce (co-writer of Crimson Spires) will be contributing to the script!
While big milestones have been crossed in the development of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened, it has been a lot of work to get there. Completing Jezu’s path involved not just a lot of blocking, but blocking action-heavy scenes. He is the General of the Royal Guard, after all. Many of these scenes have full voice acting, not just from Jezu, but fan-favorite Xavier Wolven as well. New music has also been composed for these action scenes.
As for Nikolaos’ path, the post-scripting work is well underway. The script has been converted into data tables and imported into the game. From there, a full scene list has been created and integrated with those data tables. This is the behind the scenes coding action that let’s the game know what to do based on the choices you make.
Speaking of choices, there have been tweaks to the game that allow you to customize your character when you play new character paths. You can change Serafina’s hair color and specify your current relationships with Arken and Belatrix. Serafina has a lot of fun hair color options!
From there it’s blocking, blocking, blocking to make Nikolaos’ scenes come to life. Nikolaos may not be as ready for action as Jezu, but he is quick to be sneaky. And I’m not going to spoil how he deals with these new fire effects… Anyway, as all of the script for Nikolaos’ path has been sent to the voice actors, the voiced lines are being edited into the blocked scenes as they arrive. Jenny is also looking for a new voice actress to give life to the leader of House Perin.
Arken’s voice actor, David Dixon, was recently interviewed by Woodsy Studio. The interview can be found with both text and audio options at the following links. Part 1 discusses David’s various roles at Woodsy Studios over the years, while Part 2 digs into other voice acting work in both video games and various animated series.
It’s all these parts coming together that bring Woodsy Studio’s latest game to you. Until next time, be on the lookout for new clips from Serafina’s Saga: Awakened every Thursday!
David Dixon has voiced Woodsy Studio characters for 10 years, going all the way back to the first voice acted Woodsy Studio’s project, the Serafina’s Saga animation (Arken Jeridar). Now we take a moment to talk to David about his overall experiences in voice acting and his own personal passions. This is part 1 of 2 in the interview with David (see Part 2 here). You can listen to the vocal recording of his response to each question, and/or read the transcribed text. Enjoy!
1. Your history of voicing Arken goes back all the way to the original Serafina’s Saga animation and you are reprising the role in the upcoming Woodsy Studios game, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. Has your approach to the role changed over time?
Hello there, I am David Dixon and I voice Arken (Serafina’s Saga: Awakened, Serafina’s Crown).
Yeah, for sure! After seeing more of his development from the end of the original games to the new installment I see new angles of his past so I’m definitely trying to push the sorrow and bitterness more, but also have a bit more fun with the sarcasm. I see he uses that as a deflection or even a wall when he’s uncomfortable. I also think the passage of time and changes in my life are helping me wade deeper in the truly emotional moments with Serafina.
I think that if I had to the narrow it down I’d say I’m kind of giving my performance HD Plus remaster, but yeah I’m definitely trying to use more of what I’ve learned as an actor since then to just really delve deep and really make Arken just come to life more. It’s one of these things as an actor you’re always looking back at your old performances and in the moment you could be like “Yeah oh that’s great I love this.” But then sometimes when you go back and you’ve learned so much since you look back and like “I would have done that differently, ah crap oh no I would have done that differently!” So kind of a bit of that, yeah. I just really want to push forward with what I’ve done in the past and just really flesh out Arken.
2. You have voiced villains in two Woodsy Studio games: Picard in Serafina’s Crown and Thomas “Tip” Wagner in Crimson Spires. What is your process for connecting with villains, and how much did it vary between these two?
I definitely like to think of what makes them tick in their everyday lives. With Tip I see him as a man driven by fear and paranoia. Now saying he’s driven by fear I don’t mean for him to be sympathetic at all, I’m more focusing on the ignorance that comes with fear, you know. He’s a bad dude in a very sadly relevant to today’s atmosphere villain. He’s a bully who wants to feel important, like he has the answers, so I latch on to that want. With all the goings on in that particular setting he goes from being a nothing and to now just looking for an opportunity to say, “Yeah yeah hey I feel seen I’m important.” But as I said earlier you look at the fact that he is a bully he is a jerk and so I’m layering that on to some of those natural wants of wanting to be heard, wanting to be seen. But also, I’m the bad guy, I’m a jerk, so I’m having that be corrupted into wanting to lord it over people be like, “Ah you don’t know anything, I know something, why should we trust you, you’re an outsider, I’ve been here all this time, and I know what’s what, so let’s put the microscope on you!” and I take it from there.
With Picard, I had fun with his hedonism and treated him like a bit of a brat, if I’m being honest. We’ve all had days when we feel we’re owed a bit of indulgence, a bit of extra pepperoni on our slice, a bit of Grace when we woke up before our alarm and it’s raining out and the forecast said it would be sunny. I took all of that and cranked it to 11, to the point where he’s basically saying “Let’s all indulge, let’s all get into a fun party!” And I have him get into a bit of a scary hissy fit where people just can’t drop what they’re doing and indulge. They can’t just say “Okay you know it’s time for a party I have work I have to deal with a sick relative.” It’s all of that where people have different motivations, different plans, different amounts of freedom in time, and he doesn’t see that, so he takes all the realistic feel of “Okay hey I want to have some fun,” “hey let’s all have a good time” and he turns that into just being angry, and just insulted. “Wait, you don’t have time to stop what you’re doing to have a good time with me?” And I crank it all the way up to a godly level so yeah I think it’s all about finding that little bit of an anchor.
In high school, my theater teacher–Mr Slate–talked about how the key to playing any type of character is finding some of those anchors so you know what drives all of us. So he would always mention, and it’s always stuck with me, you don’t have to be a murderer to be angry enough to murder somebody. If you’re playing a villain you don’t have to go out and do something horrible. You can just think of what made you that angry, and then add on layers and layers and then, you know, you’re cooking.
3. You voiced Heremon ir-Caldy in Woodsy Studio’s Echoes of the Fey series. Unlike most roles you’ve had in Woodsy Studios games Heremon becomes a romantic interest for the main character over the course of the series. Arken also became a romantic interest for Odell in Serafina’s Crown. Does this change your approach to voicing a character?
Oh yeah, *laugh*, a bit. I’m not used to romantic relationships in real life so I really focus a lot more and I really put a lot into wanting to get it right. I’m a lot more in my head when I’m prepping versus when I’m just playing like a salesman or something like that. I’m thinking a lot more of am I connecting well enough to the love interest? Am I being convincing? Is the audience buying what I’m putting out? Do they like what I’m going to be doing this performance? I’m having a lot more scrutiny on myself to make sure that yeah this is entertaining and this is authentic and this is doing justice to what the author, in this case Jenny (Gibbons), would be writing. It’s a different type of challenge but it’s a good challenge.
4. What are your favorite types of roles to play?
Villains are fun since I get to push the contrast between myself and–depending on the type of villain–I get to be hammy. It could be a lot of fun to just MWAH-HA-HA all throughout the production. I also really like playing mentor types and heroes. I really want to get a chance to play more idealistic heroes like a Superman type. I think those are incredibly fun, but challenging. You really have to sell the optimism and heroism without it feeling phony. We’ve all seen hero characters pop up in a cartoon show and not really like a superhero show but like something like a spoof, like a kind of like Angry Beavers or in Ren and Stimpy you had Powdered Toast Man. A lot of times you know it’s hokey, it’s fun, but it’s not sincere and I’ve got to go in a little bit of rant so you’ll have to excuse me.
I often times see people saying Superman is boring, but I don’t agree at all. I find the concept of one of the most powerful beings choosing not just to save the world, but taking a second to sit down next to you and ask if you’re okay and if you’ve had breakfast. I find that fascinating. The guy can lift mountains, but he stops to listen to people and he truly fully loves his neighbors. It’s not just PR. You know it’s all of that because his heart is just that big. Some of my favorite moments of Superman like in the media, and comics, animated movies… some of the most interesting moments are when he’s just not doing impossible odds but just sitting there and listening to somebody and like really really just caring about them and being like, “Okay I want to help, I want to make sure that you’re okay.”
I mean sometimes it’s like more emotional stuff and then sometimes it can even be lighter stuff. There’s times where he kind of gets into like a dad-like mode and he was just kind of floating there one time and a whole bunch of these guys were robbing a store and they just all just stood, looked at their guns, put them down, took off their masks and just turned themselves in.
On the more heartfelt but still just as impactful vein, there was an anniversary issue where all kinds of different people were saying how much they loved Superman. But the one that stuck out to me was there was a guy talking about how he was a career criminal in Metropolis and Gotham and other places, but he just kept running into Superman and Superman was like, “You can do better than this. I believe in you.” Eventually, it took him a while, but he got his life together, rehabilitated himself and just lived on the straight and narrow path, and I thought that’s a cool thing.
I mean you have all kinds of things like awesome super battles and superpowers but it’s something a bit special and different to see someone who’s like, “Yeah I get it, hey maybe you’re not in the best place there’s a reason why you did this, you signed up. Not everyone is as privileged as me. I’m a super-powered alien and I can do this but I believe you can be better and I want you to be better.” And that’s kind of the core of Superman for me, where he just absolutely loves everybody, he sees the best in everyone and he wants everyone to get that second chance.
To me that is an amazing character and I would absolutely love to get a chance to really juggle that where it’s like, okay the weight of the world’s on your shoulders but you’re still balancing being a guy who’s fighting for truth and justice: on the the lower levels as a journalist, on the higher levels as a guy who can move planets and mountains. All of those different things coming together to just make a really compelling narrative where it’s not about, okay can he punch this guy out? Can he stop this Armada of bad guys? It’s like yeah, okay, is he going to save the day on a personal level? Is he gonna be there, is he gonna help you through a terrible day? Is he gonna be a friend? I love that idea and yeah, more of that. I’d love to try more of that. It’s fun and compelling.
5. What aspects make a role extra challenging or difficult?
That depends. Sometimes it can be the subject matter. How dark is the villain going to get with their head space? What am I going to have to… What lines am I gonna have to cross? What is going to be informing my performance? What’s going to be driving the anger, the hate, the bitterness? Then there’s other things, where: is the performance itself gonna be challenging? Am I going to be slipping between English and a fictional language? Am I going to be doing a role where I’m playing dual roles?
There was a project where the game took place in the past and you saw me as a younger character, but there were chunks of the game that flashed decades forward and I was an old man. And so it was interesting to be balancing those two performances. But there are other times where some things can just be oh it’s kind of like it’s a marathon rather than just kind of like a jog. It’s like okay, there’s gonna be a lot I’m having to do, or they’re just even things that are just surprisingly complex. Is this character going to sing? Is this character presented as upbeat and happy, but they’re hiding a secret, they’re hiding sorrow, they’re hiding guilt or shame, and you have to have the audience start to kind of clue in. So that could be another challenge where you’re having to let the audience know there’s something about this character, but you can’t make it too obvious or you can’t make it too subtle that no one picks it up.
So, yeah! *Laugh.* Every role is a challenge, even if it’s a something you consistently come back to like a series, you can have an episode of that just throws a curve ball. It’s a lot of fun. That’s one of the reasons I love acting. There’s just so many things you can get involved with from project to project, from episode to episode, from chapter to chapter.
Greetings everyone! It has been some time since I posted an update. But I’m happy to say that development for Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is still progressing strongly.
If you have been following me over the past few years, you know that I’ve hit a few creative hiccups. Finishing Crimson Spires and publishing with East Asia Soft was a gratifying achievement that I remain quite happy about. But as often happens after riding a big high, a rough downward slope followed after.
Malcolm Pierce left his role as partner of Woodsy Studio, leaving me (Jenny) as the sole writer and developer. Although this is how I originally began Woodsy Studio, returning to solo development after years of partnership has been a difficult journey. I was also in the midst of some heart-wrenching life changes that took a toll on my creativity.
Altogether, I had a year or more of very low creative output. I started and stopped projects that never got finished. But eventually, I decided to go back to my origins: the first visual novel I ever made. And since then, I have been completely remaking Serafina’s Saga. I’m writing all new scripts, drawing new art, building 3D environments, remixing old music, and composing fresh tunes. And I’m having a blast doing it. I’m also now working with an awesome voice cast to bring the characters to life, as well as some other creative colleagues (including Malcolm Pierce) who are helping me with some elements of the game.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer for a sneak peak at how it’s all coming together:
Thanks to all of you new and old followers who have played my previous games and encourage me to keep creating. I appreciate your patience as I work on this new journey for you, and I hope you will love it when it’s complete!
I cannot provide a solid release date as of yet, but my aim is to release in early 2024. So stay tuned!
It’s probably cliche at this point to say: we live in difficult times. Even so, it is true. For the past seven months (all of this year so far), I have struggled with creative inspiration. There are so many possible explanations for why I feel blocked. It’s all too easy to make a list of the prime suspects:
Existential depression from global pandemic
Year-long isolation from normal social structures
Loss of ambition due to reaching certain career goals (actually a good thing… ?)
Large emotional upheaval from experiencing huge romantic relationship changes in the last year
Loss of creative partnership
Post-vaccination restlessness to get away from my computer and related work
… I could probably keep going. But you get the point.
As this seven-month-long creative stagnation has dragged on, I have often crafted a mental list like the one above and tried to pick a single culprit. Once I do, I try to forge a plan to overcome that specific struggle, whether within my ongoing work or outside of it. But none of those plans have worked. Some of them are beyond my control. Others have no simple solution. In any case, fixing one would not fix the others.
One of the most confusing aspects of my blockage was that I normally obtain therapeutic healing through my creative process. How could I evolve from these life trials without my art? Had I changed so much that I no longer needed that creative outlet?
It was only through a long period of time, extensive talks with my former creative partner (Malcolm), and discussion with colleagues that I started to hone in on a singular problem I could fix.
The story I was writing no longer resonated with me.
Amidst life and world upheaval, this last problem hid more secretly, tripping all my attempts to wrestle the other demons. It was easier to blame my stagnation on the bigger issues in my life rather than the relationship with my creation itself. I DO process my feelings through story and creative expression. But the story I was trying to tell no longer expressed my feelings, even though I conceived it less than a year ago.
To give you a little more background, the story was called Incognis. It was a sci-fi romantic drama about a woman who found rare love and happiness within a polyamorous quad, only to throw it away for the sake of selfish ambition. The inspiration for this idea came from tumultuous emotions at a very specific time in my life.
I was nesting romantically with a quad during the pandemic
I wrestled with polar extremes of happiness and misery
I blamed myself for the misery–but would later realize it arose from toxic emotions from one of my partners
I was at the peak of self-focused ambition, having just lost my creative partner while trying to finish the studio’s biggest release yet
All of these intense emotions led to the conception of Incognis, and with good reason. During that specific period, the story of Incognis was a fitting expression of my emotional turmoil. But at the beginning of this year–around the same time I actually started working on Incognis–those personal emotions shifted. Life experiences and loved ones helped me overcome those struggles, rather than my art.
In retrospect, it becomes easy to see such patterns. But for seven months, I operated under the belief that I still needed to make Incognis. I blamed my creative blockage on that first list, rather than the nature of my creation itself. When you have been your own boss of your own studio for eight years, you learn to push yourself past periods of self-doubt and temporary blockage. But in this case, I pushed myself too far, and everything else suffered as a result.
At long last, I have decided to scrap my previous plans for Incognis. I will take some extra time to recharge and let some new ideas simmer. Most likely, I will still use a few scraps from Incognis in the form of assets and environment designs. But the story and characters will get a complete overhaul, leading to something new and truer to my current state of self.
As always, I hope you will enjoy the result, though it might take longer to create. What use is art if it doesn’t come from the truth within ourselves?
Hey everyone! It’s been a while since we updated y’all on Crimson Spires and other Woodsy Studio goings-on, so we thought we’d put out a post on how summer has been going for us. First off, it has been very hot and very humid. There’s a lot of great things about living and working in St. Louis, but the summer is definitely not one of them. Not for us, and not for our studio’s dog, a husky who dramatically changes her opinion on walks for three+ months out of the year.
Mira in the summer sun
Other than that, summer has marked a slow down for us, which brings me to leading with our biggest piece of bad news. Crimson Spires has been delayed until 2020, likely closer to the middle of the year than the beginning of the year.
This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone following the project, as this is very clearly our most ambitious game. When we set out with this project, we thought that we would end up expanding the gameplay scope (to include 3D exploration) but have a similar-sized script to our Echoes of the Fey titles. We were incredibly wrong. Currently, the Crimson Spires script is approximately as long as Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament and we haven’t even written 2/4 paths. The paths in this game are considerably more unique than anything we’ve done before, so we’re probably looking at a script close to twice the size of Last Sacrament.
We’ve also hit other difficulties. In the past, we released an average of a game a year and now we’re at slightly over the one year mark for Crimson Spires. Our quick turnaround wasn’t just about getting money from releases (although that was a necessary factor), but also our own fickleness with projects. We work hard and then we burn out–typically after about a year. That happened, and it sucks.
Finally, we both found that we needed to find other financial support for our studio beyond game sales. A few things happened. First, we didn’t release a game this year (duh, that’s a problem). Second, changes were made late last year to the Steam algorithm for recommending games to users. This has caused a rather dramatic reduction in views and wishlists for indie developers across the board. Naturally, it hit us hard as a studio that really relied on Steam sales of back catalog titles.
The growing 3D landscape of Crimson Spires in UE4
Here’s the good news: we’re not done. You’ll notice we’re not cancelling anything, just pushing it back. And we hope that it will be even better for the delay. To help support us, Malcolm has been teaching game design at a local university and Jenny has begun a full-time job in web development. This is going to slow us down, but it’s also going to give us the resources to make Crimson Spires even better. We’ll be able to ship with more voice acting, for one thing. And we’re not too proud to admit that we’ll use some of the extra money on assets that can improve the world of Bataille, Missouri. We always tweak any assets we buy to fit our game, but it’s especially easy with a game set in (relatively) modern day in a (relatively) realistic style to find useful ways to speed up environmental development.
So, what have we done recently? The 3D world of Bataille is considerably more built-out and explorable. Julian’s path has been almost entirely added into the game project. Maddy’s path is halfway written. New art for new characters has been deployed on the project, some of which we’ve scattered throughout this post.
And we’ve also made sure to start taking better care of ourselves. Jenny’s new job allows her to treat working on Crimson Spires as more of a passion project and less of a piece of work she has to finish to keep the lights on. Malcolm took a quick breather this week to participate in the UE4jam, a four-day long game jam put on by Epic Games. You can see his game here. Both of us know that if we stay burnt out, we won’t be able to provide the story and experiences we want to.
We pride ourselves at Woodsy Studio on finishing games. We don’t start something and just let it wither and die. Crimson Spires is coming, we just ask for a little patience while we make it the best vampire/serial killer romance about late capitalism in the Midwest that it can be.
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!
It will also release for desktop computers on Steam and itch.io!
New Avatar Options
An important new feature coming with the Valentine’s update includes new avatar options for the player. Currently, there are only 3 base options for male, female, and non-binary. We’ll be adding at least 3 new options for each gender, so 9 new options overall.
Gallery Addition
The update will also enable a Gallery system browse-able from the Main Menu screen. From here, you can view all the images you’ve unlocked so far while playing the game.
New CGs
Keep a look out for new CGs appearing in the Valentine’s update, as well!
Raphael helps Uriel exercise (or so he claims)
Reply Improvements and Halo System
Whenever you reply punctually to a message in the game, you’ll receive Halos. You can use Halos to reply to missed messages or unlock special images.
Secret Story Branch
We’re also added a whole new secret story branch to the game of about 20,000 words. But it wouldn’t be secret if I told you more than that!
2017 was a busy year for Woodsy Studio. Development started on our latest and biggest game. We ventured into the free-to-play market in two different ways. We released our first console titles and we (unsuccessfully) dipped our toes into crowdfunding. Here’s a quick look at the year in review for Woodsy Studio.
Woodsy Studio’s first release of 2017 was an experiment on two fronts. To start, it was our first game developed in Unreal Engine 4 and, as a result, our first game to utilize 3d environments. We also decided to release it as a free, stand-alone chapter to help promote the series in general.
Even though we had to build a visual novel display system from the ground up, we quickly took to UE4. Resource management (especially related to sounds and music) was much simpler than in GameMaker Studio. Building 3d environments instead of drawing 2d backgrounds also allowed us to incorporate camera angles and increase the number of settings and CGs featured in the game.Using UE4, however, had a downside. For the first time, we had to worry about the performance of our games. On low-end machines–specifically older computers and laptops without a dedicated GPU–The Immolation ran poorly. We coded in a low graphics mode (which, quite frankly, made the game look rough) but we’re not sure how many people knew to take advantage of it. Visual novel fans aren’t used to worrying about performance or graphics settings, and some of our initial reviews likely reflected that. For future (not free) episodes, we’ll likely look into a way to default to low settings when the user doesn’t have a graphics card.
Overall, we’re very happy with The Immolation as an introduction to the series and as a functional performance test for our future VNs in Unreal Engine 4.
2017 marked Woodsy Studio’s first release on console platforms, with our 2016 PC game Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail coming out on both PS4 and Xbox One. We were still on GameMaker Studio for this project and we did all of the porting work ourselves, so we’re incredibly proud at how the game turned out on consoles and the fact we were able to release both ports within (almost) a month of one another. Xbox One was especially groundbreaking for us, as (I believe) we’re the first traditional visual novel on the platform and one of only a few GameMaker ports to appear on the system. We’re hoping that with future releases, using UE4, we’ll be able to put our console versions out much closer to our PC version.
October – miraclr: Divine Dating Sim (ios/Android)
This October, Woodsy Studio made its second venture into the free-to-play market with the mobile title, miraclr: Divine Dating Sim. Developed in under two months, miraclr is a novel-length (75,000+ words) VN that takes place in real-time over a single week. You chat and collaborate with the archangels of heaven to plan and enact the first true miracle in over 400 years.
miraclr was a unique project for us, in no small part because it was our first mobile-focused game. We had released games on Android before (Serafina’s Crown and Quantum Conscience) but those had been developed with PC in mind first and ported over to the mobile platform. miraclr, by its nature as a game that required real-time interaction, only really works if you have the game with you at work or school or wherever you spend most of the day. There are in-app purchases that allow players to skip around the real-time elements of the game, but we wanted to be sure it was completely playable for free players.
We’re hoping to have some new miraclr announcements soon, so stay tuned if you’re a fan!
November – The Last Sacrament Kickstarter
Not all of our news in 2017 was good. For the first time, we tried crowdfunding one of our games, the upcoming Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament on Kickstarter and fell significantly short of our goal. This certainly wasn’t out of lack of support from our current fans, who contributed and sent us plenty of messages of support. Unfortunately, despite various attempts to reach out to media and promote the campaign, as well as being designated a “Project We Love” by Kickstarter we simply weren’t able to get any press coverage or amplification.
Unfortunately, the reality of crowdfunding is that there’s only so much an independent studio can do to get the word out. We released a demo, still available here, and did what we could to try and drum up support. But ultimately we learned that we’ll likely have to take a different approach to getting press coverage when we release (which we still intend to do; more on that later!)
December – Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail on Jump
Finally this year, we expanded our reach to another platform–the online game subscription service, Jump!
Porting to Jump was a bit difficult, mostly because of the size of our game. On PC/Consoles, The Fox’s Trail is an installation a little over 700 MB. To make it work and playable via browser, we had to tweak our texture compression and sound streaming. This led to a few bugs we hurriedly fixed during release, but now the game is fully playable on the service. So if you’re a Jump subscriber but haven’t checked out our games yet, make sure you try out The Fox’s Trail!
Upcoming – Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament
Of course, the year in review wouldn’t be complete without a mention of our biggest project this year, Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament. We started production on our biggest, most intricate game yet back in March of 2017 and have worked on it throughout the year. Even with all the other releases in 2017, we always kept up work on The Last Sacrament and we hope to have it released in early spring of 2018 on PC, with a console version either concurrently available or out shortly afterwards.
Thanks to all our fans for your support! Hopefully we released something in 2017 that you enjoyed. We’re looking forward to more updates and releases in 2018 so make sure to follow us or sign up for the newsletter to know when we have something new for you!
We know a lot of you have been waiting to play Echoes of the Fey on PlayStation 4 so we’re happy to let you know that our first installment,The Fox’s Trail is out NOW for $7.99.
Did Folren ir-Adech die during the war between Humans and Leshin? Or is there a darker truth behind his disappearance? Investigate the mystery now on PS4. But don’t think we’ve forgotten about our PC users! We recently pushed a patch on Steam that improves controller support to match the PS4 version and fixed a couple minor issues regarding options menu functions and Steam Achievements.
Finally, we’re still hard at work on our next title, Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament, with the majority of the script complete and a good portion already in game and playable. Keep an eye on us at @WoodsyStudio on Twitter for updates, screenshots, and other Echoes of the Fey news!
