Hey all, a relatively small update in terms of fixes (though the fixes are a bit big!) as the engine is pretty much complete aside from a handful of things I've noticed in testing. My primary focus now is wrapping up the rest of the game's writing as all the music and art assets are now more or less in place.

April 20 2021 —

• Beta10 release
• Updated Unity version to 2019.4.24f1
• Further overhaul to controller support
• Fixed an issue with controllers & keyboards where input was sent repeatedly resulting in an unplayable state
• Added an option to the Graphics menu that toggles the Map auto-spin on and off

November 25 2020 —

• Beta9 release
• Updated Unity version to 2019.4.12f1
• Accessibility focus!
• Big overhaul to keyboard navigation, elements should be easier to select via keyboard and the intended element more intelligently highlighted
• Fully implemented image descriptions for all icons, equipment images, and headers in-game; interact with graphics to see a description overlay which is also read out via TTS
• Initial "TTS is enabled by default" dialog now correctly speaks via TTS as well
• Initial TTS dialog can be navigated by keyboard correctly
• First tutorial image can be navigated by controller and keyboard

Relatively minor update but I think that's a good sign as the engine is about as polished as can be — I haven't found further bugs or issues after weeks of testing.

September 02 2020 —
• Beta8 release
• Updated Unity version to 2019.4.9f1
• Fixed the "continue" sound not triggering when the first tutorial screen appears
• Minor fixes to button text

Hi all, a small(ish) update fixing some engine stuff that came up since the last release was pushed live.

If you're having trouble accessing it through your sales page, try grabbing the demo from itch as versions are functionally the same at the moment, but Patron content can be unlocked with your code. I believe this is because the game isn't "released" in itch yet so page access keeps getting locked. I'm trying to figure out a way around that — but in the meantime you're not missing out on anything as I'm still making engine updates public. Please let me know if you come across any issues as I think the engine itself is basically finished now and all that's left is getting the writing done (still a big process obviously, but we're getting there!)

Fun bit of trivia: the word count for publicly-accessible content (IE, the tutorial, internships, and all Patron storylines) is a bit over 40k words at the moment. This puts it on the shorter end of the average novel length (nearly as long as Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time for reference!), so that's a fun little benchmark for what you all can play right now!

August 10 2020 —

• Beta7 release
• New app icon!
• Updated Unity version to 2019.4.7f1
• Updated TTS strings for tutorial images to reflect slight changes to default keybinds and UI elements
• Fixed TTS not reflecting volume changes
• TTS now automatically reads glossary definitions on open (previously required a click/tap on the definition)
• Information windows (like text descriptions of icons) read their text on open automatically
• Slight visual changes to the second half of the second Patron commission
• Autoplay pauses as expected when Story Tray is stowed
• UI improvements to the Map when new stories are unlocked through game progression

I'll look into the itch page, but the demo version is identical at the moment so if you'd like to play it now they're the same files.

The game is DRM free on all storefronts, as well. :)

Hey Violette, let me look into that as I'm not sure what the issue is. 

In the meantime if you download the demo from the main itch page you can still play that — the demo and beta are currently identical as there were enough bug fixes that I felt it was appropriate to update that too.

Let me know if you still have trouble!

Hello!

So, first of all I want to thank everyone for their patience — as I mentioned in my last Kickstarter update, it's been a pretty hectic time for me over the last year. Despite the lack of outward updates, I've been hard at work behind the scenes and have reached a bit of a milestone; as of this update, I'm pretty confident that (aside from any bugs I haven't encountered through a year of testing!) the Alcyone engine is now feature complete. All that's left is the remaining writing, and then we're good to go.

I don't want to set expectations on anything because clearly life keeps throwing curveballs. This feels easy to get away with when tasks are distributed across a team, but this has been a broadly solo operation from the start so delays land on my shoulders. That said, I do feel like all I have left is the writing and then Alcyone will be in tip-top shape for release.

If you're a Supporter, you've got access to all of the Patron commissions — which are wrapped up for the time being with this update, as I've just added two at once! If you backed Alcyone on Kickstarter or pre-ordered on itch before the alpha ended, you should have received a code. Send me a message if you don't see it!

You can check out all of the updates via itch and if you have any questions, feedback, or comments PLEASE get in touch. Release notes are below!

Also: don't forget that you can wishlist Alcyone on Steam — and PLEASE DO, as this helps out with metrics tremendously!

- - - - 

June 25 2020 —

• Beta6 release
• Fix to the game not unpacking and loading properly in Windows systems due to filename error
• Two Patron Commissions! This now also wraps up the Patron content for the time being
• "Autoplay" system implemented — choose between three, four, and five second delays in the Option menu and play/pause from the UI element in the lower right corner of the Story tray
• Slight adjustments to make the Status Tray more dynamic and reactive
• Slight tweaks to the initial New Game experience
• ESC key always returns to the top menu list instead of the last-used screen
• Fixes to the music state not saving/loading correctly
• TTS now has an independent sound control option
• TTS will repeat previous text when navigating to dimmed passages
• TTS will speak the current volume level when changing music, sound effects, and TTS
• Tweaks to the opacity of previous passages
• Music properly saves track and position between hubs and save game reloading
• Custom cursor added
• Added a glossary overlay to the menu
• Glossary overlays have been increased in size slightly
• Improvements to the navigation system for keyboard use
• Secondary bindings implemented for controllers
• Graphics options now include a font size toggle between three options
• Fixes to some glossary terms not triggering when interacted with
• Fixes to some glossary terms not being interactive if the term line-breaks mid-paragraph
• Status of trays are properly reloaded when restoring saves
• Fixes to some dialogs not properly progressing story when clicked
• Patron code now works when entered mid-game
• Fixes to Hub locations not showing on the overview map
• Tweaks to some equipment, and fixes to some equipment with incorrect stats
• Fixes to wording on receiving and completing Objectives
• Fixes to cursor "blinking" when transitioning between interactive and non-interactive states
• Stowed trays are now properly non-interactive
• Removed mouse scrolling — clicking and dragging now scrolls trays more intuitively and without accidental issues missing text because of the scroll wheel
• "O" binds to Objectives by default and not the Options menu
• As Maladies increase, the UI will now reflect their progression in a more visually interesting capacity

Hey Nyphren! Unfortunately I can't do anything about the previous order in terms of refunds or anything, really sorry you grabbed it twice!

As far as the beta build goes, it's greyed out because I haven't yet pushed anything to that branch. If you download the current demo, that's technically the "beta" as I updated the demo in the new Unity engine for everyone to have access. Once I update the Unity version to have the same content as Twine (all of the Patron stuff) then the beta branch will be updated and the demo will fully replace Twine. That will happen soon, I'm still doing QA to make sure there aren't any bugs.

So for right now grab the demo from the itch page. :) I'm aware of a bug (which I have fixed, but it's not uploaded just yet) on Windows that causes the zip file to give an error, and the itch app won't work either, but the zip file works okay even if it complains.

It could be because I haven't pushed any changes to the beta branch directly (I will once the Patron stuff for May goes out at the end of the month) because I didn't want to break old save games for people yet.

If you go to the main itch.io page directly and scroll to the bottom where it says "demo," there should be four options depending on your operating system. Do you have any ad blockers active or javascript disabled? If so, whitelisting itch.io should help.

May 16 2019

• Beta5 release
• Tweaks to the tutorial images
• Additional graphics and sound options added to the menu
• Improved scrolling on macOS
• TTS added to Map region names
• TTS improvements
• Glossary keywords now accessible via keyboard

More robust audio controls are planned for the game including volume for TTS, sound effects, and music (and shutting any of those off) but I haven't been able to implement it just yet. Thanks for the suggestion though!

Hey Daza,

It's also occurred to me that antivirus software will sometimes delete unknown exe files from zips, so check to make sure that hasn't happened either.

I've only just realised I forgot to put a thread up for the beta, and there have been quite a few releases for it already. Here's the release notes for all of the betas so far, including the build I just pushed — for now this is still in the "demo" download, I'll push it into the normal purchases soon.

I am aware of a weird issue with the itch app (and another weird issue on Windows involving the zip file itself) but I'm struggling to figure out what's causing either and how to fix them. For now, if you're impacted by it grabbing the zip file from the itch.io page (scroll down to the bottom of the page to the demo section and download from there) and forcing it to unzip anyway even if it complains about overwriting an existing file seems to be the fix — check your antivirus software as well.

May 11 2019 —
• Beta4 release
• Version number added to Main Menu
• Improvements to TTS, keyboard navigation
• Fix where TTS would only read first line of any multi-line dialogs
• Initial tutorial now available any time from Menu
• Fixed issues with keyboard navigation and the Map
• Region names added to the Map
• Citadel model added to the Map
• Fixes to incorrect fonts in Credits screen
• Fixes to edge cases where clicking on edges of "bubbles" wouldn't progress story
• Consistency between next click triggers
• Initial controller support added
• Pre-May 2019 Patron content added and now accessible for Supporters
• Fixes to initial internships, small writing tweaks
• Improvements to how attributes are phrased for the sake of clarity
• Map regions can be closed via the back keybind
• Disabled accidental keyboard navigation to Map regions out of focus
• Disabled accidental activation of inactive/hidden Map Hub locations

May 07 2019 —
• Beta3 release
• Fixed bug with tooltip overlap on choice requirements/unlocks
• Fixed bug where glossary entries weren't read by the TTS system
• TTS works without keyboard navigation being enabled
• Fixed depth sorting issues on the Map hubs
• Fixed bug with keyboard being enabled by default
• Added an option to the game's first launch that asks if TTS/keyboard nav should be enabled
• Keybindings are on a separate screen in the options menu
• Fixes to keyboard navigation
• Fixes to percentage challenges failing when you change equipment a second time
• Further bug fixes to the internships

May 03 2019 —
• Beta2 release
• Fixed misfiring gameover states
• Fixed collect-4 dialogs preventing mouse scrolling
• Fixed screen jiggle when using keyboard navigation
• Fixed unicode characters missing from credits screen
• Fixes to TTS
• Added a quit button to the main menu
• Split TTS from keyboard navigation
• Patron codes implemented for Patron Supporter content
• Fixes to some bugs found in the internships

April 30 2019 —
• Beta1 release
• Massive update switching game from Twine engine to Unity
• Alpha test concluded
• See Kickstarter for full information

Hey Daza!

Yeah I've been made aware of some issues with the itch app that I'm having trouble figuring out.

If you go to the main itch page (https://mixvio.itch.io/alcyone-the-last-city), scroll to the very bottom where it shows the demo downloads, and grab the win64 version there does that work? There also seems to be some weirdness in how itch's butler package manager is creating the zip files where it gives an error on unzip, but ignoring it seems to work for people hit by the bug.

I'm trying to figure out what the problem is, but this very much seems to be on itch's end and I'm unsure of what's going on there.

Hello awesome people, I've pushed a big update to Kickstarter announcing a slew of big updates, but the tl;dr is:

• No April Patron Commission, but there will be two in May
• Because I have ported Alcyone from Twine into Unity
• And you can go download the Unity version right now through itch
• And Alcyone is coming out in December

Go read this announcement for more details and let me know what you think!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuameadows/alcyone-the-last-city-interactive-fiction-video-ga/posts/2495024 

The next Patron Commission is now live!

March 31 2019 —

• Alpha8 release
• Added the March 2019 Patron Commission, "The Gift"
• Fixes to some glossary tooltip definitions
• Fixes to variable flagging in a couple Patron Encounters

Hey supporters! Just a quick note to say that the latest Valentines-themed Patron commission is live — grab the demo through itch.io to give it a play.

Also, keep an eye out for some pretty awesome (if I do say so myself) news coming, hopefully, in March. That's all I'm saying for now!

Alpha6 is out now, along with the third Patron Commission:

January 31 2019 —

• Alpha6 release
• Added the January 2019 Patron Commission, "The Survey"
• Fixes and tweaks made to the save/load dialog system

Thanks, Maxime; am I guessing correctly that English isn't your first language? Maybe this is a bit of a translation issue. :)

The gender choices were developed after speaking with a bunch of transgender, non-binary, and intersex writers, game devs, and players to try and give a good balance of choices for everyone to pick from. Androgyne in the game is closer to non-binary, whereas "hermaphrodite" is considered an outdated and potentially offensive term. The gender choice, ultimately, has little material impact on the game itself and is just to give players more representation to enjoy the game however they wish.

As far as what the game itself is, I think if I call it an RPG people might be expecting something like Zelda or Diablo, and I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea. You pointed out that there's not much gameplay in the video — that was the Kickstarter pitch (I'm working on a proper trailer at the moment!) so it's slightly different, but it's difficult to put a text-based game into a video format unfortunately. I'm working on it, though! It's closer to an RPG than a visual novel, I think, but it's not quite either. I don't mind what people want to call it as long as they enjoy it, though. :)

Why are there graphical artifacts in the texts?

I'm not sure what you mean here, could you possibly send me a screenshot of what's happening? That's not been a bug that other people have reported so I'll see what I can do. If you can't attach it in an itch message, you can email joshua at alcyonegame dot com instead.

Hey Maxime, thanks for the post. I'm actually a big fan of visual novels and have done writing work on many in the past, so they're definitely something I'm familiar with. :) I wouldn't really agree that this should be categorised as such, since the visual part of Alcyone is more secondary to the game, but it's a tricky, subjective thing to nail down. Failbetter calls their genre "quality-based choice games" but I don't think that really helps people out much either unfortunately!

I'd consider visual novels to be games, as well as interactive fiction, and I don't really gatekeep on what level of gameplay a game must have to be considered such. It feels a bit counterproductive and starts getting into "real gamers" territory, which is something I've always been averse to.

Either way, I hope you've enjoyed the game! :)

Just a quick update to the alpha as well as the public demo — I fixed up a couple of issues that were reported after the Patron launch (nothing game-breaking, fortunately!) so hopefully, hopefully, this is the last time the demo needs to be touched.

December 03 2018 —

• Alpha4 release, and hopefully the final demo version
• Fixed an audio crossfading issue between the main and Encounter versions of music tracks
• Fixed an issue with the Mind internship's music
• Fixed an issue with the Charm internship's music
• Expanded the Help & Glossary section of the game to actually include the Help part of things
• Glossary entries are now alphabetised and not arranged in the order that the player may encounter those terms

Alpha3 is now out on itch! 

As discussed on Kickstarter, this brings in the Patron update that includes additional content on a monthly basis as a special thanks to early backers. The Patron's first Commission is an Encounter nearly ten thousand words in length, so this is a substantial amount of new content available to everyone.

Full release notes are below.

November 23 2018 —

• Alpha3 release, and final (?) demo release
• Preliminary accessibility update adding img alt text to primary icons for players using screen readers; this will be an ongoing fix, but many of the more vital icons now have proper descriptions
• Added access for Supporter Content to those who were early backers or Patreon supporters
• The Patron has set up shop in the City! Check Kickstarter for details about this eccentric figure
• The Patron's first Commission is now playable — help him pick up a particularly special parcel
• All four Attribute internships are available in the Alcyone demo now. Enjoy pursuing the Mind and Charm tracks in addition to the existing Body and Vigour ones
• Slight font size tweaks to the header text at the start of each passage
• Encounter "Trapped" has been tweaked to provide additional solutions for players who didn't pursue the Body internship
• Made some edits to the wording in certain character creation passages, and some additional writing edits throughout the first four internships
• Audio levels have been tweaked across the board to help with competing against screen readers
• Fixed a crossfading bug with the Encounter versions of music tracks so spoopy ambience works like it's supposed to!
• Huge overhaul to how variables are handled in the game; this breaks old save files, but should not impact them going forward
• Visual tweaks to better differentiate conversation bubbles from regular story text

Alpha2 is out now on itch; you can download it directly from your store page or with the itch app — the zip file (whichever way you download it) contains executables for five operating systems, so be sure to navigate to the downloaded directory and delete any you don't need.

Alpha2 Release Notes — 23-10-2018

• Info/release notes screen added to the first loading screen
• Autosave system implemented
• Alcyone now has Objectives, and those Objectives are now exposed to the player
• Counter now shows how many passages remain in each “page”
• Hub locations actually work properly when the demo’s end is reached
• Further visual tweaks
• Removed the spinning widget from each page and reorganised the appearance & content of the sidebar
• The Help button actually does something useful now!
• Kickstarter backers added to the Credits overlay

Yeah I'm also on a MacBook Pro with a single GPU, so there's no graphics switching on my end either unfortunately.

Hey thanks tons for these posts, this is helpful.

• On the mac, I noticed that voiceover separates certain words, the way it breaks up paragraphs. I was able to click on those words to get the glossary info. I couldn't figure out a way to get that to work for me in windows.

This is probably down to how I've actually got the glossary working (there's a hacky bit of javascript that goes back after the page is drawn and looks for keywords, and if those keywords are found it retroactively wraps them in the glossary div — this way I only have to add definitions in one place as opposed to manually doing them every time I write the text out, and it detects the keywords automatically instead of me forgetting a word here or there.) I probably won't be able to do anything about this in terms of screen readers, but that's why I added the glossary button on the side so definitions can be accessed outside of a passage. Dunno why it's interactive under macOS but not Windows, but maybe that's down to their screen readers specifically.

• Looking at the area with attributes and inventory, I know I have encounter secrets and perils, but I'm unable to get more details about them. Meaning, it just says encounter secret, or peril, but doesn't tell me what it actually is.

I think that I can rectify this by adding in the img alt text that I meant to go back and do but never had a chance. Right now if you mouse over the various images it gives a hover tooltip that tells you what the secret was, for example, and I think once I go back and implement those it will accomplish the same thing for people on screen readers.

• Also, I can't tell if I should be able to get more details about the items in my inventory, such as a description or if it gives me some kind of boost to an attribute.

This is also in the hover tooltips and should (hopefully) be fixed with appropriate img alt text. However, are you able to interact with the buttons in the inventory to equip/unequip items once you have access? That's one thing I was worried about since it was an issue earlier on. Otherwise the inventory screen is just a pretty wall of images that doesn't do anything useful!

Thanks, glad to hear it! I'm just waiting on assets for the second two internships and then the four will get pushed to the demo; once the game's UI and so forth is locked in and concrete, it's just the writing  left to finish and I'll get that in place pretty rapidly. Thanks for your support!

I'm extremely pleased to announce the initial release in the Alcyone: The Last City alpha — Alpha1!

Thank you all for being so patient as I've gotten this organised. This first release is a substantial change over the demo file I presented during Kickstarter; there's not any component of the game that hasn't been redone in some capacity. This portion of the game contains the same "areas" as in the original demo — character creation, a choice of two internship pathways with exposure to the Encounter system, and a secondary Encounter following completion of the internships. However, all of this has been rewritten and should look new even to players who saw the original demo.

Alpha1 Release Notes — 30-04-2018

• Total overhaul of the game's appearance compared to the demo
• "Dyslexic-friendly" font from Fontsmith to improve overall readability
• New splash, menu, and interstitial screens
• Custom cursor icons
• Consistent styling implemented for buttons & UI elements from the Twine engine & SugarCube 2 functionality
• Massive editing/rewriting passthrough to the Alcyone prose 
• Text is now broken up into much smaller "bubbles" to further improve readability
• Implemented additional audio and visual effects
• Preliminary fixes implemented for screen readers (this will require further testing)
• Glossary tooltip system has been overhauled to improve functionality and readability
• Better differentiation between dialogue "bubbles," story "bubbles," and more important game moments
• Passage headers are separated and better differentiated from the rest of the story bubbles
• Improvements to various CSS elements

If anything comes up please don't hesitate to let me know — enjoy!

I still get it launching and then instantly/immediately closing whether I launch it through the itch app or from the standalone zip download. I tried opening it a couple of times to clear out the first launch issue, but nah — still unplayable for me on macOS unfortunately. Anything else I can test?

Nope, it just literally opens for half a second, the icon bounces a couple times in the dock, and then the icon closes. If I open it directly, the application remains in the dock but doesn't show any windows or anything (it doesn't seem to be locked up, however) and nothing happens.

Unfortunately, I did try that and it didn't fix the issue.

I tried downloading it through the itch app and launching (it just closes instantly), also I tried downloading it through itch as well as directly from the website and the same thing happens if I move the .app file somewhere else or the entire folder. I've had to resort to playing it in a virtual machine to get it to work at all.

As above, the moment I launch the game it just instantly closes without showing anything. If I launch it directly (without the itch app) it remains open but it sits in the dock and there's no game windows or anything else visible. I hadn't seen this posted already so I don't know if it's a bug on my end or what.

Very glad to hear that! :)

Hey Alterion, unfortunately I'm not a Linux user and I haven't been able to test that as much as the Windows and  macOS versions just yet. I remember this coming up during the kickstarter campaign and other users had comments about it (including running the 32 bit version with extra dependencies).

I think the demo contains a 32-bit binary for Linux in the download but let me know if I've left it out.

This comment might have some useful information, otherwise try running it through the itch.io launcher (or without it, vice versa) instead of downloading it directly. If you're still having trouble let me know and I'll poke my much more knowledgable Linux friends for help. Unfortunately given the wide variety of distros out there it's hard to know what the problem is without more information, but this (hopefully!) shouldn't be an issue by release.

Yep, you're absolutely correct — they're all the demo for the time being and as the alpha and beta tests progress they'll be updated accordingly. You don't need to download anything besides the alpha for now, and that will update when it begins. Hope that helps!