On this day, four years ago, the original version of Vacant Sky Act I was released. In those four years, we've come a long way, with the subsequent releases of Acts II and III as well as the recent Complete Edition releases of Acts I+ and II+. 2012 was a good year for us, with two major releases and the release of our first (small) commercial game, Encarmine. In this past year, we brought the community together with the launch and wild success of the Vacant Sky: Awakening Kickstarter.

But 2013 is going to be our best year yet. Let's take a look at what's in store.

Metis2D
To facilitate the development of Vacant Sky: Awakening, we've been hard at work on developing our own game engine, (tentatively) called Metis2D. As we near completion of the engine's core features and continue our testing of it, we're happy to announce the first game to be released with the new engine.



One of our earlier microgames, The Vestibule, has been successfully ported to Metis and runs like a charm. We expect to rerelease The Vestibule on new platforms, namely the Ouya. The Vestibule will be available for free as one of the Ouya's launch titles.

Vacant Sky: Awakening
Unsurprisingly, the majority of our efforts right now are concentrated on VSA. Work has been coming along at a steady pace. It's still a little early to show anything new from the game yet, but we're still hoping to manage a release before the summer. But although there's nothing to see, there is plenty to listen to:


http://vacantsky.bandcamp.com/album/vacant-sky-awakening

The soundtrack for episodes 1 and 2 of Vacant Sky: Awakening is now available for purchase! Kickstarter backers who pledged at least $25 will shortly be receiving download codes via email.

Thanks for being patient with us as we go through the roughest part of the development cycle. Please look forward to a release of Episode 1: Journey of the Black Knight in the coming months.

Ars Harmonia
Those of you who were following the Vacant Sky companion story, Ars Harmonia, have probably been wondering about the status and future of the series. For the foreseeable future, our efforts remain primarily concerned with the development of Awakening, which resulted in it being pushed to the backburner.

However, a chance encounter with some old friends has brought about a change in fortune for Ars Harmonia. Ardent Blue Productions expressed interest in doing a game adaptation of the story and I'm excited to say that we've entrusted it into their capable hands. Although we're not directly involved in the game's production, I'm confident in their ability to bring the story to life.



It's still too early to estimate a release, but look forward to more news in the latter half of the year. You can check out the RMN profile for the game here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/4926/

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Thanks for sticking with us for another year! We're hoping to make this the best yet and we hope you're as excited about it as we are!

Cross-posted from Kate's blog:

author=felicitousArtisan
Hey guys! You like getting free stuff, right!? Like music and games? Well, read on…

So to celebrate that Vacant Sky: Awakening is now over 100% funded on Kickstarter (thank you so much to everybody who pledged and signal boosted!) we are running a competition!

The prizes:

Third place
-A digital copy of “Sounds of Contention,” the Vacant Sky soundtrack

Second place
-A pre-release digital copy of the new Vacant Sky: Awakening Episode 1 soundtrack (Here’s a sampler)
-A digital copy of “Sounds of Contention,” the Vacant Sky soundtrack

First place
-A digital copy of Vacant Sky: Awakening Episode 1 (once released)
-Chance to design a character to appear as an NPC in Vacant Sky: Awakening
-A pre-release digital copy of the new Vacant Sky: Awakening Episode 1 soundtrack
-A digital copy of “Sounds of Contention,” the Vacant Sky soundtrack

How to enter:

Send in something Vacant Sky related, art, fiction, music remix, omake comic, fangame, cosplay or prop photo… Pretty much anything! to create@projectbc.net (link or attachment). It can be from Awakening, Contention, or even Ars Harmonia (free web novel).

REFERENCE MATERIAL: There’s a bunch of official character art and illustrations from Contention and Awakening here and here.

DEADLINE: 11:59 PM Eastern time on February 6th, 2013.

Good luck!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/20/vacant-sky-the-indie-rpgs-second-act-gets-revamped-released-for-free/

We got an article about the Act II+ release on PC Gamer. Hurray!

One last call for more beta testers for Act II+. Because of the huge amount of branching in the story, it is very, very difficult to test everything. Every little bit helps. If you're interested in helping out with testing, please drop me a line.

Thanks!

It's been a while since the Complete Edition release of Act I+ and so far the reception to it has been fantastic! We've gotten a lot of new folks into the series and some more external attention. Since then, it's been a little quiet on our end as a result of balancing work on the Complete Edition with Awakening (and some other neat things), but it's all coming along.

The current game plan is to release Act II+, which will be bundled with Act I+ (which will have the reported bugs fixed), before the end of the year. We're really close, so with any luck the wait won't be much longer!