Octomber #1: UNA
Hope you’re enjoying 🎃ctober, Believers! Aside from launch-month May, October is the cultiest month of all. As Gene Wolfe said:
“Some are haunted by ghosts. I am haunted by stories.”
So, you can expect a lot of activity this month. Next week we have not one but TWO announcements! One you’re probably expecting, like
But the other might well make you
We have a bunch of Halloween-y sales coming up, none of which I can reveal without Gabe Newell coming around and replacing all the English Breakfast tea in my house with Earl Grey (😱). AND, of course, we’re working towards full release of German and Japanese on Steam, GOG and Humble, shouldering its way through the skin of the world on Thursday 29th October!
(Which just so happens to be our fifth anniversary. Romance isn’t dead, it’s just tied up in the performance of a product launch.)
We are currently having problems with our EXILE Chinese players, due to confusion over translation. We’re working to sort that out, but it means that in the meantime we’re down to 40% positive recent reviews on Steam. SAD TIMES! If you’ve played and didn’t totally hate it, please consider leaving us a review! 🙏 The Madrugad will stop crying if you do.
Moving swiftly on, thank you to everyone who’s sent in a German or Japanese bug report so far! We’ve fixed a load of things already, and really couldn’t do it without your help. If you’re not part of the beta yet but would like to be, all info here!
In merch news, I’m delighted to report I received my zingara fortune-telling deck test pack this sprint. I’m very happy with it! Here’s an amuse-bouche for y’all: a reading of my general fortune, following the instructions in the pack…
Good things happen! A secret relationship – ahem – is dangerous! I apparently don’t get COVID and then Saliba appears and then… wait… widowhood?!
In case you’re interested, you choose a representative card for yourself in these general readings. Who are you? (If you really don’t feel represented by a card, you can always opt for the Jack of your suit instead.)
I’m hoping I can launch these on Friday 13th November, for extra occult points. But I’ll confirm that when I hear from the printers.
Alexis may have some interesting things to tell you about boxes in future – as far as I can tell, BOOK OF HOURS is basically a game about putting things in sentient boxes – but for now, I’ll leave you with the scent of announcements slouching closer, ever closer, through the dim and dusky days.
Keep it spooky, people. ♥
Neat.
Regarding the Simplified Chinese Exile DLC, a bit of research makes it sound like you guys just used a fan-localization of without crediting the creators or finishing their work (I just took the negative reviews and plugged them into Google Translate, so perhaps I’m wrong, but there was a lot and it seemed pretty consistent.)
Specifically, that seems to be what the negative reviews are directly stating, done by some of the very people who worked on the translation. It seems really grungy to ask people to submit positive reviews to counterbalance these criticisms, rather than meeting with and trying to treat fairly with the people whose work you seem to have taken for granted.
It seems pretty grungy to just use a fan-made localization without crediting them or listening to what they had to say about the work as well, but it sounds like that already happened, so I don’t know why you’d follow one grungy deed with another.
I was trying to figure whether I’d buy BoH or not based on how confident I was in how the stories shook out around Fail Better, and this weird, small act of legerdemain really suggests I shouldn’t extend the benefit of the doubt
You know what? I guess I don’t know enough about what’s going on; it’s possible that the fan-translation people missed something or something. I shouldn’t presume.
But posting a request for people to counterbalance the negative reviews before reaching an accord with the aggrieved party just seems… really bad. Like it seems self-serving or dishonest. Or like, the habit of creating two worlds when the problems of one feel too difficult.
Hello! To clarify, people are under the mistaken impression we stole a community translation and bunged it into the game hoping nobody would notice. We haven’t done that. We received permission to use it from the translators, but there was confusion over what names should be in the credits and what version of the translation was used. No one has stolen or misused anything without permission, and we absolutely will credit eveyone involved! We’re just waiting on the right version of the translation and the full list of names.
It’s very hard to communicate misunderstandings like this to a community whose language you don’t speak. So we have to go through a third party which takes time to trickle down and that’s why everyone seems cross. But we’ll get there!