Reality — Fancy Fish Games

＜/reality＞ Now Available on Steam!

DavidMaletz — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 16:29:51 +0000

Since the last update, we have been hard at work finishing Book 3, doing some final playtests/polish and adding additional features like achievements, steam trading cards and a scene gallery. Now we are proud to announce that we have launched the game on Steam! The game is currently 15% off until April 25th to celebrate the launch, so get it now!

You can also download the updated demo here:

Book 3 - "Truth"

Book 3 is the final - and, as the name suggests - most revelatory part of the story. All of the story threads we’ve been weaving through books one and two come together here, and your choices begin having a larger impact than ever before. The heavy branching in Book 3 and the Epilogue was definitely an editing challenge - however, we think it adds a lot (especially to replay value)! It’ll be fun watching people compare their epilogues and the very different paths they can take!

A few mostly spoiler-free screenshots from Book 3:

Over the last few weeks our composer, Chase, has produced a ton of new and wonderful music tracks! You can listen to one of the new tracks, “Remorse,” right here:

Remorse - Indie DB

Spread the Word

I hope you are as excited as we are! If you are, please held spread the word about the launch - on social media and beyond. Let's build some hype! And, once you have the game in hand, please share your screenshots and reactions using the hashtag #RealityVN! We want to hear what you think!

UI & Demo Update

DavidMaletz — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 20:23:05 +0000

There’s only a month left until release, and we are fixing up a lot of the loose ends and preparing for launch. For this week, we have a lot of updates to share!

Major UI Overhaul - the old UI was more a placeholder than a final asset, so we’ve finally updated the UI! It’s now smaller and takes up less screen space too - so you can see more of the pretty backgrounds!
Added Choice Indicator - there is now a cool effect (visible in the above video) for big choices, that will let you know that your choice had a major impact on the story.
Demo Update - We updated the Demo (chapter 1) with the new UI and choice indicator, along with some edits and improvements. The Steam version has also been updated for Beta backers.
New Music Tracks - Chase, our composer, has been hard at work creating the last few tracks of music for the game! You can hear one of the new tracks in the above video.
Chapter 7 Edits - Even with all this going on, we have been continuing to edit and work on the last book of the game, and have written nearly all of the missing scenes from Chapter 7 now.

The choice indicator that lets you know which choices have a major impact on the story.

We still have a lot to do between now and April 18th, but we’re moving as fast as we can to release on time. We plan to give more frequent updates as we move closer and closer to the finish line!

Book 2 Beta Release

DavidMaletz — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 03:34:45 +0000

We just released Book 2 for Beta-access backers (chapters 4-6)! Book 2 is titled “Contact,” and it is where things start getting strange in , and the first major twist is revealed. We also spend more time getting to know the three main characters pasts and quirks, and there are some interesting moments of “contact” between them - perhaps heart-warming, but possibly heart-breaking, depending upon your choices.

Screenshots from Book 2

In other news, we launched a coming soon page on Steam for . Feel free to check it out and definitely share it with anyone you think would be interested in the game. As you can see on the steam page, we have officially moved our release date to April 18th, 2017. This is mainly because of the major edits mentioned in the previous backer update - Book 3 will take more than a month to finish, and then we will inevitably have revisions based on beta feedback, as well as marketing work. If you haven’t yet, please fill out the Additional Backer Survey.

Also, our second artist has now completed over half of the ending panels. She is very fast and efficient, and we are quite pleased with how the illustrations are turning out. We would share some with you if they weren’t spoilers for the ending(s)!

March Plans

For the rest of this month, our plan is mainly to write the new sections for Book 3 and finish editing it. We also have a number of CGs that still need to be done, and two final characters + more expressions for all the characters. We should hopefully have the Beta of Book 3 released by April 10th, giving us a little over a week for revisions before the official release.

Screenshot of new scene from Chapter 4

We’re looking forward to seeing beta-readers reactions to the edits to the ending - I think it greatly increases the strength and conflict, plus it gives a little more screen time to some of our more minor characters.

Thank you for your continued support and patience, and as always if you have any feedback on Book 2, feel free to post it in our development forums or use our handy feedback survey.

Chapter 3 Beta Release

DavidMaletz — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 21:42:38 +0000

We’re a few days late, but Chapter 3 is finally ready for beta-access backers to enjoy! Chapter 3 is the end of the first “book” of the game (where the story is split into three distinct books).

Screenshots from Chapter 3

Looking back on our January Plans from a previous update, we’ve accomplished everything we set out to do, and we are still on track for a (late) March release! The script has been edited, we’ve on-boarded a new artist who is working on the ending panels, Chapter 3 is now released, and we opened a late-backing pre-order system on our website: http://fancyfishgames.com/reality/.

Chase (our composer) has also completed a new track for InterMense, which you can listen to here:

InterMense - Indie DB

The new music has been added to Chapter 1 (the demo), along with a few minor changes to that chapter and a revised sprite for Ben - if you haven’t played the demo yet, you can do so here:

February Plans

For February, we want to keep up the momentum and and stay on target to release the full game by the end of March. We’ll mostly be focusing on editing, art and music updates now, and we should be able to increase our pace since the majority of the backgrounds and character sprites are done. Our goal is to release all of Book Two (chapters 4-6) by the end of the month. That will leave Book Three, the epilogue, finishing touches/revisions, and backer rewards for March, which is definitely doable (especially now that we have a second artist on board).

Are the secrets of Vitalia and the Penta hidden beyond the bridges?

It’s an exciting time as the full story is finally coming together. Thank you for all your support to help make this happen! We will continue to share development updates, and if you have any feedback on Chapter 3, feel free to post it in our development forums: http://fancyfishgames.com/forums/discussion/255/player-feedback-thread or use our handy feedback survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdyv7axizrXSBzvKka6t9bgxHd5l5vKL2jYH_qwONRAmb9fag/viewform.

Chapter 2 Beta Release

DavidMaletz — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 17:10:05 +0000

Happy 2017, everyone! We are excited to announce that the beta version of chapters 1 and 2 have been released! Chapter 1 has been through more edits and updates, and is freely available here:

Chapter 2 has been released to beta-access backers via Steam keys.

Development Progress

Here’s what we’ve been up to during the last few weeks:

Chapters 1, 2 and 3 have all undergone major script editing.
More sprite work was completed - character sprites are now nearly done!
Two new backgrounds were completed - backgrounds are now nearly done!
Two new CGs were competed.
Several new expressions for Ben and Lilya were made.
Ben’s sprite was revised/updated.
A new music track was completed and added (Vitalia theme #1).

A World Unknown - Indie DB
New sound effects and transitions/visual effects were added.

January Plans

We are looking forward to making a great deal of progress on this month. Here’s the plan:

The next two weeks will be spent doing a major editing pass through the entire script. We will be finalizing all of the endings, tying up some loose story threads, and making sure everything from our long list of story notes and ideas has been thoroughly addressed.
Once the script has reached a really clean state, we’ll be on-boarding a new artist to create the Ending Panels. This will help us stay on schedule!
Chase (our composer) will be working on getting us more music tracks - finalizing music for Vitalia and making some new beats for time spent at InterMense.
Somewhere around the 18th, we’ll be moving our focus back to art - creating new characters, backgrounds, CGs, and expressions for Chapter 3.
We hope to release the beta version of Chapter 3 by the end of the month!
We also plan to open late-backing and pre-order options within the next week.

As always, thank you for all your support! We can't wait to share this story with you!

Major Demo Update

DavidMaletz — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 17:04:30 +0000

Our Kickstarter was a success, and we have just released version 0.2.06 of the Demo, which you can download and play here:

This major update includes the following changes:

Many editing passes to improve the pacing and flow of the story. Scenes have been cut, re-arranged and added, and we feel that the story is much stronger and more concise now! We also cut the prologue, as it wasn’t immediately relevant, and was confusing to many readers. The prologue sequence will now appear later in the game.

A new MMO scene we added - it helps set up the start now that the prologue has been removed.

Added new art to several scenes to help bring them to life, and show instead of tell.
Added more character art to make the characters more expressive.
Removed the character glow on speaking, and replaced it with some scaling and darkening which relates who is currently speaking without feeling out of place. We’ve also done some minor improvements to the UI (although this is still an alpha version - more UI fixes will be coming).
Chase, our composer, composed the Full Realms theme (the VRMMO that Lilya plays).

Mainframe Loop - Indie DB
Added a login screen for Full Realms.

The demo (chapter one) isn’t completely done - we still have some placeholder assets to replace and more music/sound effects to add. But, it’s starting to feel more polished and we are very pleased with the pacing! Chapter one is the first thing players experience, so we want to make sure it’s very exciting and interesting.

As always, many of these changes have been thanks to awesome player feedback! If you play through the demo and have any thoughts for us, please don’t hesitate to share it in a comment here or via our google feedback survey!

We are now forging ahead and focusing on chapter two - look forward to more updates as development progresses!

Lilya is celebrating the success of the Kickstarter and our progress towards completing the game!

Announcing ＜/reality＞

DavidMaletz — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 16:56:16 +0000

Early Trailer - Indie DB

Supernovas blaze in the night sky and major natural disasters are commonplace,

but the gaming world is abuzz over a revolutionary virtual reality console.

The Penta, developed by InterMense founder Jacob Lessard,

promises a direct, neural connection more “real” than reality itself.

But what does it truly mean for something to be real?

is a philosophical sci-fi/fantasy visual novel told from two perspectives, with a focus on player choices and character development (only light, optional romance). We started writing the story for the game in July, and plan to release the full game early next year.

We've also just released the early alpha demo! We've been working hard to get to this point, and it feels great to have made it to this milestone. If you want to try the game out, you can play the early demo here:

I hope you will try the demo! Please send us any feedback you have!

We still have a long way to go, but we’re determined to share this story with the world.