Great news, everyone! ＜/reality＞ is now live on Steam! And it’s 15% off until the 25th!

We hope you’re as excited as we are!

＜/reality＞ will also be available on Itch.io and via Humble shortly - so look out for that announcement soon!

And if you haven’t yet, this is the perfect time to check out the updated free Demo, over on Itch.io.

Please help us spread the word about the launch! And if you already have the game in hand, please share your screenshots and reactions using the hashtag #RealityVN on social media! We’d love to hear what you think!

Hey everyone! We released the ＜/reality＞ beta of Book 3 - the final part of the story - via Steam last night, for beta-access backers. And, there are only 4 days left until the official full release! We hope you’re getting as excited as we are! Please check out our Coming-soon Steam page and add the game to your Wish list if you’d like a reminder upon release!

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!

Here are a few [mostly] spoiler-free screenshots from Book 3:

^ In more ways than one…? o.o

^ But is it good? That’s the question.

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.

Stretch Goal Post-Launch Update

Unfortunately we haven’t had time to add in all the extra CGs and art for the stretch goal, and we didn’t want to postpone the launch date again. Instead, we are planning to release an update in mid-May with all of the extra art (along with some other non-essential updates and polish). The game that will be released on April 18th is a full and complete experience that we’re proud of, but if you want a little extra art and prettiness, you can wait for the May update - we’ll leave that up to you!

Backer Rewards

Because of the crunch to release on time, we will be sending out all the Kickstarter backer rewards (besides the game itself) post-launch. Digital copies of the game (DRM-Free + Steam) will be sent out via HumbleBundle on April 18th, and all other rewards will be sent out within the following month.

Spread the Word!

As ever, thank you for all your support, and for coming this far with us! This has been an amazing journey. All your help spreading the word has been greatly appreciated - please keep at it - on social media and beyond - as launch nears. Let’s build some hype! And once you have the game in hand, please share your screenshots and reactions using the hashtag #RealityVN! We can’t wait to hear what you think!

Are you ready to dive into an unreal adventure? Only 13 days until launch!

The </reality> Launch Trailer is live! Take a look and let us know what you think!

And, the </reality> Steam Store Page has been updated with the new trailer and fresh new screenshots! Launch is just under 3 weeks away now, folks! Woah! It’s getting real around here (pun intended).

Don’t forget to add the game to your Steam Wishlist if you’d like a reminder upon release!

Meanwhile, we are furiously working to complete the last of the story revisions and final touches needed before testing and release.

As always, we’re so grateful for all of your help spreading the word about the project! Here are some links to make your life easier:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fancyfishgames Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FancyFishGames/ Homepage (pre-orders open!): http://fancyfishgames.com/reality/ Itch.io (demo): https://fancyfishgames.itch.io/reality

Welcome to Round 3 of our EVN demo reading group!

Last week, we enjoyed the dramatic Falconers: Moonlight demo. Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Live Let’s Read and/or submitted feedback! The live reading was well attended, and together we learned some very important things. Now we know that going “into the bush” is most certainly a euphemism, Nai makes an excellent whisky-toting obaa-san, and things really should be measured relative to nipple height. This session was recorded, so if you want to hear our extremely professional™ voice acting skills, check out the youtube video linked at the end of this post.

This week, we will be reading the demo of ＜/reality＞, a near-future sci-fi about a withdrawn VR nerd who signs up to test a new neural device, but ends up getting into much more than she bargained for.

Please join us if you can!

Download the demo here

＜/reality＞ Reading Schedule

Live Let’s Read (on Discord): Sunday March 26th, 8PM GMT/4PM EST/1PM PST

Read by/feedback due by: Tuesday March 28th (send your feedback to: [email protected])

Check out the Schedule to see what we’ll be reading in the future, or the About page for more info.

The goal of this activity is to provide feedback to EVN developers on projects currently in development, and also have some fun as readers, by checking out things we may not have thought to try otherwise.

There’s only a month left until we release </reality>, 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.

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.

We have released Book 2 of </reality> to Beta-access backers (chapters 4-6)! Book 2 is titled “Contact,” and it is where things start getting strange in </reality>, and the first major twist is revealed. In these chapters 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.

In other news, we launched a coming soon page on Steam for </reality>. 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 some major edits we decided to do the the ending. 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.

Chase (our composer) has continued to send us tracks and flesh out the soundscape of </reality>. We will probably post an update to the Demo (chapter 1) soon with all of the new tracks (so it is more varied and less repetitive), but for now you can listen to a preview of Ben’s Theme.

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 - the final book - and finish editing it. We also have a number of CGs that  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.

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

We’re excited to share this shiny new promotional art for </reality>! What do you think of it?

In other news, the </reality> Steam page is now live! We are getting organized and ready for release next month.

We’re also working hard on Book 2 (chapters 4-6), which we still hope to be able to release to beta-access folks by the end of the month.

We’re a few days late, but Chapter 3 of </reality> is finally ready for beta-access backers to enjoy! Chapter 3 is the end of the first “book” of the game (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, and Chapter 3 is now released!

We also opened a late-backing pre-order system on our website (which has a beta access option that will get you chapters 1-3 immediately): http://fancyfishgames.com/reality/. So, please check that out and share, if you missed the Kickstarter campaign, or want to help us spread the word!

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

http://www.indiedb.com/games/reality1/videos

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: </reality> Beta Demo.

If you’ve played the demo and have feelings about it, please don’t hesitate to use our handy feedback survey!

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.

It’s an exciting time for us, as the full story is finally coming together. Thank you for all your support, likes, reblogs, and encouragement, as we make this happen! We will continue to share development updates, so see you next time!

The </reality> Kickstarter campaign ended just about a month ago now. But if you missed it, not to worry! </reality> now has a brand-new, shiny, official website! And it offers pre-order/late backing options via paypal!

Check it out right here: http://fancyfishgames.com/reality/

Please help us spread the word! For those who aren’t able to use Kickstarter, or were short on cash during the campaign due to the impending holiday season, this will be exciting news!

We will probably be fairly quiet over the next few weeks as we continue to focus on script editing, as opposed to art, which is easier to share. To tide you over, enjoy these fun gifs featuring some new character expressions:

Screenshots from the chapter 2 (beta) of </reality>!

Happy 2017, Tumblr! 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: http://www.indiedb.com/games/reality1/downloads/reality-alpha-demo-0163

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).

New sound effects and transitions/visual effects were added.

January Plans

We are looking forward to making a great deal of progress on </reality> 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.

We have just released version 0.2.06 of the </reality> Demo, which you can download and play here.

This 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.

New art to help bring some scenes to life, and show instead of tell.

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).

Added the updated Full Realms VRMMO music track to replace the old, placeholder one.

Added a login screen for Full Realms.

Check out more images/gifs from the new demo in our Kickstarter update!

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 them via our google feedback survey!

Yesterday, our kickstarter ended with $6,248 pledged from 194 wonderful backers! We reached both our main goal and our first stretch goal, so we’ll be adding more character poses/expressions, more CGs, more ending panels, more music tracks, and more sound effects! We’ve already begun to identify places that could really benefit from additional CGs, and what expressions would add life to the game!

What happens next?

Over the next few days, we will be finishing a major overhaul to Chapter 1 (the demo). We’ll share a link to download the update when it is done! We’ll also be sending out kickstarter surveys to gather the information we need for reward fulfillment.

Over the next few weeks, we will be working on Chapter 2, and plan to share it with beta-access backers ($35+). They will be given access to our development forums and in-progress builds once Chapter 2 is in a shareable state.

Rewards will be fulfilled as soon as they are ready, with the game itself scheduled to release March 2017 (and we plan to have all rewards fulfilled by then)!

We’ll be keeping all our backers up to date with development progress through kickstarter updates! We’ll also have backer-only updates for sharing some of the new art and music from the stretch goal.

In January, we plan to release a pre-order/late backing system for the game. This will give you a chance to add additional rewards to your pledge or order additional copies of the game!

Thank you again to everyone who helped make this kickstarter a success! Please let us know if you have any questions, and I hope you’re looking forward to the release of </reality> as much as we are!

</reality> is 100% funded on Kickstarter! We are so excited!!! Woohoo!

Thank you to all our backers! And thank you to everyone on Tumblr who reblogged us and helped us spread the word about the campaign. You are all awesome!!

Since we passed 100%, we figure now is a good time to reveal our stretch goals (although, with less than 40 hours left, it’d be a stretch to reach them)!

$6,000 - Additional art and music

At this funding level, we will upgrade our art and music goals - we’ll be able to make more character poses/expressions, more CGs, more ending panels, more music tracks, and more sound effects.

$7,000 - Additional story routes

At this level, we will be able to add some major alternate story routes, making your choices even more impactful. This stretch goal includes additional art and CGs for those routes.

$8,000 - Partial voice acting

If we hit this goal, we will be able to hire voice actors to help bring the </reality> characters to life!

Honestly, we’re stunned by everyone’s amazing response to this project - and so grateful we made our base goal. Already, we plan to make the most awesome game we can, but if you want to help us push for stretch goals, there’s always room for improvement. So, please be sure to continue sharing the project until the end!

We are 95% funded and just 48 hours from the end of the Kickstarter campaign! We only need to raise $201 more to succeed. Please share and back if you can!

It’s been a roller coaster of a campaign, but we are almost to the end. Can we make it?? We are feeling optimistic!

In terms of development, thanks to lots of insightful player feedback, we have begun a large, ruthless editing pass on Chapter 1 (the demo). We’ve trimmed it, rearranged it, and focused it, to create a better “hook” and keep the pacing exciting. These changes are feeling really good so far - we can’t wait to share the updated demo with you! If you have more feedback, please send it our way.

We’re still working on Chapter 2 as well, and hopefully within a few weeks we will have an early draft of that to share with Beta-access backers.

^ (11 of the 14 characters in </reality>)

There are only 4 days left until the end of the ＜/reality＞ Kickstarter campaign! We are now at 73% funded - can we make it??

We’ve had several questions about romance in ＜/reality＞, so today we are sharing a little about that - and a work-in-progress CG of Lilya and Ben!

Relationships in ＜/reality＞ are entirely optional and driven by player choice, and can be pursued from either Lilya’s or Jacob’s perspective (who each have two romance options). There are several different types of outcomes for each pairing. Similarly, your choices will affect Lilya and Jacob’s relationships with non-romance-able characters such as friends and family members.

In other news, ＜/reality＞ was featured in an article on NerdybutFlirty!

And, our Thunderclap now has 86 people signed up! Can we reach 100 in the next 3 days? If you’re not familiar, Thunderclap is a new way to amplify a message about a project or cause by saying it together. It will simply post the message you sign up for on your behalf at the prescribed time. This will help us get the word out about ＜/reality＞ as we near the final hours of the Kickstarter.