I don’t know if this is wise from a marketing standpoint, but I’ve decided to upload a copy of The Road to Underhome, so far only available as a PDF with downloads of The Sea Will Claim Everything, to the Lands of Dream website. I’m not sure why I’ve decided to do this – perhaps because it’s more likely to be read here, or because it just feels like it belongs on the site – but I think it’s the right choice. I was in a strange emotional state when I wrote it, and bits of it are a little rough, but it says things I needed to say, and provides insight into how and why a game like The Sea Will Claim Everything gets made.

Do note that it’s meant to be read by people who have finished the game, so give it a wide berth if you don’t want any spoilers at all or if this kind of text ruins the reality of the game for you.

The Sea Will Claim Everything is now available as part of the Indie Royale Lunar Bundle. Yay!

If you have any problems, please do get in touch.

Hi all,

Julian the Announcement Fox here. It’s been a bit quiet on the site, hasn’t it? Yeah. Sorry about that. You see, Jonas has been having some issues. Something to do with canals, apparently. And roots. I don’t know what he’s been doing, but it must involve rivers and plants. And apparently also some screaming, though I don’t know why.

Don’t worry, though, he’s not given up on the Lands of Dream. In fact, when not busy with roots and rivers, he’s been working with his editor on finishing a children’s book set in the Lands of Dream. It’s coming out very soon, actually – though it’s in Greek, so you may have to wait for a translation. Still. It’s a book! In the Lands of Dream! Exciting. One of my cousins is in it, apparently. Say hi if you see him.

I’ll try to get Jonas to update more often again.

Yours truly,

Julian the Announcement Fox

Reposted from Indiegogo:

I’ve been asked to clarify our stretch goals for Ithaka of the Clouds, so I’ve made a list. With numbers and stuff.

$13,500 – remake The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge

$14,000 – update The Book of Living Magic, add minor improvements to The Fabulous Screech

$15,000 – remake The Museum of Broken Memories

$20,000 – remake Phenomenon 32

$50,000 – remake The Fabulous Screech as FPS/RTS hybrid

$100,000 – remake Phenomenon 32 five times

$500,000 – build a house out of cream cheese

$1,000,000 – remake Call of Duty as Marxist text adventure

$25,000,000 – make a pretty good science fiction movie

$99,999,999 – build working replica of Babylon 5

$1,000,000,000 – buy tuna for cat

Enough people have gotten together and contributed money that a game about gay trolls based on the poetry of Kavafis is actually happening.

Seriously.

Wow.

I don’t know how many people are out there who want interactive storytelling rooted in literature and poetry and philosophy, with political undertones and bad puns… but there are enough.

Ithaka of the Clouds is a game that will exist.

We can’t thank you enough.

(Because nothing says “thoughtful, intelligent art” like a lolcat. Right?)

Also: read about stretch goals.

Check out this wonderful video with our intelligent, kind, erudite and entirely real producer, Joseph Kyranzes.

(Who is not fake. At all. Really.)

The first few days of the campaign have been amazing. We freaked out a little when Paypal suddenly stopped processing contributions for almost a day (just our luck), but once everything was fixed we saw that quite a few people were actually supporting us. It’s slowed down now, but we’ve already reached more than $7000! Which is amazing. Seriously. Wow. Thank you. THANK YOU!

We’ve also made it into the press – RPS, PC Gamer, Adventure Gamers, IndieGames.com, even Eurogamer. At this point it looks like Ithaka is getting more attention than The Sea Will Claim Everything!

It’s still a long way to reaching our goal, though, and we could really use your support. Not just in the form of contributions, but also in spreading the word. There are a lot of websites out there that have never heard of the Lands of Dream, or that can’t imagine that games like these could have fans. There are also many people who might hugely enjoy Ithaka of the Clouds, but who don’t generally think of themselves as gamers and who normally would never hear about a project like this one. You can do a lot to help make Ithaka happen by tweeting about it, sharing links on Facebook, and letting your favourite sites that haven’t covered it know that it exists. Don’t spam anyone, but retweet/share/submit buttons do exist for a reason. (They do, right? Because otherwise I may have been doing it all wrong…)

We’d like to do a video giving you a bit more information about the various perks, but before we do: does anyone have any questions? We’ll gladly answer them, in the comments or in the video. We’ve put a lot of care into making each of these perks as cool and unique as possible, because we really don’t want to feel like we’re ripping you off. If you’re going to pay a lot of money, you should at least get something special.

We will, of course, also answer questions not related to the perks! Several people have asked when the game is set, for example, to which the answer is “a long time before any of the other games”. So you will be returning to many of the locations you’ve seen before, but they will be quite different.

Ah, I’m rambling again. Do feel free to ask if there’s anything you want to know, and see you in the next update.