Hi all,

As this website’s official Announcement Fox, I am pleased to announce that The Fabulous Screech and The Sea Will Claim Everything have both taken first place in their respective categories in the Best of Casual Gameplay 2012 awards. This makes me happy, and makes up for the fact that Jonas is being a lazy bum (or sick with a jaw problem, if you want to use different words) and hasn’t posted the new Wanderers’ Tale yet. But still! Awards! Isn’t this nice?

I’d tell you that Screech is really happy and grateful, but ever since his show won the Katsouli’s Choice award a couple of years ago he considers all human praise to be beneath his notice. You know how cats are.

Love to all,

Julian

It was my intent to post a different tale this week, but recent events have brought the story of Chu-bu and Sheemish to mind. It is a story worth remembering.

Hi,

Julian the Announcement Fox here again. Jonas just posted this on his site:

So the time has come again for the Best of Casual Gameplay awards. These awards are voted for by the public, so winning one last time for The Book of Living Magic was quite meaningful to me. This time I have more than one nomination – as a matter of fact, four out of five games I made in 2012 are nominated. That’s rather awesome, isn’t it?

Anyway, it would be highly appreciated if you went and voted! You can vote once per day until the 23rd.

(Arcadia: A Pastoral Tale and The Fabulous Screech are under Interactive Art or Experimental, Traitor is under Shooter and The Sea Will Claim Everything is under Narrative. But please do vote in the other categories as well.)

The competition this year is fierce – so many excellent games – and I don’t actually expect to win anything, but if you enjoyed these games, why not throw some love their way?

Thanks.

I don’t know why the people of your world insist on calling your transdimensional portals “games”, but do go vote. I’d love to have another award for my den.

– Julian

Rarely did that troubled, brilliant man dream as brightly as when he dreamt of Celephaïs. If you have visited the Lands of Dream via the windows that I helped create, you will have found echoes of this dream; you will have heard, even if you do not remember it, of the Valley of Ooth-Nargai and the Cerenarian Sea.

Young Howard, incidentally, much later learned to let go of the hateful illusions that mar some of his writings, and became a friend of famed magician/inventor Old Man Bill.

It is said that Samuel Taylor Coleridge did not understand the importance of his vision of Xanadu until, more than thirty years after setting it down, he came to Oneiropolis and met the mighty Khan himself. A great adventure then followed; but that is too long a story to be told here. For those of you in our world, however, who are intimidated by the pronouncements of the critics (or even worse, for those who are in thrall to them), I direct you to this collection of amusing historical anecdotes.

“As to ‘Kubla Khan’, and the ‘Pains of Sleep’, we can only regret the publication of them, as affording a proof that the Author over-rates the importance of his name.”
– Josiah Conder

Few remember Josiah Conder now (except for his descendants, the ghoulish creatures known as the Commenters Below Newspaper Articles), but Coleridge’s vision of Kubla Khan inspires still.

Once again the season has come around in which people of vastly different ideologies, personal outlooks and religious denominations gather together to worship a magical tree. We do not know why this is done, but believe that in all likelihood it is a tradition dating back to the days of the Ents. And so, in the name of blessed Yavanna, we are selling The Sea Will Claim Everything at a discount price of 50% off!

It’s the biggest game in the surreal and wonderful Lands of Dream, it sports one of the best soundtracks we’ve ever encountered and unique visuals that wouldn’t feel out of place in a children’s book, it tells a story that will make you proud of gaming, it features dozens of odd characters, it’s huge, it’s got impressive walls of text and it even features two of the smartest puzzles we’ve encountered, but these are not the reasons you should play The Sea Will Claim Everything. No. You should play this game because it can actually help you become a better person.
– IndieGames.com (Top 12 Games of the Year)

And since gift-giving is a tradition associated with ent-worship, we remind you that philosophical games make great presents, especially for people you wish to confuse or befuddle.

So get it now! All hail Yavanna!

(Edit: The special offer is now over. Yavanna be with you.)

This is a poem. Many people these days appear to suffer poetophobia, or do not have the patience to read poems; others seem to believe that poems are a form exclusively reserved for the trite thoughts of adolescents. But it would be a great shame to disregard so many works of genius for such foolish reasons. So please read Ulysses; read it slowly, if at first it seems to be written in an unfamiliar tongue.

And make sure to utterly disregard the lunatic scholars who now claim that, contrary to all rhyme and reason, the poem is ironic. They are the saddest of Urizen’s minions, taking themselves so seriously that they cannot believe any great art to be serious. They are the same people who have convinced themselves that The Turn of the Screw cannot be a ghost story.

As for Ulysses himself, I once met him on the Isle of the Sun, and he seemed rather pleased with this poem.

Hi folks,

Julian the Announcement Fox here. I just wanted to let you know that you can win a free copy of The Sea Will Claim Everything over at The Advent of Indies. And, even more importantly, there is a new downloadable version of The Fabulous Screech available!

Yes indeed. Tell your friends!

Thanks for reading,

Julian