Hey humans,

For anyone who missed it, Jonas wrote an explanation of where work on The Council of Crows currently stands. It’s probably going to continue being a bit quiet around here, because the whole team is really busy contributing to that project. Once that is over, the website will kick back into gear with loads of new stories and other exciting things. It’s just, you know, the crows are so bloody demanding, they want their story to be absolutely accurate.

I don’t like them, they’re too devious and grim and they keep trying to steal my food.

Yours truly,

Julian the Announcement Fox

This mysterious message was found in a bottle that smelled of mushrooms:

The folders are bursting with content.

The files are running over with data.

The game is so big. We had to buy more paper. More crayons. More cats.

It’s so unexpected. So crazy. So argh.

We have to finish it or it will explode.

Send help.

Damn, time in our world is even weirder than in the Lands of Dream. I told Julian the Announcement Fox that I wanted to keep the site updated every week, because there are so many stories to tell, but then we had to get the whole Lands of Dream to help us with making some changes so we can actually tell those stories, and we went to some big mountains, and there was a man who sold sandwiches to boat people, and… uh, I lost track.

Anyway, a veritable explosion of stories is coming your way, so when it arrives, we’ll really need your help to keep them evenly spread out over the internet.

I guess these are days of wandering – in every sense of the word. Even my friends Jonas and Verena are moving out of their old home, so they can properly dedicate themselves to finishing The Council of Crows. How strange. But perhaps it’s appropriate to share another Wanderer’s Tale with you, one written by the great adventurer Lord Dunsany. It’s short, but if there’s ever been a better description of what Lord Urizen and his Great Machine have done to the Lands of Dream, I haven’t seen it.

Read it here: What We Have Come To.

More news soon, including new stories from the Lands of Dream and the release date of The Council of Crows.

Yours truly,

Julian the Announcement Fox

One of our updates has been eaten by a Potato-Faced Website Muncher, one of the most dangerous animals of the internet. We’re pretty sure it’s gone now (it hid for a while in one of the subfolders), but that doesn’t mean it’s not coming back, and it may well still be in one of the surrounding websites.

If you notice any potential signs of a netovore (missing pixels, absence of updates, broken images, strange word scrambles, HTML-scented guano) please contact the Oneiropolis University Department of Hazardous Netbeasts immediately. They will send someone to capture the creature and release it in the interweb jungles of Epsilon Robertani, Bob the Spider’s artificial planet.

We finally present another extract from Jorrum Dooga’s long-delayed Book of Likely Facts:

For centuries now, humans have been asking dogs one question: who’s a good boy? Over and over they interrogate this bizarre conundrum, the answer remaining elusive. Until now.

Dog scientists working at Oneiropolis University have successfully used the Colossal Woof-Woof Collider to discover the solution to this mysterious puzzle. Who’s a good boy? We finally know: an 18th-century dog called Fishnose, born on a ship crossing the Atlantic and raised in a small village on the Namibian coast, who is now thought to reside in Billion Toad City. Cat scientists from Gatopolis have provided data that confirms this finding, although they claim that “good” is an overrated and probably pseudoscientific concept and that dogs are smelly.

Although this breakthrough has been hailed around the world, it is by no means the end of the investigation. An even more mysterious question remains, after all. We may know the answer – but why was anyone asking the question in the first place?

Fascinating, isn’t it? We hope to feature more extracts from this marvellous book soon, and we also hope that Jorrum will finally understand the meaning of the word “soon” – which is, as we found out, missing from his Fractional Dictionary of Possible S-Words.

Hi there,

Please excuse a brief pause in the updates while we deal with an infestation of Melancholic Mould. It started in the fridge, you see, in a pair of lemons, but now it’s spread all over the place and just moans and moans and won’t shut up. It’s irritating and depressing and we’re working on having it moved to a more appropriate environment.

(Otherwise things are fine, don’t worry.)

Apologies,

Julian the Announcement Fox

Being a fox, I don’t really understand some aspects of human culture yet. Sometimes you call portals to other dimensions “games”, and you also have a thing called… money? That you exchange for goods, if I understand correctly? The mushrooms keep telling me about it but I’m not sure I believe everything they say.

Anyway, the magical portal known as The Sea Will Claim Everything is now available via your world’s strange steam-powered technology! My friend Jonas has written a whole thing about it, though it’s written in that weird PR-speak he sometimes uses for his job, where he pretends to be a writer.

The Sea Will Claim Everything is now on Steam.

The Council of Crows is now on Steam Greenlight.

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You can also get The Sea Will Claim Everything via the Humble widget on its Lands of Dream page.

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We’ve been working on the Lands of Dream for, what, a decade now? I’m not good at doing the whole “selling yourself” thing, but I’m quite proud of what we’ve created. It’s a world, a strange and interesting and unique world with a life all of its own. It is rich in themes and imagery, deeply interconnected to literature and poetry, and full of shockingly daft jokes. And it’s not just games, it’s also the Oneiropolis Compendium and the children’s book and even the website itself, all part of this huge tapestry of stories.

I think it’s some of my best writing, but none of it would have been possible without my collaborators. Verena Kyratzes not only draws the graphics, she’s also an equal partner in the design process, coming up with all kinds of ingenious ideas. Helen Trevillion created amazing music for the first few games, bringing out the grace and beauty I wanted the Lands of Dream to have despite all the silliness. I didn’t think anyone could have kept the spirit of that music alive, but Chris Christodoulou has done so and gone even further, and his scores elevate everything we do.

We’re all extremely grateful to our kind and patient fans, who have supported us over the years even as we sometimes take ages to finish anything. A habit we are now trying to break by making some changes in our lives.

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If you would like to support our games, the best thing you can do right now – apart from buying them, or buying copies for your friends, relatives, and/or enemies – is to write reviews on Steam. What we’re particularly keen on is reviews that explain why you enjoyed The Sea Will Claim Everything. It’s a strange game, after all, and one of our biggest challenges is just getting people to give it a go. Any positive review is hugely appreciated, of course, but what would be particularly brilliant would be reviews that are useful to other players, helping them to make up their minds about whether this is their sort of thing. Thanks!

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Folks who’ve already bought the game: see the previous post. We’re working on getting Steam keys to you, although in a few cases it may take a few more days, depending on factors beyond our control. You’ll definitely get them sooner or later!

Some of you may also end up getting more than one key. Do us a favour and give it to a friend who might enjoy the game. Word of mouth is a big deal.

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No doubt we are in for a whole bunch of confusion, chaos, and tech support. But we’ll try to do our best. If there’s a problem, get in touch and we’ll see what we can do. And most importantly of all, enjoy your time in the Lands of Dream.

Does that make sense to you? Jonas tells me it will, and I trust him, even though he’s big and hairy and reminds me of a fish I once knew.

Enjoy!

Yours truly,

Julian the Announcement Fox