"'Honneur et Humanité', remember?"
OK, OK, Spencer doesn't have to be nice - that's the whole 'roleplay' thing I guess - but when I play him he is. Because I am pathologically unable to play horrible characters without feeling really terrible. But soon, some of you will get to play him however you want! The first pre-alpha build of Travelling At Night will be available to a select few testers at the end of November or early December. AK finished writing the core narrative for the first part of the game last week, and you'll have the full run of the Sanitarium Aujourd'hui. Thank you to everyone who signed up to test: we'll pick 20-30 people at random and get in touch nearer the time if you're one of them.
I thought this would be a good time to (re)introduce your (tbc) three possible companions throughout the game. You'll only be able to recruit the first, Vincent, in this pre-alpha, but will be able to swap him out for Lalla Chaima or Corso Reverte later on.
Vincent and Chaima both have two outfits (Vincent sports the Sanitariuam Aujourd'hui uniform, then changes into his own clothes; Chaima wears her own clothes first, but changes into a theatrical Berber outfit when she's performing at the Rosa Mundi). The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that both of them have had a makeover since you first saw them, as I wanted their respective Algerian and Moroccan roots to show more clearly. But I haven't touched a hair on lovely Corso's head partly because a) Adrien drew him and b) he's perfect. The key thing to know is Vincent and Chaima are exes (Chaima: 'I do not recall this man at all. At all.') and this means there is an extremely balanced and healthy relationship between them now, especially because Chaima's Rosa Mundi performance is her throwing knives and Vincent is definitely very happy to be there when she does.
We also have some additional characters you've not officially met yet - whom I've ingeniously dubbed The Blondies:
Meet Mathis, Vincent's laconic colleague at the Sanitarium with a past he's not thrilled for you to find out about. Then there's Maître Argant, representative of a certain power transmarine, with unclear intentions and exquisite tailoring. The next you saw in Dream form in a Reddit post a while back: here is Nina, Witch of Lagasse, in all her glory. And finally, taking her ease, is half-Canadian Bessy Bloom, jazz singer turned cook (to make ends meet) who never seems able to sit still...
You'll meet Vincent, Mathis and Bessy in the pre-alpha, but will have to wait for the others. In the meantime, though, we can share the second floor of the Sanitarium where you'll rootle about in this build in November/December. There's one place you're not allowed to see yet, but here's what the Suppression Bureau are happy to show:
The upstairs is a place for crafting (note the Verdant and Holy Places - with one other opportunity hidden beneath the Suppression Bureau's censored section), dressing (note your gigantic wardrobe) and sleeping. Your room's the middle on the left, decorated with some slightly troll-y touches by Dr Aubière. No prizes for guessing which is the room used by Rodia - the Greek singer-patriot rendered stationary by the Plague of Leaves - but many points if you figured that the largest, plushest room in the bottom right corner is Strathcoyne's, because of course it is. Please make sure to set your alarm for the middle of the night so you can sneak into people's rooms and see him sleep. Creepy? Yes - I told you you didn't have to be nice! But also rewarding because you get to see Strathcoyne look cute:
I leave you with a rapid-fire burst of smol but significant news:
Japanese localisation for BOOK OF HOURS now has a launch date and that launch date is Thursday 13th November;
French and Spanish localisations for Cultist Simulator's mobile port (App Store / Google Play) are still expected this year, but we are at the mercy of our mobile publisher Playdigious on this one;
AK and I are on holiday (!!!) next week (LAZY DEVS) so please forgive us if we are quieter than usual, briefly.
For now, happy Halloween. May the Watchman light your way at this most pervious time of the year.