This sprint’s title comes from my favourite literary lady, Gwendolen Harleth in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. That’s a lot of names to open this blog with, but we did a lot of things, sooooo…

The big aim for this sprint was to get us ready for the EXPLORER’S BUILD, releasing on Monday! For which, I am delighted to say, we NOW ARE READY! Full patch notes and a lot of flag waving will occur on the day, so I’ll gloss over the details for now. Suffice to say, you’ll find expeditions, a smorgasbord of locations to explore, some unimpressed guardians of said locations, new tomes, and… what was it again? Oh yeah. THE HOUSE.

AK’s spent the majority of this sprint writing and designing the new content in the Explorer’s Build, so more on that tomorrow. The headline update here is really that functional Mansus (???), into which you can Dream yourself if you have lots of bravery and little sense. Let it be noted that due to half of Weather Factory’s intense arachnophobia, anyone entering the House through the Spider Door will be sent straight to the cupboard.

We put a bunch of new art in the game this sprint from Clockwork Cuckoo, Sarah and myself. We updated our cultist icons, added placeholder and some unique location icons ready for the Explorer’s Build, new scrolls and tomes, some additional ingredients, and revamped the way we depict foreign language and translated books. We also f ~ i ~ n ~ a ~ l ~ l ~ y revamped our three legacy icons, so look out for new Aspirant, BYT and Physician icons, too.

(Because this is my blog and I can, I also want to give a special shout-out to the new Guardian aspect icon. He is so tuff but also so smol. ♥)

Earlier this week we posted some updated visuals from AK’s in-fiction text: Hoare’s Hints to Travellers in Italy, fragments from the notebooks of ‘Parsival’, and Teresa’s letter to her beloved, from the remote port of Noon. Take a look here! Sarah, meanwhile, finished off two new Hours cards for us: the ELEGIAST and the HORNED-AXE. AK is particularly partial to the ELEGIAST; I am particularly moved by the AXE. Believers, CHOOSE YOUR SIDE!

This sprint we’ve also been prepping for a number of talks in the near future. BECAUSE MAKING A GAME WAS NOT HARD ENOUGH. We’re demoing at EGX Rezzed next weekend (Friday – Sunday, at the Tentacle Collective! Look out for gigantic waving green things), and AK’s giving a talk on the Sunday at 1PM about Apocalypse and Yearning. The weekend after that, we’re both off to Dubrovnik to speak at Reboot Develop. And then, at last, we have a ‘weekend’.

The main point of this obviously is that I got to spend some money on stickers. So come find us at Rezzed to Choose Ur Cult, be up for a chance to win an Orchid Transfiguration USB with a Perpetual Edition Steam key on it (another one, if you’re a Disciple-level backer or higher), eat colour-coded bon-bons, and marvel at our prestigious Cultist Simulator/Weather Factory branded hoodies, designed by someone with little understanding of colour, e.g. me.

Something I’m really excited about that we did this sprint – apart from, y’know, getting ourselves ready for our final large content drop, which is a feat for BABIES – is that we finished our launch trailer! Working with the delightful Vanessa Williams who made our original ‘Bring the Dawn’ announce trailer, we’ve come up with 1:10s of timer-orientated mystery, intrigue and a great drum section at 40s in. The trailer should be published places from Wednesday onwards, so look out for it then. Coax and/or threaten your acquaintances to watch it for an improved % chance not to spawn into the Mansus on the Ascent of Knives.

I leave you with news that I’ve been picked as one of Code First: Girl’s ‘Ones to Watch’ (?), and that Sonja will be receiving a surprise Weather Factory hoodie of her own when they arrive, so you may expect exuberant eight-year-old photos next sprint blog. This is the sort of #premium #content you’re all here for, right?

Now, tick tock until the Explorer’s release…

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