We're very glad to announce that Echoes is now available!

Immerse yourself in an intriguing universe where whodunit meets cosmic horror, and follow a thrilling investigation in a seemingly quiet town in the American Northwest. Every lie you uncover conceals an increasingly horrifying truth.

Can you solve the mystery without getting lost in the maze of madness?

Take advantage of the 15% launch discount right now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1775220/Echoes/

And if you already possess one (or several) Nova-box games, you can complete your collection with an extra 10% off with this link:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

Echoes is a remake of our very first narrative game.
For those of you who remember the original version, thank you so much for still being here, over ten years later! We sincerely hope you enjoy this vastly improved version of Echoes.

Yours,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

I know we promised you more regular updates, but I'm afraid March came and went with no news from us due to Nico being very busy with his teaching gigs and I (Geoffroy) battling a nasty pulmonary infection.

So, here we are, fashionably late, but bearing important news, as you'll discover if you keep on scrolling towards the bottom end of this digital missive.


A couple of weeks ago, we had the joy of going to Angoulême for the second edition of the Spawn festival, which showcases indie games that are either local to Nouvelle-Aquitaine, eco-responsible, progressive, or all of the above, which, as you can imagine, is right up our alley.

As always, the hospitality of our peers from Angoulême was incredible, we had such a great time!

A wild writer is hiding somewhere in the picture, can you spot him?
Photo credit: Capucine Chauffourier.


The name "Echoes" may sound familiar to the ears of our most devoted readers, since it was indeed the first game we ever released as an independent studio, even before Along the Edge, back in 2013. Being released in the very early days of the iPhone AppStore, we were a bit sad to see this piece our history slowly withering away, sadly destined to one day become completely incompatible with the current version of the Apple hardware and software.

It ended bothering us so much that, I (Geoffroy) started working on this side project on and off from September 2021, having a little bit of time to spare during the production of End of Lines. Fortunately, we had the foresight to prepare for an eventual PC release, so we already had high-resolution visual assets at hand. Less fortunately, the scripts for the game were completely incompatible after a decade of evolution of "Teckel", our in-house narrative game engine.

Also, diving back into the project, we quickly realized the gigantic gap of quality between our first attempt at a narrative game and our later, very obviously superior, work. So, we decided that we might as well take this opportunity to do justice to these characters we loved, and I re-wrote the totality of the text, dialogs, and choices from the ground up, keeping only the twists and turns of the original story (as imagined by Frédéric "Ekmule" Lignac) as a guideline.

After the release of End of Lines last year, Nico retouched the illustrations that were in the most dire need of an upgrade, and we asked our friends and regular collaborators Camille and Julien from Illustrason to expand and remaster the soundtrack and the sound effects of the game for good measure. As usual, Rachel translated this new version of the text into English and Alix made sure everything was free of any typos or mistakes.

That brings us to today, proud and ready to unveil this heavily remade edition of Echoes. If you want learn more about the game, please, have a look at our Steam page, and please consider adding it to your wishlist, as an offering to the mighty algorithm gods, if nothing else. We'll appreciate it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1775220/Echoes/

The game is set to release soon (probably sooner than you think) for PC, Mac, Linux and the Nintendo Switch.
As always, the game has been tested and optimized for the Steam Deck or any potato capable of running Windows 10 (as it is now required to launch Steam).


As you can imagine, Echoes has been taking up most of our attention recently, but we're also making progress on our next game. Stay tuned for more on that front soon.


To conclude, here's our traditional monthly illustration. This one shows the evolution of the art style of Echoes from one episode to the next, following and depicting the gradual degradation of the narrator's psyche, one of the most original  features of the game.

That’s all for now, and see you next month!

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

While we're secretly working on our upcoming release (you'll get a sneak peak at the end of this newsletter), let's talk a bit about carbon emissions.


Last year, Nova-box was one of the pilot studios in France to set up a tool for calculating greenhouse gas emissions for video games. This collaborative effort led to the deployment of the JYROS platform, now available to all.

We've been striving to make low-tech games for over ten years, and we're aware of our environmental impact, but we've always refrained from communicating about it, because we didn't have any figures to back up our intentions, however virtuous they may be. The cost of a personalized carbon footprint was unfortunately prohibitive for a small structure like ours.

We're delighted to now be able to share our figures with you:

Of course, we'd love to be able to compare these figures with the industry average, but it's difficult to find reliable, anonymized data at this stage. We'll be happy to update you when we have more data to share. Until then, we think we can agree that our consumption is indeed very low, and not at all representative of the cost of IT in general.

To find out more, we invite you to visit the Jyros website:
https://jyros-jeuvideo.com/
(The "resource" page contains numerous documents, guides and reports on the subject).


We're very glad to report that our next release has been submitted and validated by Steam. Hopefully, we'll be able to tell you a lot more soon.

In the meantime, here's the soundtrack cover of our mysterious next project (though our most faithful followers might already have figured out what we've been working on *wink wink*).

That’s all for now, and see you next month!

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.

Hello and Happy New Year 2024 everyone!

Spring is in the air, and the Nova-box premises are bursting with color and activity. The seasons just don't seem to count for anything anymore, do they?

We're delighted to be part of the Steam Storyteller's Festival again this year. You can catch End of Lines with 30% off this week alongside a great selection of narrative gems.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/

Last Sunday, France 3 broadcast a program about ecology in the video game industry. We were delighted to be invited to express our views on the subject.
You can watch the replay here[www.france.tv] (in French).

On a more Nova-box-focused note, Geoffroy took part in the "La culture du carry"  radio emission hosted by Julie Langlois on Radio Campus Besançon. You'll also hear some delightful musical extracts from Julien and Camille's work on Seers Isle, End of Lines and Across the Grooves.
The podcast is available here[campusbesancon.fr] (also in French).

As usual, we leave you with a mysterious screenshot of one of our current projects.

That’s all for now, and see you next month!

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

Best,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

Despite a very mild (and particularly rainy) month of December in Bordeaux, the Nova-box premises have quietly gone into winter mood as everyone prepares to join their loved ones for the end of the year. Desks and instruments have been prepared for this short (but necessary) period of hibernation.


We're delighted to announce that End of Lines was selected to be featured at the Dreamhack Beyond Indie 2023 Sales. This was a great opportunity to showcase our latest interactive graphic novel on Steam, from December 15th to 21st. End of Lines was on sale with 25% off for the occasion, but don't worry if you missed it since, right on the heels of this event, the Steam Winter Sale has just started.

It will be the last time you'll be able to get our titles at these attractive prices for a while. As always, there's our nifty "complete your collection" bundle for you to get an extra 10% off on our game you don't already own. The link is here below.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/


As you may have noticed, all Nova-box games have recently been updated. We've added support for “DualSense” controllers (PlayStation 5). We've also taken the opportunity to push some minor bug fixes to End of Lines and Across the Grooves. All of this is detailed in the most recent patch notes of each game.


It's a bit technical and you won't notice any difference on your end since our games are fully offline experiences, but we're pretty proud that Nova-box development servers are now managed locally, thanks to our friends at Zaka Services, a small company in Bordeaux to whom we entrust our data management.


Zaka Services are very much aligned with us on carbon reduction and sobriety measures. For example, they only use refurbished hardware for their servers.

Here's a link to their website (in French): https://www.zaka-services.com/


We're now fully committed to the pre-production of our next graphic novel, and can't wait to tell you all about it. We can't tell you much about it for now, but the story will revolve around a couple of iconic places. One of them is a strange cabaret tentatively called “The Outpost” (the name might change, but don't hesitate to tell us what you think of it).

Here's the first concept art of this whimsical albeit a tad creepy place.

That’s all for now, and see you next month!

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

Best,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Dear Friends,

here are the patch notes for v2.1.2 of Along the Edge:
— Dual Sense Gamepad support. Your PlayStation 5 gamepads should now work correctly both via USB and Bluetooth.
— Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor was disabled when playing on a touchscreen equipped Windows device.

Please note that our Twitch integration beta has been disabled. Unfortunately, Twitch completely changed its token system, rendering the feature unusable for the time being.

If you're interested in Twitch integration, please reach out to us, we will consider devoting some of humble resources to make it work again if there's enough demand.

Edit / Hotfix 12/15/2023 :
— Fixed a potentially progress breaking bug that could occur in Chapter 5 (December), when Daphné and Sophie enter the tower.

Thank you and kind regards,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

Let's talk about some nice events we've attended and the yearly Black Friday stuff.


Firstly, all Nova-box games will be on sale on Steam from November 21 to 28!
If you want to complete your collection, you can opt for the bundle for an extra 10% off plus the sale discount. The games you already own will be deducted from the price.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/


We attended the Hypermonde literary festival at Mérignac last month. Nova-box's text-based narrative games are always in the spotlight there and we appreciate this extraordinary opportunity to meet and greet numerous authors from all over the world.
Amongst my little discoveries this year, I was able to get dedicated copies of:

• Le Premier jour de paix by Elisa Beiram. An excellent futuristic novel. It’s a bit like End of Lines but with some brighter sides (warning: with no interactivity, you're in for an incredible rollercoaster ride).
• L'Empire s'effondre by Sébastien Coville. The "speculative fiction" genre is known to often present insightful, sometimes disturbing, reflections of reality. I particularly appreciate the intelligence and accessibility of this one.

As always, many thanks to Fabrice Carré and the team for this event, we had a excellent time again this year!


We were also present at the Game Conf in Angoulême, where we were able to meet many other independent game developers and attend the Game Cup 2023.

We had the pleasure of running into a number of people from the indie scene, including Modiiie, who had done a series of live plays of our games in French. Many thanks to her.


Julien Ponsoda, musician and composer from Illustrason, with whom we are blessed to work on all our productions, has just released a new album! You can discover his work here:

https://julien-ponsoda.fanlink.to/my-favorite-things"


While we continue to make progress on Nova-box's next narrative projects, I (Nico) am doing some illustrations for the fabulous project from our neighbors and friends at Manufacture43: City Ambulance: Rescue Express (C.A.R.E).

In particular, I worked on the portraits of the main protagonists: Jakub & Mishra.

Find out more on Steam and add the game to your wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2213710/City_Ambulance_Rescue_Express/

That’s all for now, and see you next month!

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

Best,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

This month, we're diving deep into the launch of End of Lines and its aftermath.

Our latest interactive graphic novel was released on May 25th, 2023, just a few days after Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and at the very moment the press was receiving advance copies of Street Fighter 6 and Diablo 4 with only a few days for them to complete their reviews before their embargo was lifted (spoiler alert: it didn't go well for us).

But let's start with the good news: we've had some very good feedback. We'd like to thank everyone who has supported us despite all the big releases coming one right after another this year.

Here are a few samples of the reviews the game received over the web and in the press:

• "If you like visual novel-style games, don't pass up End of Lines. It's really great!", yunicia.fr (18/20),
• "Moving play of impressions, sublime in its sense of detail.", Les Inrockuptibles,
• "End of Lines is an experience that dares to carry a difficult theme perfectly suited to the visual novel theme.", Canard PC (8/10),
• “I enjoyed End of Lines’ take on the consequences of neglecting the climate crisis, as shown via the intimate stories and daily struggles of individuals living those very consequences in the future. It’s a warning!”, Switchaboo (7/10),
• “End of Lines gets down to the nitty-gritty, naming those responsible for a coming catastrophe and showing the ecological and human consequences in the clearest terms. The result leaves nobody unscathed, and is as unsettling for its climatic anxieties as for its human dramas.”, The Pixel Post,
• "End of Lines is a remarkable game both in terms of storytelling and direction, taking on all the strengths of the developers' previous games.", Loutre Perfide for veuillezparlapresente.com,
• “End of Lines brings us a new visual novel in which we get a glimpse at a potential future that can hit us if we don’t act on the effects of climate change and global warming before it’s too late.”, PS4blog.net (9/10).

A big "thanks" too to the content creators who helped give our humble creation greater visibility.

Despite the good feedback, as you can imagine, the release of End of Lines was a bit of a disaster for the studio. The game was practically invisible on release and, as a result, to be honest, sales are clearly not up to expectations.

For example, the steam page has reached a plateau of 28 reviews over the past few weeks, which is very low. Even if the majority are positive, this is unfortunately not enough to sustain an indie game.

As a result, we've had to scale back our ambitions for future projects. We also had to (sadly) part ways with Julie, the wonderful artist who produced most of the backgrounds for End of Lines.

If you'd like to help us out, you can continue to spread the word about the game and share your opinion on the Steam page if you haven't already done so.

Naturally, we haven't given up at all. We're continuing to do our best to give End of Lines more visibility.

Our launch event at the Librairie du Basilic bookshop gave us the opportunity to unveil the game with a glorious public reading by our partner Alix, co-author and proofreader of End of Lines.

We hope to continue our collaboration with booksellers, thanks to a little booklet we've produced that we can leave on the shelves.

If you are a bookseller, or know any booksellers who might be interested in this project, please write to us.

On the technical side, a patch is on its way to correct a few bugs and rebalance variables. We've noticed that certain junctions are rarer than they should be.

For reasons we won't go into here, but I'm sure you'll understand, we've decided to stop using the social network formerly known as Twitter for our studio communications. It's a difficult decision, as for several years this platform was our main tool for talking about our productions and for engaging with our community.

As a result, we'll be publishing our newsletters much more regularly. We'd be very grateful if you could pass on the subscription link to those who might be interested in our news.

To interact with us, you can find us here:

• on Mastodon: @novabox@mastodon.gamedev.place[mastodon.gamedev.place]
• or on Bluesky (the account is handled by Geoffroy): https://bsky.app/profile/nova-box.com
• and why not my personal toot box? https://mastodon.art/@Nicofouque

While we're going through the trials and tribulations of releasing End of Lines, we've started to work on at least two projects that we're sure to announce shortly. In the meantime, here's a mysterious concept for one of them (we're keeping the other one exclusive to the subscribers of this newsletter — so, please subscribe!).

That’s all for now, and see you next month! (we really mean it this time).

And in the meantime, Seers Isle, Along the Edge, and Across the Grooves and End of Lines are available here on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15195/Novabox_Collection/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

Best,

Nico,
on behalf of the team.

Hello everyone!

It's official, after three years in the making, we're finally ready to release our next interactive graphic novel, End of Lines.

Continue reading for an abundance of details.


Mark your calendars: End of Lines will be available worldwide on PC/Mac/Linux via Steam and a selection of trustworthy online retailers across the Internet on Thursday, May 25th.

In this new interactive graphic novel, you'll be following a family trying to survive in a post climate meltdown Europe. To achieve that, you'll have to manage their resources and the people who travel alongside them, while, of course, making choices that will shape their journey across the continent.

In other words, we decided to explore one of the possible outcomes of an important contemporary issue in this game. Perhaps the greatest challenge of our time.

We really hope it will resonate with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_FP8IPv9hs

Of course. we have scheduled a release discount over on the Steam Store (If you haven't done so already, please be kind enough to add End of Lines to your wishlist — it really helps with discovery algorithms and will let you know when the game is out).

And for those who are wondering, well yes: the original soundtrack, which consists of nearly 2 hours of instrumental music and ambient sounds from the game, masterfully crafted by our friends Julien and Camille from Illustrason will be available as a DLC on Steam, as a downloadable album on Bandcamp, and on streaming platforms such as Spotify or Deezer.


The team will be at the Librairie du Basilic on Saturday, June 3rd from 2PM to 4PM (and possibly later). You'll be able to test the game, and meet and greet us. We're also planning a couple of surprises for the afternoon.

The Librarie du Basilic is a very nice place, specialized in speculative fiction and fantasy literature, with a great selection of books and lovely people who will happily point you towards your next favorite author.

And if you are itching to pay them a visit before the party, note that they've set up a demo of Seers Isle in the store. They also have some Steam keys for this game to sell from a limited run of beautiful ex libris we made back in 2018.

The address: Librairie du Basilic — 20 rue du Mirail, 33000 Bordeaux


Once again, I have to apologize for the lack of news these last few months, but as you may imagine, finishing the game has been quite a hectic endeavor for everyone involved, to say the least.

Still a lot to do before we cross the finishing line, but we're definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at last.

As always, let's conclude with this month's new illustration, the last you'll get for End of Lines. Soon, we'll be switching gears and we can't wait to tease you about our upcoming interactive graphic novels.

That’s all for now, and we hope we'll see you on release day!

Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658960/End_of_Lines/

If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup

You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).

And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox

Best,

Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.