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They wear boots in the mines and dangerous/unclean areas. But shoes are optional in the universe. Some characters wear shoes as fashion statements. 

Nope. Echo is a fictional place mixed from places from Arizona, Utah, and California. It's loosely based on:
-Echo, Utah

-Nowhere, Arizona

-El Cerro Gordo, California

Any translations for these projects tend to be unofficial fan projects. I'd love to have them translated officially but wouldn't really know the costs or the avenues to go through to get accurate translators. 

I like the idea though, once we have finished routes. 

-George

Maybe when it's finished. Unsure what logistics it would have to go through to be there though. 

-George

That's gonna be a bug of some sort.

-George

The Man in the Moon stole it from me. 

-George

Sounds like a good idea to me!

- McSkinny

Sorry, but much of the plot deals with the sexual themes of this game, so it wouldn't make sense without them. 

-George S.

There is an unofficial discord (which I don't currently use but some other EP devs do.)

Have been trying to set up something more official in the mean time.

-George

Thank ya. We appreciate the love and support. 

-George

The games reference one another but there's no particular order you need to go in. 

-George

(Definitely check out the patreon build that just came out if you are willing to support us. There have been major edits for pacing around the stag scene.)

William consenting verbally and nonverbally makes this a consensual scene. 

William has degrees of sexual neurosis that he wants to get over through self-struggle, which is why bondage is helpful to him. 

-George

William is homosexual. Many gay people in the US were coerced into marriage for colonialist purposes, and that's a major component of William's story. There are several major bi characters though, like Cliff, Todd, James and his wife, Dora and Jim. The majority of a sexually segregated workforce in Echo at this time period would express bisexuality and m/m relationships in some fashion based on historical trends and evidence. Homophobic attitudes would still coexist in some capacity with this realty as well. 

-George

It's quite possible... (by Stickly)

- McSkinny

Angling for May or June.

- McSkinny

'Ey! For Echo, I was doing 7-10k word updates (30-45 minutes of content) per build each month. I may stick to that, or do a bigger update every two months. 

I'll probably just end up alternating between the two, in the end.

- McSkinny

Murdoch has a lot of merch planned but some has not been released and some is still in the illustration stages (one of the artists got covid.)

He'll have an update next. 

I had a vote and he came in second.

There's a good deal of people who said they won't play until there's an ending which is why I stopped writing in parallel. 

The front page. 

If everything goes well probably in a year.

People requested endings from me so I'm going mostly all in on nik's first. Murdoch will be second. 

The policy the project has always taken is that non-profit fan projects are allowed. 

-George S.

Sam hates the stigma attached to him, surrounding his job, moreso than most of the acts involved in the job. Like William, he has a lot of self-loathing that isn't necessary, that cultural hegemony has unloaded onto him. Howly did confirm to me that he loved having sex with clients since the beginning. 

What Sam actually hates is struggling to scrape by with how little he's paid, and being demeaned for his reputation. 

I don't think making a sex worker who loathes sex *itself* is necessarily a stronger narrative choice, or even a particularly unique one when it comes to how pop culture portrays sex workers vs. the frequent reality. 

One of Sam's flaws is that he has good people in his life who he met through his sex work but is too bothered by the stigma to enjoy when good things are looking him in the face-- even if they're things that Sam loves.  

Hello. Since the crux of this argument is about honest criticism, we need to address true things.  

1. I have written more than ninety-five percent of this project. The content of this project that howly wrote was:

-half of the introduction  before the route split, until nik is first introduced.

-The very beginning of the nik route until before yao is first introduced.

Howly had some very loose ideas about Nik and Will. He wanted will to be married and have some homophobic elements to his character perspectives. He wanted Nik to be a heart-felt love story. I have done my best to uphold these original ideas while letting a good portion of myself enter the story, such as exploring labor History in Nik route, and Mystery elements and themes of homosexual shame and self-loathing in Will route.

I'm sorry you are not interested in the labor politics of nik route or Will's self-exploration of himself, but, these are coming from places of genuine humanity.

2. I do not consider an overwhelming amount of this game dark. A lot of it is a celebration of the progressive movement in America before things go bad. I try to do a mix of good and bad things to tell a story of the town in this era. A lot of it does veer dark due to the nature of the horror genre. 

3. I do not hate Cliff. I have cowritten him since the beginning with Redd, and have written a heavy amount of the portion of his story.  I like weasels, and even used to have a weasel fursona a long time ago! I just never wanted to portray Cliff as a suave cool guy, because a lot of his story is so heavily tied to themes of the nastier side of anthropology and colonization that America did in this time era, and to some extent still does today.

If Cliff had not been an anthropologist, we probably could have gone in a drastically different direction with him. But I think the role of the Meseta needed more presence and we used Cliff's story to explore that more. 

Cliff's story is about growing (or not growing!) as a person, all the while enjoying his eccentricities.

Criticism is always welcome. But it needs to come from places based on the truth. There is a lot of me in the characters in this story- but that's kind of the point of being an author. 

-George S.

Time, space, and timeline hopping are things that are possible in the Game under specific limited conditions. 

Sam died multiple times in this vision for the thing attached to him to find the right moment to leave. 

-George S.

There's definitely going to be edits for all places and routes by the time the story is finished. We plan on a final edit pass in between individual route completion and full game completion.  Thanks for reading!

-George

About 2 more weeks. 

Y'all behave. Don't make me get the broom.

-George

There will most likely be sex scenes down the line, yes. I want to ensure they're satisfying emotional payoffs and fit the story when they happen, so it'll be a little while!

- Redd

It's in the game files! 

- Redd

There should be more? That's an old build. 
-George

An old woman wielding daggers three stands before you.

She laughs a hallow laugh. An inhuman laugh. 

Betwixt crooked teeth yellowed as if by the wild sumac itself, you hear the cacophony of her voice:

"There's penice," she says, throwing back her head. 

The ancient world turns beneath you. Silence. Stillness. Somber truth.  

combo breaker

He's plenty hot, he's just cooling off for the winter!

-McSkinny

it is out

It's entirely optional, but it's something that you can only do if you have a good relationship between Sam and Will and you as will consent to it and are open to the idea of him being submissive.

The narrative of the plot changes if you don't do this, but there isn't a "correct" answer. 
-George

Yeah. It's kind of a strange thing to think about because "faithful" usually refers to religious institutions back in the day, and not breaking your vows. M/m and f/f relationships were often not seen as real or natural by these institutions.

A sex worker would generally want a lot of clients unless they could become a concubine to a rich patron. 

-George

Not to dismiss what you're saying, but there's another harmful stereotype about sex workers I try to be mindful of-- the idea that it's a terrible, desperate profession that folks are forced into because of hard times (aka the depiction you see in the Les Miserables musical). 

A lot of women in the wild west and geishas in Japan found a new sense of agency and autonomy through sex work, and found themselves in economically stronger positions than they were used to. A lot of sex work was banned in parts of the world specifically as a reaction to women gaining political and monetary power through these means as a patriarchal response. 

I didn't want to portray Sam's life as a sex worker as something miserable, even though he has a lot of cultural hangups and shame about doing it himself. 

Sam likes sex, is good at it, and is making a living in a way he probably otherwise couldn't. I try to portray his work life and also write sex in a way that is meaningful to the plot-- but I also don't want to diminish the joy Sam has doing the act. 

Keep in mind this Will is a character who likes BDSM and did some pretty kinky stuff with Sam in the previous intimate scene that they had together. 
 
Sam was more or less reciprocating Will's desires in a later scene, which were discussed verbally prior to the scene, and enacted nonverbally after. 

There's an aftercare scene I'll be writing in the future, but I just hadn't gotten there in the story at the time due to it being 15k words (which is already big for a monthly update.)

Thank you for reading, and I do hope you will revisit Will's route again some time, even though it's good to avoid triggers that you know will offput you.

--George S.