I'm extremely pleased to announce the initial release in the Alcyone: The Last City alpha — Alpha1!

Thank you all for being so patient as I've gotten this organised. This first release is a substantial change over the demo file I presented during Kickstarter; there's not any component of the game that hasn't been redone in some capacity. This portion of the game contains the same "areas" as in the original demo — character creation, a choice of two internship pathways with exposure to the Encounter system, and a secondary Encounter following completion of the internships. However, all of this has been rewritten and should look new even to players who saw the original demo.

Alpha1 Release Notes — 30-04-2018

• Total overhaul of the game's appearance compared to the demo
• "Dyslexic-friendly" font from Fontsmith to improve overall readability
• New splash, menu, and interstitial screens
• Custom cursor icons
• Consistent styling implemented for buttons & UI elements from the Twine engine & SugarCube 2 functionality
• Massive editing/rewriting passthrough to the Alcyone prose 
• Text is now broken up into much smaller "bubbles" to further improve readability
• Implemented additional audio and visual effects
• Preliminary fixes implemented for screen readers (this will require further testing)
• Glossary tooltip system has been overhauled to improve functionality and readability
• Better differentiation between dialogue "bubbles," story "bubbles," and more important game moments
• Passage headers are separated and better differentiated from the rest of the story bubbles
• Improvements to various CSS elements

If anything comes up please don't hesitate to let me know — enjoy!

Feedback for playing the game with a screen reader. I've tried it both with mac and windows. I've played up to the point where you go to the place you chose to work.

On the mac, once I put it into full screen, I was able to access everything as far as I can tell. When it wasn't in full screen, I couldn't read the text.

On windows, it all worked from the start except for one thing. On the mac, I noticed that voiceover separates certain words, the way it breaks up paragraphs. I was able to click on those words to get the glossary info. I couldn't figure out a way to get that to work for me in windows.

The UI bar seems to be working fine. I was able to save and load games and see my attributes.

Let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like me to check.

No problem about the glossary. As long as there's a way to get that information. Speaking of which, I found something with the area that comes up if you open the glossary or credits. I can't close it by clicking the close button. Might be there for inventory as well though I haven't specifically tried it.

Regarding inventory, I can equip/unequip, but it could be improved somewhat if possible. I see 2 links for each item. One says "none", and the other is the name of the item. I confirmed that clicking the links changes the corresponding attribute number the way I expect. If "none" could be changed to unequip, that would help things make more sense. It would be even better if if there was a control that toggled between equip/unequip. The other issue with the current inventory is that I don't know if an item is equipped or not without checking the stats.

Overall, looking good.

Alpha2 is out now on itch; you can download it directly from your store page or with the itch app — the zip file (whichever way you download it) contains executables for five operating systems, so be sure to navigate to the downloaded directory and delete any you don't need.

Alpha2 Release Notes — 23-10-2018

• Info/release notes screen added to the first loading screen
• Autosave system implemented
• Alcyone now has Objectives, and those Objectives are now exposed to the player
• Counter now shows how many passages remain in each “page”
• Hub locations actually work properly when the demo’s end is reached
• Further visual tweaks
• Removed the spinning widget from each page and reorganised the appearance & content of the sidebar
• The Help button actually does something useful now!
• Kickstarter backers added to the Credits overlay

Alpha3 is now out on itch! 

As discussed on Kickstarter, this brings in the Patron update that includes additional content on a monthly basis as a special thanks to early backers. The Patron's first Commission is an Encounter nearly ten thousand words in length, so this is a substantial amount of new content available to everyone.

Full release notes are below.

November 23 2018 —

• Alpha3 release, and final (?) demo release
• Preliminary accessibility update adding img alt text to primary icons for players using screen readers; this will be an ongoing fix, but many of the more vital icons now have proper descriptions
• Added access for Supporter Content to those who were early backers or Patreon supporters
• The Patron has set up shop in the City! Check Kickstarter for details about this eccentric figure
• The Patron's first Commission is now playable — help him pick up a particularly special parcel
• All four Attribute internships are available in the Alcyone demo now. Enjoy pursuing the Mind and Charm tracks in addition to the existing Body and Vigour ones
• Slight font size tweaks to the header text at the start of each passage
• Encounter "Trapped" has been tweaked to provide additional solutions for players who didn't pursue the Body internship
• Made some edits to the wording in certain character creation passages, and some additional writing edits throughout the first four internships
• Audio levels have been tweaked across the board to help with competing against screen readers
• Fixed a crossfading bug with the Encounter versions of music tracks so spoopy ambience works like it's supposed to!
• Huge overhaul to how variables are handled in the game; this breaks old save files, but should not impact them going forward
• Visual tweaks to better differentiate conversation bubbles from regular story text

Just a quick update to the alpha as well as the public demo — I fixed up a couple of issues that were reported after the Patron launch (nothing game-breaking, fortunately!) so hopefully, hopefully, this is the last time the demo needs to be touched.

December 03 2018 —

• Alpha4 release, and hopefully the final demo version
• Fixed an audio crossfading issue between the main and Encounter versions of music tracks
• Fixed an issue with the Mind internship's music
• Fixed an issue with the Charm internship's music
• Expanded the Help & Glossary section of the game to actually include the Help part of things
• Glossary entries are now alphabetised and not arranged in the order that the player may encounter those terms

Alpha6 is out now, along with the third Patron Commission:

January 31 2019 —

• Alpha6 release
• Added the January 2019 Patron Commission, "The Survey"
• Fixes and tweaks made to the save/load dialog system

Hey supporters! Just a quick note to say that the latest Valentines-themed Patron commission is live — grab the demo through itch.io to give it a play.

Also, keep an eye out for some pretty awesome (if I do say so myself) news coming, hopefully, in March. That's all I'm saying for now!

The next Patron Commission is now live!

March 31 2019 —

• Alpha8 release
• Added the March 2019 Patron Commission, "The Gift"
• Fixes to some glossary tooltip definitions
• Fixes to variable flagging in a couple Patron Encounters

Hello awesome people, I've pushed a big update to Kickstarter announcing a slew of big updates, but the tl;dr is:

• No April Patron Commission, but there will be two in May
• Because I have ported Alcyone from Twine into Unity
• And you can go download the Unity version right now through itch
• And Alcyone is coming out in December

Go read this announcement for more details and let me know what you think!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshuameadows/alcyone-the-last-city-interactive-fiction-video-ga/posts/2495024