Hello! No Images? Click here Hi there!Great to see you again! Thanks for subscribing to the Fullbright newsletter. Honestly I can't tell you how much it means to us to know there's this dedicated group of folks out there all across the world (and we do know you're all across the world! Hi Singapore, hi Brazil!) who are excited to hear about what we're up to. And this time around we have some especially cool stuff to share! By the way, if you ever want to drop a line and let us know what's on your mind, you can just reply straight to this newsletter and we'll receive it. Hope you've been well! And without further ado, let's get on with the show. The big news is... TACOMA IS COMING TO PS4!We're so grateful to all the folks who have picked up Tacoma on PC and Xbox One, but we know there's a big contingent of fans who have been waiting to experience the game on PlayStation. And so today, we're thrilled to announce that Tacoma is coming to PS4 on May 8, 2018-- and it's available to preorder right now on your PS4, for a special launch discount! Tacoma takes advantage of some of the PS4's cool extra features-- including support for higher framerates or higher resolution on your PS4 Pro, as well as Remote Play on your PS Vita! When testing Remote Play on Vita, we found that exploring the world of Lunar Transfer Station Tacoma on that sharp little screen, curled up on the couch with this fictional place we built showing up as a little diorama in your hands, was just really, really cool. We hope folks who have a Vita will take advantage of the feature, and that everyone who's been waiting for Tacoma on PS4 will have a great time with the game when it's available on May 8! AND it's got Commentary?!To celebrate Tacoma coming to PS4, and just generally to revisit the game in all the detail we can, we're adding over 2 hours of developer audio commentary to the game when it releases on May 8-- which will be coming as a free update to PC and Xbox as well! Folks from the entire team did playthroughs of the game and found the developer-side bits and pieces that would lead to good stories and insight into how the game got made. You'll learn about just how many developer cats appear in the game, how our sound designer Patrick created the voice of Romeo the cleaner bot, where the inspiration for our non-linear story exploration mechanics came from, and much, much more from the folks who built this weird, ambitious little game of ours. Looking for more? You can get a little preview of Commentary Mode on the PlayStation Blog! And to celebrate the occasion...Cool new stuff on the shop!We really enjoy making neat stuff to put on our little web shop, and we've noticed that folks get really excited about the limited-edition type of items we make-- so we whipped up a few new things to celebrate Tacoma coming to PS4! First up is a reprint of our excellent illustrated launch t-shirt, designed by cyberpunk artist Josan Gonzalez! The first shirt was a stark classic white-on-black style, and this time we're doing a reprint featuring a hand-pulled cyan-to-mint color gradient on a mottled heather-black shirt, echoing ODIN's color scheme on this striking design. We have these in both regular and fitted cuts; we'll be taking orders now through the end of PS4 launch week, May 15! Then this limited run will be over, and the Tacoma launch shirt will be a thing of the past. Order now and we'll start shipping these out middle of May! And, as seen on the jean jacket above (modeled by yours truly), we're introducing our limited edition Tacoma Enamel Pin Set! It's a set of three high-quality pins, each depicting one of our AI-related concepts from the game: Minny (your adorable personal assistant AI who pilots Amy's ship), the venerable ODIN, and the emblem of the AI Liberation Front to show your support for the rights of ALL consciousness. These pin sets are limited to an edition of 100, and each comes on a lovely backing card featuring Tacoma's iconic title art, hand-numbered by Sarah Grayson (the voice of Amy in Tacoma and Sam in Gone Home-- and our Production Manager at Fullbright!) Both of these Cool New Things are available in the Fullbright shop now, and while you're there-- we've discounted a ton of the older items on the store as well, to get'em outta there! We've decided that for the most part we're going to phase out "forever" items like our existing Fullbright and Tacoma t-shirts, totes, and mugs, and focus on making fun, "one-off" items like we're sharing with you today. So all the items that are marked down to $5 will be available from now til May 15-- and then we're going to de-list them, ending their time on the Fullbright shop. We're keeping a couple of "forever" items around that we (and our fans!) seem to especially love: the hoodie, trucker hat, stickers, and sew-on patches. But when the rest of the discounted items are gone, they'll be gone for good-- so if you feel the urge, toss a few of'em in your cart as well, while they're still around! What else, what else... Oh right, we were at BAFTA! And IGF!Award season has come and gone, and we were beyond honored to be included in more than one prestigious ceremony-- not least of was the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA Awards... which you can see Steve presenting one of in the image above! While we didn't take home trophies this year, it was incredibly cool to get to go up onstage in my little tux and present one of these beautiful golden masks (for Audio Achievement, awarded to the good folks who created Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice!) We were really happy seeing such incredible games and game-makers up onstage at both BAFTA and IGF, including our friends who made Night in the Woods taking home the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at IGF (!) Congrats to all our fellow nominees, and thanks to all the folks who work hard to make these crazy events happen every year. And here's to all the folks striving hard right now to make the games that we'll be thrilled to see on stage at NEXT year's awards! Godspeed, sweet game developers. And speaking of award winners... ...have you PLAYED Gorogoa?We were so happy for Jason Roberts, the creator of Gorogoa, when we saw him go up onstage at both IGF and BAFTA to receive awards for the game he spent over seven years of his life on. It's a really thoughtful, beautiful, abstract puzzle game, all about making almost stream-of-consciousness connections between objects, spaces, shapes and colors to navigate a surreal but believable world. Something between an almost Myst-like puzzle game and a beautiful hand-illustrated comic book, Gorogoa is a contemplative, one-of-a-kind experience. And it was released on practically every platform under the sun, so whether you're looking for an artful journey on PC, console, or iOS, the game's right there for you. Finally... Portland Stuff?!Since this is a no longer a Tacoma-specific newsletter (though to be fair, this entry has been pretty Tacoma-centric...), in the last newsletter I put an end to the Weird Space Facts we'd kept up with for so long. But what to put in their place? Well, for now, I was thinking what if in each newsletter I shared some odd or interesting little observation about the city of Portland, OR, where our studio is based? We live in such a unique, odd, vibrant little place, and part of the joy of living here is discovering all the different unexpected details that pop up as you explore. So today I'll talk about: GRAFTED FLOWERING TREES! Every spring in Portland, the flowering trees come out. Cherry blossoms especially, but also magnolias, dogwoods, Japanese snowbells and more. And one detail of certain Portland neighborhoods is only visible during this brief and colorful time of year. When the city was planting flowering trees in the first half of the 20th century, many of these newly-planted trees were grafted together from multiple saplings, presumably to make each tree a bit more hardy. Throughout the year, you'd never know these were anything but standard run-of-the-mill trees-- but during the window of time when these trees are in full flower, you discover that half the tree's blossoms are pink, and half are white! These unique trees have grown for decades, getting larger and spreading their branches, while maintaining a distinct split between the colors of their two grafted halves. You'll even see branches of one tree intertwining, completely different types of blossoms on each, despite splitting off of the same trunk... Thanks again, friend, for subscribing to the Fullbright newsletter! We'll have more news coming soon, so keep an eye here-- and we hope you'll enjoy exploring Tacoma with Commentary Mode on PS4 when it arrives on May 8! Til then... |