Until I'm Gone: Info³
 

Hi all

It's been a long time since I last informed you about our progress on our project- Until I'm Gone, and once again the time has come to set things right...
Don‘t know what "Until I‘m Gone" (UIG) is? Well, then believe that it is a FREEWARE winter-melancholy-dark-horror adventure game under development by Faraway Studios (set in Czech republic) for almost two years now. To be concrete (if you know the project, you can skip this part) :

Until I’m Gone is a 2.5D 3rd person point-and-click adventure game with horror elements and a psychological subtext. It takes place in a small mountain village covered with snow at Christmas time. The main hero is forced by his lady-friend to visit Pitfall Mountain. Soon after he arrives, the village is cut off from the outside world due to a huge snowstorm, and Nathan, who forced to stay until the storm blows over, unwittingly starts to reveal the tiny secrets of this picturesque village...
More about the story can be found on our webpages.

http://farawaystudios.com/gfx/forestSon.jpg http://farawaystudios.com/gfx/roomSon.jpg http://farawaystudios.com/gfx/characterSon.jpg

Know what UIG is, still remembering it, or looking forward to it (as we hope ), then here's the news that you might have missed, if you do not visit our webpage regularly. To get a comprehensive picture of how UIG looks now, what has gone through, what happened, and so on, you should nevertheless look on our website, because it is impossible to summarize it all here, in few posts...

Hm... this posts gonna be big... If I remember things right, I had previsously chatted with you when we released the "new" "cold" pictures, so from that point:

Languages - since then, the language portfolio of the project grew HEAVILY, right now, we are prepaing to release the game (in Q3-Q4 2007, so this winter!) in 14 world languages! Yeah, you read right: when the project will come out, it will, right in this 1st version, feature 14 World languages, and it is very probabe, that you will find even your native language in there... Simply check it out... The game is being translated into: English, French, German, Russian, Hungarian,Czech, Slovak, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Greek, Polish, Danish and Dutch ("Netherlands").

The team - Has also gone through many changes from my last post. We are now better organized, have more talented people (especially new pogrammers (about 4) 2D graphic designer and a few more), got rid of confirmed slackers, have new experiencies, made also some new interviews, where you can find "never-before-said" information and more (check the "Articles" section on our web), made some "summarization" of the project (section "News"), replaced some "externist" (they had no time, regrettably) etc., etc., many other things. I won‘t bother you with this anymore :-).

Hacking- is not good for you... right... Right, even when you hacked us (and you did ) you didnt break us. So sorry guys, but still nothing. It takes time, keep trying :D...
And now seriously. Our project must be these days really "something", when we have "attract hackers" and been hacked (unfortunatelly quite (+-) "succesfull") just week, week or two ago. But still, it doesn't seems, that the attackers were that succesfull to "get something they should not", it seems, that all they made was "mess". It almost seems, that all projects must go through these problems.

http://farawaystudios.com/gfx/UIGGal...SmallHover.jpg http://farawaystudios.com/gfx/UIGGal...SmallHover.jpg http://farawaystudios.com/gfx/UIGGal...SmallHover.jpg

Publisher-... Hm... no, no worries we don't have any, what's "worse"... we don't even look for one, and the worst is, that we had even rejected few ! Yes, no worries that some publishers will contact us, pay us and we would be like "wow", infantinelly starring with the mouth open, illimitable crazy happy that "we made it". No, this situations or even speculations are NOT appropriate because it’s not that this situation didn't happen... It already did! And we are still here, still freeware, still happy and still poor :-).
If you are interested why did we reject some publishers, why dont we want any for UIG and more information around, check the news section and FAQ (or even contact us via email )

Music- Yeah, finally we had released an example of music, you will hear in UIG. One full 3,5 minutes dark-winter-calm-ambient track (visit section download to get the track), just the right one for the game from "just the right" person- a music composer with over 10 years of experience in the industry- Human Error, née "Rafal Kuczynski".
Stream of the music track avaiable also here.
And we are also starting to work with "Tony Porter" a profesor from well-known Game development university Full Sail in Florida. What does this all mean...? This means that we are absolutely familiarizated with importance the music plays in every creation whether it is a film, serial story, E. games or something else and this element will be heavily polished in the game! (the soundtrack of the game has alreay over 50 minutes and we are not still done with the game...)
At last,music helps (from the biggest part) build the feeling of the game, and this is something which we focus on most of all (our internal team motto could sound somethig like "Feeling, Story, Graphics")

And this is probably all for today,I hope you will keep us your favour and wish you a nice end of summer holidays, oh... and look forward, because this winter, your computer is really going to froze!


For more info, large versions of screenshots and more, simply visit us at www.farawaystudios.com.

Roman Navratil
Faraway Studios team

Thanks for the information Roman :) I'm already unpatiently waiting the game to be released, because it has been in my top 5 waiting list for some time now... As for the screenshots and music samples... you are doing some great, great work here! This is one 3rd person clicker that I believe no one self-repeating adventure gamer should miss!

Looking good! Finally a game that is also in Portuguese (need help translating? :D i'd love to help :P) 14 languages!? now thats amazing.

how can something look so good, be free? :)

whats stopping you guys to make some money on this? :P lol, id buy it

As they say in FAQ in farawaystudios.com:

"FAQ: Why is it going to be free?
The game is going to be free because at the beginning we didn’t intend to make a commercial product. We started making the game out of enthusiasm and love for games. Over time the quality of the game began to rise and several publishers contacted us. Once we had weighed all the pros and cons we decided to keep the game freeware. We knew what would get if we said *yes* to a publisher- stress, deadlines, necessity of arranging our time (school/work vs. the project), interventions from the publisher, uncertain earnings and fans unpleasantly surprised that the game is not free :-). This way we can make the game *quite* peacefully and right the way we want to."

sorry, i just found the website for it this morning.. wasnt even aware of the game til now. I was just shocked when it said freeware.. thats all :)

Respect for the principles (though I can appreciate wanting to avoid the downside of publishers too) I'll keep my eyes peeled for the release.

Well you could...
Check the website-section Faraway, subsection Join us



Thanks all for their positive reactions!

You did not know about the game?
Argh, somethings wrong with us :-).

Well if you appreciate our project in this way, and would buy it (if it would be commercial) you have always the possibility to Donate us. (check web for details)

I remember the screenshots, and still think it looks pretty good. The music isn't something I'd like in my iTunes collection (i.e. not my style), but it nevertheless sounds like a good fit for the game.

It's interesting. Good luck with the final stage of your development (and the release)!