Hi everyone! Chapter 3 of the fan-made comic Half-Life: A Place in the West is now available! Titled “The Pit”, this chapter comes in at 30 pages. The Pit picks up where Chapter 2 left off: Leyla Poirier and Albert Kempinski go their separate ways after an intense dispute, but are both drawn to a gladiatorial arena in New Franklin. Known as “Kal’s Pit”, this seedy arena puts on a show of blood sport against captured aliens from beyond the city’s walls. But when an accident throws everyone into danger, an unlikely hero emerges… And back at City Hall, Major-General Long makes a discovery that will change New Franklin forever. We’ve made some changes in our team with this issue - Ivan, Ester, and Javier have continued on from Chapter 2 in the roles of Inker, Colourist, and Letterer, respectively, but our previous penciler, Heath, has had to step down due to family commitments - we will miss him, and are incredibly grateful for the wonderful work he did on Chapters 1 and 2. In his place, we’ve brought on Kristian Rossi, who has worked on such comics as Trespasser, The Temporal, and Moonshine. Kristian brings his own style, and we think you’ll love the new direction. As always, let us know your thoughts!

What’s Next?

Sometime Soon (tm) we’ll be doing another application update. This will come before the release of Chapter 4, and will contain another (free!) short interlude between chapters, as well as application improvements including controller support, integration with our soundtrack, and possibly the fabled addition of opting into a two-page layout. This will also include the behind the scenes commentary video for Chapter 2, which I am still cutting together. We also should be shipping the first batch of our additional translations at that time! As well as the translation of Chapter 3 into Russian, which is unfortunately not yet ready for release today. (Obviously if that’s ready before the release, we’ll do our best to get it out ahead of time!) We’re also working hard on Chapter 4, which will be going into production the first week of August, and an intended release this autumn. More coming on that soon.

What else is going on?

To plug some other things, Ross and I have been writing Blog posts on the new A Place in the West website, on topics from artistic style, comics on Steam, and why we decided to use the Half-Life IP. You can check those out at http://a-place-in-the-west.ghost.io/. Our website also contains a newsletter signup if you want more frequent updates that we generally post here on Steam. The newsletter comes out once a month and contains some additional behind-the-scenes looks and early teases. Ross and I were also interviewed for the Ghost City Comics podcast which should be released early next week. Be sure to check them out! Their podcast is very informative and, if you are (or want to be) a comic creator, they are doing a competition which can get you feedback, reviews, and even a cash prize. As ever, we thank you for continued interest and support of the comic, and hope you’re looking forward to sticking with us through the Pit and beyond!

[ 2017-07-21 15:06:07 CET ] [ Original post ]