Today through 1pm EST on January 3rd you can get Anamorphine for 25% off! As before, the soundtrack is 10% off (listen to a track), or you can buy them together for 25% off of both (a great deal!). If you prefer to buy from other sites, we’re also 25% off until January 4th on Nuuvem. If you’re looking for a gift for your friends and family, the Steam gift function is a simple and seamless was to give them Anamorphine, a gift with emotional power.
2018 was a big year for Artifact 5. We ported Anamorphine to PS4 and launched it - our first game as a company. It was a labour of love by a core team of 6 people, and it’s still a little surreal that it’s out there in the world. Thank you so much for supporting us through this adventure. We’re excited for our new ideas in 2019, and we look forward to telling you all about them as they fall into place!
Have a wonderful end of 2018!
Artifact 5
- Samantha, Mo, Ramy, Mehrdad and Beatrix
It’s been a while! Launch and the months right after were intense for the team, as we fixed up bugs and strategized about how to best improve the game in the long run. And for now, we have good news!:
Through November 27 at 1pm EST, you can get Anamorphine for 25% off! The soundtrack is 10% off, too, or you can buy them together for 25% off of both (a great deal!). If you prefer to buy from other sites, we’re also 25% off on the Humble Store and Nuuvem, in Brazil. This is a great time to encourage friends and family to support the game. You can listen to a track from the soundtrack on YouTube.
If you didn’t see it around launch and need something to help describe to your friends (or yourself) what Anamorphine is like, here’s a great, non-spoiler article about Anamorphine from The Washington Post.
We are still working on a VR patch that fixes a couple of key bugs, and have been optimizing the PS4 version to help with lag. We’re excited to get these out in the near future, so bear with us if you’ve been waiting on those to play all the way through or buy the game. PSVR support is still something we’d like to do in the future, but it’s a long process; we’ll let you all know when we have solid news down the line.
Hey there!
It’s been a very busy two and a half weeks since launch. It started with a Day 1 Patch for PS4, PC, and VR. Then we put out a PS4 patch fixing a game-breaking bug (thanks, Day 1 patch :/). Since then, we’ve been working hard on a VR and PC update which makes the game *much, much* better to play in VR, especially on the Vive, which was in some cases a real mess. So if you were holding off until these bugs were fixed in VR, now’s the time to grab Anamorphine and play it!
We know performance on the PS4 is sub-par, so you’ll be happy to hear that we’re working on further optimizations to make it a smoother play experience. Being pulled out of the emotional story by lag isn’t the way the game is meant to be played, clearly.
In the meantime, you can read about how The Washington Post loved Anamorphine over on their website.
If you run into more problems, please let us know here or at suppport@artifact5.com! Here’s some patch notes for the build we put up today (August 17, 2pm):
Fixed bugs:
- All Menus now appear in Vive as they did with Oculus.
- VR can now be toggled if you’re using the Vive
- Full support for VR motion controllers (cursor/no cusor, step/smooth) throughout game
- Fixed gamepad issues in VR
- Fixed a portal issue that caused double vision in VR
- Fixed issues where quick movements would cause out-of-sequence loads in both VR and Flat
Known Bugs in All modes:
- Exiting the game to the main menu leaves the game in a laggy state
- Shader errors with Elena’s bathwater
Known Bugs in VR mode:
- In-Game Trigger warning has a font rendering issue. Looks garbled. (this will be fixed promptly)
- Toggling VR on and then back off with Oculus will crash the game
- Fastest and Fast quality modes have an LOD issue making the game unplayable
- Some portals and thresholds are difficult to travers in VR with a cursor
- When entering areas with distorted gravity, the VR cursor will have an offset orientation
- One of the VR captures does not fade quickly enough
- VR players can still move during loading
- VR Menu is stretched a little
- Mindscapes have a strange floor collider at the start location
- In VR when the player goes through a choice portal, they land _inside_ the floor
- Credits can not be seen in VR
As you can see, we still have some work to do, but we’re on it! We hope you’re enjoying Anamorphine, and if you want to discuss it with other people who connected with the experience, join our Discord!
IT’S HAPPENING!
We are so excited to announce that Anamorphine and its Official Soundtrack will be coming out on July 31, supporting PC, HTC Vive*, Oculus Rift*, and PS4. You’ll be able to buy it on the PS4 store (heart it!), Steam (wishlist it!), the Humble Store, Green Man Gaming, and if you’re in South America, Nuuvem - it’s good to have options!
Last week we went Gold on PS4, a milestone we’ve been working towards since November 2017. Ramy, Mehrdad and Mo have been complete heroes, wrestling with crash after crash on PS4 for more than seven months. To quote Ramy, “We ate a big fat slice of humble pie,” which more or less sums up the entire process of creating this beautiful, insane passion project of a game. That said, we’re thrilled to show you the results of all of that pie-eating. We hope you’ll tell us what you think (our Discord is a great place to do that!), sign up to our newsletter to stay in touch about launch day itself and get behind-the-scenes info on the game and its development, and share the news with your friends.
We’ve spent countless hours in Unity. Traveled across North America, Europe and the Middle East to show it at festivals. Been included in research projects! Basically, we’ve learned more than we could have possibly imagined. We can’t wait for you to play Anamorphine next week!
*The flat and VR versions of the game are one and the same, so if you buy them anywhere, you can play them with your Oculus or Vive. We might come to the Oculus store itself later. We’re planning our PSVR launch for later this year.
Hey folks - great news! In anticipation of a launch this summer, we’ve made a Discord where we can all hang out, share more regularly about what we’re up to, and create a space for all of you who are into surreal stories, environmental art, VR, super-depressing stories, and more! You can join it using this code: https://discord.gg/ts5SSYf. Join us for a special Discord kick-off/meet-and-greet with the main team from 12pm-1pm EST on Friday, June 8.
In April, we were super busy showing Anamorphine at PAX East in Boston, the NewImages festival in Paris, and Amaze in Berlin. Check out our snapshots from the events:
PAX East, where we were part of the IndieMegaBooth!
NewImages Festival. Anamorphine was shown in their VR arcade, and Sam gave a talk about Metaphorical Storytelling - watch it here.
Amaze, the 7th international Games and Playful Media Festival, where we were an official nominee and Beatrix gave a talk about sound design and audio.
Hey Anamorphine fans! Your patience truly stuns us as you calmly wait for the game to come out. If you haven’t yet, Wishlist Anamorphine on Steam. There’s not long to go now! But before we make hard date announcements, we have some other exciting announcements about where you can find us between now and launch:
We made it into the Indie Megabooth for PAX East! This is a dream, and will expose Anamorphine to more people in-person than ever before. You can visit us at booth #13081 from April 5-8. Even better, you’ll be able to play on PC and in VR! You’re in for a great new experience.
As if April couldn’t get more exciting, we are also nominated for an A.MAZE award! Our fantastic Sound Designer & Composer Beatrix, who also worked on another A.MAZE-nominated project The Museum of Symmetry, will be attending to represent us from April 25-29.
What else are we up to? So much! Here are some other places you can find us in March and April:
GDC, San Francisco, USA. Mo, Beatrix and Sam will be there. The only public showing of Anamorphine will be at Canada’s GDC Play area on Wednesday, March 21, 10am-12pm PST, on PC.
NewImages Festival, Paris, France: Sam will be speaking at this film/VR festival on April 5.
London Games Festival: Sam will hop over to London from Paris (oo la la) to see some of the fun at London Games Week, as well as participating in the London Funding Market on April 10-12.
Remember to sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with our latest news (blog posts + bonus recommendations of cool content from around the internet from the team).
Hello everyone, and Happy Valentine’s Day! Because we’re a bunch of morbid weirdos, we desperately wanted to release Anamorphine on this couples-centric day of romance, but the production schedule didn’t allow it. Think of it: a tragic tale of broken dreams and a spiraling couple, to be played with mounting concern alongside your loved one; or alone, in the dark, reminding you of the tough side of relationships… what’s not to love?
What else is happening? Plenty! Mo, Sam and Beatrix will all be heading to GDC to learn things, discuss our next project with publishers, and see our awesome international dev friends. We’re waiting to announce Anamorphine’s new release date. We learned some hard lessons from our preemptive announcement, and will be mitigating that by not announcing until we are 100% sure we’ll make it.
In the meantime, Anamrphine is going through final rounds of polish and playtesting and we’re finding the feedback immensely helpful. Sending players to play in their own homes then reporting back has been a great way of getting user feedback since playing in a brightly-lit office is counter to the mood of the game. Plus, people can play when they have time, instead of dragging themselves to our office. And some bugs look cool, which is fun!
Before we sign off, here are a few things the team has been making each other watch on our Slack channel recently:
- Mo highly recommends Shaun Tan’s wordless comicbook, The Arrival. It’s a surreal story of an immigrant’s experience in a foreign culture. It shares a lot of the cool wordless storytelling tricks we use in Anamorphine!
- Mehrdad is keeping us politically on our toes.
- Sam doesn’t live on YouTube like everyone else, but does highly recommend tuning into Stupid Morning Bullshit at 11am EST on Adult Swim whenever possible. She’s sorry/you’re welcome. Technically, this recommendation is also Ramy’s fault.
Hey everyone! Happy holidays and Happy New Year - may 2018 be a year of bittersweet endings and new beginnings. That’s what we’re aiming at with Anamorphine, anyway!
After putting the team through their paces and more, Anamorphine is looking excellent, but still needs a few final weeks of polish. After around three years of work, the last thing we want is to bring it out just a little too early, when the extra time will make sure a huge impact on the final product.
So no, you won’t be able to get Anamorphine on January 16 as previously announced, but you will see it later on this Winter/very early Spring. We’ll put out an announcement when we have the new date! Thank you all for your support and patience. We can’t wait to put Anamorphine into your hands.
(^this screenshot is relatively representative of the topsy-turvy path we’ve taken to get to the end of production!)
Heads-up, everyone: today we’re featured in the Playstation Blog. We’re thrilled to be bringing Anamorphine to the PS4/Pro, PSVR, PC, Vive, and Oculus Rift! We will be bringing it to the Xbox after launch - more details on that in the winter.
Please share the Playstation blog post widely, especially the GIFs! #anamorphine #surreal #indiedev! A huge thank-you to Playstation for featuring us, and to our community for supporting us as we near the finish line.
Hey Anamorphites! It’s been a great summer, and we’re sneaking ever-closer to launch (which means you should Wishlist us early and often!).
Latest big news: we’re sending Mo to IndieCade in LA! We’re excited to participate in this premiere Indie event - our first on the West Coast. As part of the IndieCade/spaces collection, you can find us in the Inahara Foyer - Upstairs with other narrative and exploration games.
Between now and launch, it’s mostly nose to the grindstone for the team, but you can find us around Montreal:
- Samantha will be speaking at CGX (Capital Gaming Expo) on October 21 about the potential unforeseen challenges you face when building a studio.
- Ramy and Beatrix will be giving a talk called “Empowering Your Sound Designer” (something we put a lot of energy into), also at MIGS.
- Along with Tanya Short (Kitfox Games) and Tali Goldstein (Casa Rara), Samantha will be giving a talk called “Production, the Indie Way: 3 Methods For Sanity and Success” at MIGS.
- Anamorphine will also have an Indie Pod at MIGS where you’ll be able to put your hands on the game for the first time in Montreal since ComicCon.
As we suffer through the final throes of Montreal summer (40 with humidity - is this entirely necessary?), we’re fitting together the final act of the game, polishing the earlier stages, testing our TRCs, adjusting locomotion in VR - heck, we’re busy!
But don’t worry - we’ve also all managed to take a little vacation this summer, since we believe it’s healthy (and more productive) not to work flat-out, forever. Especially over a two and a half year stretch, and counting. No, really, ask us how we feel about crunch and mental health some time!
Stay tuned for more as we turn the page into October!