Lucid9: Inciting Incident news & patch notes

There are only 12 hours left for Lucid9's Kickstarter! With your help, we've raised over $30,500 and are 90% of the way to being fully funded! If you haven't done so yet, please consider backing the project or spreading the word to help us meet the final stretch. Regardless of the outcome, we've been blown away by the amount of support everyone has given the campaign. We'll continue doing our best to complete the game and will share more details of our plan sometime next week. You can find the Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/618620552/lucid9-a-mystery-visual-novel {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/23787815/5b9a88f26e1def0826a70c6ea0400ac2358d634c.jpg

🎉Happy New Year, everyone!🎉 We're very excited to announce that Lucid9 is now live on Kickstarter! Please consider supporting our project by backing it or sharing it with your friends! Thank you so much! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/618620552/lucid9-a-mystery-visual-novel For more updates during the campaign, be sure to follow us on our primary socials! Twitter: https://twitter.com/FallenSnowS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lucid9vn/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fallensnowstudios6347 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/23787815/82c6cfc83a9e17644d16a4498dc6845e25c186ab.png

Exciting news, everyone! The Lucid9 Kickstarter is officially launching on January 1st, 2024! We've poured our hearts and souls into crafting this campaign, and we can't wait to share it with everyone. To be among the first notified when the campaign goes live, head over to our Kickstarter pre-launch page today! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/618620552/lucid9-a-mystery-visual-novel In the meantime, we're gearing up for launch by reaching out to content creators and journalists. During the month of January, we also plan to host a series of development livestreams. We'll be posting more details about the stream schedule and guest appearances as we draw closer to the new year. As we've always aimed to introduce more people to the magic of visual novels, we hope this campaign will reignite the spark of interest in Lucid9 that emerged upon its initial release years ago. With the backing of our passionate community through this Kickstarter campaign, we confidently anticipate completing the game by the end of 2024. And to further fuel your excitement, we're proud to unveil the brand-new story trailer today! Take a look! Why Kickstarter? Since its creation in 2014, Lucid9 has been in development for nearly a decade. Despite some notable releases, such as Inciting Incident in 2016 and the heroine prologues in 2019, progress has been slow and inconsistent due to the game being a free project. The COVID-19 pandemic has only made things more difficult, with many of us having less time and resources than usual. A Kickstarter campaign would allow us to complete the game in a reasonable timeframe and open up opportunities for additional features and polish, depending on the amount of funding we receive. Without funding, we are limited in the content we can create. A fully funded project would cover the cost of character sprites, backgrounds, CGs, music, programming, and writing, and potentially include additional art, voice acting, and an animated opening. While the full game will still be released for everyone to play for free, we have a number of exciting rewards lined up exclusive to backers, including signed physical illustrations, digital wallpapers, artbooks, Lucid9 themed t-shirts, and more! Story In the heart of the bustling metropolis of Isamu, Japan, a dark shadow looms over the esteemed Isamu Academy. Yama Ishimoto, an intelligent yet jaded high school student, finds himself thrust into the center of a chilling mystery as a wave of gruesome murders sweeps through the school. These killings bear an eerie resemblance to the unsolved Independent Murders that once plunged the city into chaos years ago. As Yama delves deeper into the enigma, he uncovers a labyrinth of secrets and hidden truths that intertwine with the city's dark past. With each revelation, he navigates a treacherous path that draws him and his companions closer to the heart of a sinister conspiracy that has cast a pall over Isamu. Lucid9 is a tale of suspense that delves into the depths of human nature, exploring themes of friendship, betrayal, and the unwavering pursuit of truth in the face of overwhelming darkness. How You Can Help We would be grateful if you would consider supporting our Kickstarter campaign. Every contribution, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated! You can pledge as little as $1, and every pledge will help us reach our goal. You can also share the project with your friends and family to help us spread the word. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us. And to get the latest news about Lucid9, be sure to subscribe to our official newsletter here! https://mailchi.mp/ec1f448e6101/falllen-snow-studios-newsletter Thank you so much for your support! Our Socials: The Kickstarter Page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/618620552/lucid9-a-mystery-visual-novel Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/439940 Official Website: https://lucid9.weebly.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/FallenSnowS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lucid9vn/ Discord: https://discord.com/invite/q3fyjT2 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fallensnowstudios6347 Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/fallensnowstudios/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lucid9/ Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/fallensnowstudios - The Fallen Snow Studios Team

Heroine Prologues Update

Hello everyone! After a few hiccups, we are pleased to announced the release of our Heroine Prologues Update for Lucid9. In it, you will find:

• The addition of "Heroine Prologues", scenes that will act as the beginning story for each heroine's route, narrated from their own PIV. This content will appear on the start screen once the game has been completed the first time.
• A mysterious "UNDO" option which replaces the START button in the main menu (it will lead you to the prologues).
• Updated artwork for a number of returning characters as well as artwork for new characters joining the cast.
• Minor text and grammar issues have also been fixed.
• Between 1 and 2 hours of new content, a sneak-peek of what's to come!

Issue With Old Saves

Last week, we briefly pushed this update, only to find out people were having trouble loading their old saves, as it would pop up an error before returning them to the beginning of the game. We found out this was due to Lucid9: Inciting Incident using an older version of our engine, Ren'py, than what we have been using to develop the rest of the game. This was an unexpected problem on our part, and we apologize. Sadly, we couldn't find an easy fix to this problem without undoing months of work in the game's code. Which is why we eventually came up with an alternative solution: older saves made in Lucid9: Inciting Incident prior to this update will automatically go through a "compatibility fix". If you load one of these saves, you won't be loaded in the exact spot as you were before, but rather the beginning of the Day / Chapter in which the save was made. This will only happen once, after which you'll be able to save and load normally. We apologize, as this will certainly be inconvenient for some our players, but we of Fallen Snow Studios ultimately decided this was the best solution to ensure development going forward is as smooth as possible. Again, we are sorry, and we promise this will not happen again. Thank you for your patience and continuous support, and we hope you enjoy this new addition to the story!

Hi everyone, We briefly pushed today's update to Steam. However, an unexpected problem with pre-update saves has forced us to revert these changes until a solution has been found. We apologize for these recurring issues. We will be sure to let you all know when it has been resolved. Thank you for your patience. - Fallen Snow Studios

After a long wait, the heroine prologues release is now finished and ready to be released on Steam this very December 15th! As we previously described, the Heroine Prologues contain the first chapter for each of the four heroine routes in Lucid9, plus a little bit of additional content written solely for this release! Be advised that these chapters serve only as introductory pieces to the remainder of our game, narrated from the POV of each one of the heroines. Rest assured, however, that Yama will return as the overall protagonist and narrator in future releases. We're extremely excited to finally share a portion of the content we'd been working on. It's certainly a milestone for us, and we hope that it sparks interest for the heroine routes that is still yet to come. To give you some insight of what to expect from the prologues, here's a quick list: - Dope, new music tracks. - Bad writing from a prominent political figure. - (ง •̀_•́)ง ​ - Lemonade drink drunk by a lemonade boy. - Good Dads & Shady Moms. - A crotch rocket. In order to access this new content, you need to first have reached the ending of Lucid9: Inciting Incident. Once you do, you will notice that the main menu theme has changed, along with something else. Simply find this new option to see what we have in store! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/23787815/125e611664afdbfaf4107f5a0faa0b14c40586a5.png Additionally, some time after the 15th, we'll be streaming the prologues on our Twitch channel. Be sure to tune in if you're interested to learn more about its development. We will post a new blog entry on the very same day, with new information about Lucid9’s future. Thank you for your patience, and we hope you enjoy! - Fallen Snow Studios

October has come around. For some, this marks the beginning of Fall, meaning fallen leaves, cold weather and Halloween. For others like myself, this is when the climate starts heating up… or it would if only global warming wasn’t a thing. But hey, at least Halloween is the same. Halloween might be a time for scares in a safe and healthy environment, but there’s nothing scary about this blog entry! Quite the opposite, in fact, given that we have a couple of exciting news to announce. But first, let’s get the obligatory information out of the way. Progress is going smoothly, with writers, artists and composers all making steady progress since the last update. Those who joined the team recently have caught up successfully with everything that has been done before, and all that’s left now is to keep working and finish this tale once and for all. And talking about ongoing progress, the mythical voice patch is progressing smoothly and nearing completion. Soon, you’ll be able to play Lucid9: Inciting Incident again with the added benefit of NOT paying attention to the words on screen and instead listening to the wonderful voices of our talented cast of actors! We don’t have a release date (yet), but we promise to give you one once we have nailed down the specifics of this patch. I hope all of you are looking forward to this as much as I am. As you know, it’s very difficult to give our followers a sneak-peak at the script itself, since Lucid9 is a plot-heavy visual novel, and any piece of writing could count as a potential game-ruining spoiler. That said, we are happy to announce that this is no longer the case. After much discussion, us writers have decided to start work on releasing what we like to call “Prologue Scenes” to the public! We call them Prologue Scenes, but they are not prequels of any sort to what you read in Lucid9: Inciting Incident. Rather, these short scenes serve as a prelude to the heroine routes, narrated from the point-of-view of the girls themselves. These occur shortly before the beginning of their routes (and in some cases, even further away in the past). While each scene varies in length, altogether they will add between 1 and 1 ½ hours of content to Lucid9. You will get to learn more about the society in Isamu 3 years in the future, as well as what sort of lives some of our characters have led after the tragic events at the Isamu Imperial Boarding Academy. Originally, these scenes would only be accessible during the transition between Inciting Incident and the chosen heroine routes. But until the routes are finished and completed, you’ll have the option to read their prologues individually and at your leisure (after completing Inciting Incident, of course). This is exciting news for us, since we’ve been itching to showcase our writing to the public! No release date for this either, but we will provide one (along with the voice patch’s, hopefully) in the coming months. On another note, Elphaze has been working on Yama's new artwork. Big thanks to her for sharing it with us to include in this update! See you next time! Via - Fallen Snow Studios https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/23787815/f54392e3af6611d799ddceef5f359644bddb0326.png

Hello folks, it’s been a while! First of all, I really wanted to apologize for the lack of updates on steam, we tend to prefer posting through out Lucid9 blog and through our Twitter and Facebook. So if you'd like to get more frequent news, make sure to subscribe to our various pages! It has been a while since we last shared substantial news about the state of progress for Inciting Incident’s sequel, and an even longer time since I wrote a blogpost (the two are more or less related, to tell the truth). There’s a lot to say, so you can expect this post to be pretty long.

1 - Thank you

First of all, I wanted to thank you all for the amazing reception we got at the release of Inciting Incident. It couldn’t make us any happier to see people read and enjoy the story we’ve prepared for them. Still, to this day, we regularly receive messages from people telling us how they felt when reading Inciting Incident, and even though we are not always able to reply, we’re extremely grateful for your support! Of course, we do realize that Inciting Incident created (rather high) expectations for the sequel, and this is partly why things have been taking so long.

2 - What we’ve been up to for the past two years

Long story short; when we finished Inciting Incident, we more or less had a vague idea of the story’s direction. More precisely, I knew how the sequel would start and how it would conclude, but everything in between was still a work in progress. That’s when issues started to arise. We’ve had creative disagreements regarding how the rest of the story should be handled. Our Inciting Incident main writer, Luna, also left to pursue her own project (I really recommend you to check it out here if you haven’t heard of it already), which left me trying to find a new recruit to fill in her shoes for her route, something that would end up becoming quite the difficult task. In the months following the release, we continued to discuss the continuation of the story. We continued to become more and more frustrated after discussions, especially since we were ambitious and wanted to create something that wouldn’t let the readers down, but proposed concepts were often debated over. We didn’t share the same ideologies in terms of story writing. Frankly, all of this was really getting to me, and I was getting really tired of it all (add the fact that I had worked nearly non stop for half a year in order to make sure Inciting Incident release would be a success), and I ended up losing motivation and becoming less and less active. It’s at around this time that I asked David to temporarily replace me since I needed a break from Lucid9. Truth be told, I sometimes considered to quit at that point. After all, the release of Inciting Incident was a success and left me really satisfied with what I had accomplished. But there was always the nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I couldn’t really let it all remain unfinished like this, and that a lot of people were actually waiting for the sequel. I couldn’t let them down. Months passed, and a number of writers came and left. Elizabeth’s previous writer was replaced by Via. Nugget took over Suna’s role as Akira’s Route writer but was eventually replaced by Reddly. Clestae was also bogged down by real life commitments, and as a result, had to resign from her writer position to become an editor. DJ is currently filling in as Airi’s writer, who has done some very good work so far, and you can all expect him to do Airi’s route justice. Via joining the team is what motivated me to get involved in Lucid9 again, as he had a good head on his shoulders, shared (or at least understood) my thought process when creating or commenting on the content, and was always willing to work out all the details for his route and the world lore in general. Eventually, at the end of 2017, I was fully directing Lucid9 again, and here I am now writing this update. I’m also extremely grateful to David who held the fort while I was not motivated enough to work on Lucid9. Without him, the project would probably have died back then. ​

3 - What concrete progress has been made so far?

Here are how things stand currently for Lucid9’s sequel :

• Quite a lot of background art has been completed. Expect to see Yama visit new places that were only mentioned previously in Inciting Incident.
• The writing is finally showing progress. Of course, the amount of progress varies from writer to writer, but most of them have gotten a good grip on their characters and how to naturally write them so that dialogue and narration remain close to the one in Inciting Incident. The lore has been greatly expanded, and every route is planned out. So really, from now on, it’s a matter of writing regularly (and I’ll be here to make sure that progress is indeed done regularly).
• Music hasn’t seen much progress at the moment, but we’ve been trying to remedy that. Expect more music in the future.
• Most of the male characters have their first sprite done while the female cast is still mostly in development. Dizzy, the female characters artist, decided to improve her drawing style, so the female sprites might look a bit different than what you got used to in Inciting Incident. Here is a sneak peak of the current Airi’s design for the sequel :

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/23787815/fe26addf1e71093bef680ecb112e1a18b6b053d8.png

4 - Content of the sequel (Slight spoilers)

It would be pretty unfair to give you a progress update without talking a bit about the content of the sequel, especially considering the abrupt and shocking way Inciting Incident ended. A word about the structure of this sequel first. As some of you might (or might not) know, Inciting Incident is supposed to be a “Common Route”. In Visual Novels, a Common Route is often an introductory segment of the story that presents the universe and the characters until it eventually splits onto various paths called “Routes”. Each Route focuses on a different heroine. Inciting Incident ends right at the conclusion of the Common Route, which means the sequel will split into 4 Routes (one for each heroine), and the choice of that route is determined by the previous choices you’ve made in Inciting Incident. So basically, you can expect the sequel to be 4 distinct parallel stories following Yama and each respective heroine. As for the content in itself, I won't reveal too much as I’d rather avoid spoilers. The only thing that I’ll say is that the story will resume 3 years after we left Yama at the end of Inciting Incident. That also explains why the new designs for the male and female characters look more mature, they are actually all older than in Inciting Incident. Finally, at this point it’s very likely there will be a third part to Lucid9, which would correspond to a “True Route”; the final route of the VN which should happen in parallel to the heroine routes once again. The true route should tie everything up from Inciting Incident and the Heroine routes, and answer all the questions that have remained unanswered.

5 - Date of release for Part 2

We haven’t decided on a date yet. I won’t try to give any estimation as it’s very likely that it’ll end up being not respected, so I can only ask you for your patience and for you to wait until we have progressed enough for me to confidently set a release date. But we’ll take as much time as necessary to ensure that the sequel will live up to everyone’s expectations.

6 - Voice Acting for Inciting Incident

I know that voice acting was supposed to be implemented in 2017, and I’m very sorry for the people who are eagerly waiting for this update, but unfortunately, it will have to be postponed indefinitely. There are several reasons for this decision. On the VA side, we have had multiple cast changes and departures due to various reasons, and each time, we've had to scramble to fill in replacements. Furthermore, the work is unpaid, which makes it very difficult for the voice actors to set Lucid9 as a priority. (At this point, some of you might wonder about crowdfunding, but we stand by our decision against a crowdfunding campaign for various reasons.) On our side, we’ve been unable to provide the necessary support to the voice acting recording sessions, as we have our hands full with the development of the sequel. As a result, things have been really slow (there’s not even 3 in-game days worth of voice recording done at the moment), and it won’t be done anytime soon. I can only apologize again for this, as it was a feature we had promised, but we’re completely unable to deliver it at the moment. I hope it will not prevent the people planning to wait for the voice acting to play Inciting Incident.

7 - Other Lucid9 related mini-projects

In order to make up for the lack of Lucid9 related content for you all to enjoy while we work on the sequel, I’ve organized with Elphaze a new official “Lucid9 4-Koma” section on the blog where we’ll regularly post funny 4-komas for everyone to read an enjoy. For those who don’t know what 4-komas are, it’s a very short comical story told in the form of a manga page with 4 panels. You can also submit your own 4-koma ideas, and we’ll pick the most interesting / funniest ones to draw from time to time! Here is the first 4-koma made by Elphaze: https://i.imgur.com/KsisDYV.jpg Anyway, that’s it for this long update. Sorry again for being so slow with the development of the sequel, and thank you all for bearing with us. 2018 will be an important year for the Lucid9 project as I fully intend to make as much progress as possible toward a release. And thanks again for your support, it really means a lot to us all and is one of our biggest motivations when working on Lucid9! What? Are you saying it’s Valentines and usually we share an illustration on that day? Oh wait, talking about Valentines, it seems Yahiko’s overwhelming popularity earned him quite a lot of chocolate… http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/23787815/ae606f55aca148cc7e3c0b781b48c50087e7a45f.jpg (This is actually his post Inciting Incident design!) See you next time! Diamonit - Fallen Snow Studios

Hello folks, it’s been a while! First of all, I really wanted to apologize for the lack of updates on steam, we tend to prefer posting through out Lucid9 blog and through our Twitter and Facebook. So if you'd like to get more frequent news, make sure to subscribe to our various pages! It has been a while since we last shared substantial news about the state of progress for Inciting Incident’s sequel, and an even longer time since I wrote a blogpost (the two are more or less related, to tell the truth). There’s a lot to say, so you can expect this post to be pretty long.

1 - Thank you

First of all, I wanted to thank you all for the amazing reception we got at the release of Inciting Incident. It couldn’t make us any happier to see people read and enjoy the story we’ve prepared for them. Still, to this day, we regularly receive messages from people telling us how they felt when reading Inciting Incident, and even though we are not always able to reply, we’re extremely grateful for your support! Of course, we do realize that Inciting Incident created (rather high) expectations for the sequel, and this is partly why things have been taking so long.

2 - What we’ve been up to for the past two years

Long story short; when we finished Inciting Incident, we more or less had a vague idea of the story’s direction. More precisely, I knew how the sequel would start and how it would conclude, but everything in between was still a work in progress. That’s when issues started to arise. We’ve had creative disagreements regarding how the rest of the story should be handled. Our Inciting Incident main writer, Luna, also left to pursue her own project (I really recommend you to check it out here if you haven’t heard of it already), which left me trying to find a new recruit to fill in her shoes for her route, something that would end up becoming quite the difficult task. In the months following the release, we continued to discuss the continuation of the story. We continued to become more and more frustrated after discussions, especially since we were ambitious and wanted to create something that wouldn’t let the readers down, but proposed concepts were often debated over. We didn’t share the same ideologies in terms of story writing. Frankly, all of this was really getting to me, and I was getting really tired of it all (add the fact that I had worked nearly non stop for half a year in order to make sure Inciting Incident release would be a success), and I ended up losing motivation and becoming less and less active. It’s at around this time that I asked David to temporarily replace me since I needed a break from Lucid9. Truth be told, I sometimes considered to quit at that point. After all, the release of Inciting Incident was a success and left me really satisfied with what I had accomplished. But there was always the nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I couldn’t really let it all remain unfinished like this, and that a lot of people were actually waiting for the sequel. I couldn’t let them down. Months passed, and a number of writers came and left. Elizabeth’s previous writer was replaced by Via. Nugget took over Suna’s role as Akira’s Route writer but was eventually replaced by Reddly. Clestae was also bogged down by real life commitments, and as a result, had to resign from her writer position to become an editor. DJ is currently filling in as Airi’s writer, who has done some very good work so far, and you can all expect him to do Airi’s route justice. Via joining the team is what motivated me to get involved in Lucid9 again, as he had a good head on his shoulders, shared (or at least understood) my thought process when creating or commenting on the content, and was always willing to work out all the details for his route and the world lore in general. Eventually, at the end of 2017, I was fully directing Lucid9 again, and here I am now writing this update. I’m also extremely grateful to David who held the fort while I was not motivated enough to work on Lucid9. Without him, the project would probably have died back then. ​

3 - What concrete progress has been made so far?

Here are how things stand currently for Lucid9’s sequel :

• Quite a lot of background art has been completed. Expect to see Yama visit new places that were only mentioned previously in Inciting Incident.
• The writing is finally showing progress. Of course, the amount of progress varies from writer to writer, but most of them have gotten a good grip on their characters and how to naturally write them so that dialogue and narration remain close to the one in Inciting Incident. The lore has been greatly expanded, and every route is planned out. So really, from now on, it’s a matter of writing regularly (and I’ll be here to make sure that progress is indeed done regularly).
• Music hasn’t seen much progress at the moment, but we’ve been trying to remedy that. Expect more music in the future.
• Most of the male characters have their first sprite done while the female cast is still mostly in development. Dizzy, the female characters artist, decided to improve her drawing style, so the female sprites might look a bit different than what you got used to in Inciting Incident. Here is a sneak peak of the current Airi’s design for the sequel :

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/23787815/fe26addf1e71093bef680ecb112e1a18b6b053d8.png

4 - Content of the sequel (Slight spoilers)

It would be pretty unfair to give you a progress update without talking a bit about the content of the sequel, especially considering the abrupt and shocking way Inciting Incident ended. A word about the structure of this sequel first. As some of you might (or might not) know, Inciting Incident is supposed to be a “Common Route”. In Visual Novels, a Common Route is often an introductory segment of the story that presents the universe and the characters until it eventually splits onto various paths called “Routes”. Each Route focuses on a different heroine. Inciting Incident ends right at the conclusion of the Common Route, which means the sequel will split into 4 Routes (one for each heroine), and the choice of that route is determined by the previous choices you’ve made in Inciting Incident. So basically, you can expect the sequel to be 4 distinct parallel stories following Yama and each respective heroine. As for the content in itself, I won't reveal too much as I’d rather avoid spoilers. The only thing that I’ll say is that the story will resume 3 years after we left Yama at the end of Inciting Incident. That also explains why the new designs for the male and female characters look more mature, they are actually all older than in Inciting Incident. Finally, at this point it’s very likely there will be a third part to Lucid9, which would correspond to a “True Route”; the final route of the VN which should happen in parallel to the heroine routes once again. The true route should tie everything up from Inciting Incident and the Heroine routes, and answer all the questions that have remained unanswered.

5 - Date of release for Part 2

We haven’t decided on a date yet. I won’t try to give any estimation as it’s very likely that it’ll end up being not respected, so I can only ask you for your patience and for you to wait until we have progressed enough for me to confidently set a release date. But we’ll take as much time as necessary to ensure that the sequel will live up to everyone’s expectations.

6 - Voice Acting for Inciting Incident

I know that voice acting was supposed to be implemented in 2017, and I’m very sorry for the people who are eagerly waiting for this update, but unfortunately, it will have to be postponed indefinitely. There are several reasons for this decision. On the VA side, we have had multiple cast changes and departures due to various reasons, and each time, we've had to scramble to fill in replacements. Furthermore, the work is unpaid, which makes it very difficult for the voice actors to set Lucid9 as a priority. (At this point, some of you might wonder about crowdfunding, but we stand by our decision against a crowdfunding campaign for various reasons.) On our side, we’ve been unable to provide the necessary support to the voice acting recording sessions, as we have our hands full with the development of the sequel. As a result, things have been really slow (there’s not even 3 in-game days worth of voice recording done at the moment), and it won’t be done anytime soon. I can only apologize again for this, as it was a feature we had promised, but we’re completely unable to deliver it at the moment. I hope it will not prevent the people planning to wait for the voice acting to play Inciting Incident.

7 - Other Lucid9 related mini-projects

In order to make up for the lack of Lucid9 related content for you all to enjoy while we work on the sequel, I’ve organized with Elphaze a new official “Lucid9 4-Koma” section on the blog where we’ll regularly post funny 4-komas for everyone to read an enjoy. For those who don’t know what 4-komas are, it’s a very short comical story told in the form of a manga page with 4 panels. You can also submit your own 4-koma ideas, and we’ll pick the most interesting / funniest ones to draw from time to time! Here is the first 4-koma made by Elphaze: https://i.imgur.com/KsisDYV.jpg Anyway, that’s it for this long update. Sorry again for being so slow with the development of the sequel, and thank you all for bearing with us. 2018 will be an important year for the Lucid9 project as I fully intend to make as much progress as possible toward a release. And thanks again for your support, it really means a lot to us all and is one of our biggest motivations when working on Lucid9! What? Are you saying it’s Valentines and usually we share an illustration on that day? Oh wait, talking about Valentines, it seems Yahiko’s overwhelming popularity earned him quite a lot of chocolate… http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/23787815/ae606f55aca148cc7e3c0b781b48c50087e7a45f.jpg (This is actually his post Inciting Incident design!) See you next time! Diamonit - Fallen Snow Studios

We're glad to announce that Lucid9: Inciting Incident is now playable on Linux as well! We're sorry for the wait, and we hope you'll enjoy playing through the game. We're also regularly patching the game in order to correct the various bugs we encounter. If you happen to have an issue as well, make sure to contact us through the steam discussions forums, we'll make sure to try to fix any bugs you might encounter.

We're glad to announce that Lucid9: Inciting Incident is now playable on Linux as well! We're sorry for the wait, and we hope you'll enjoy playing through the game. We're also regularly patching the game in order to correct the various bugs we encounter. If you happen to have an issue as well, make sure to contact us through the steam discussions forums, we'll make sure to try to fix any bugs you might encounter.

We're all very excited and very anxious regarding the release: it's the result of two years worth of effort that we are finally presenting to the world. But we believe that you, readers, should be the only ones deciding whether our work is something that will stay as a memorable story or not. We've done pretty much all we could to ensure that Lucid9 would be of the best quality possible, and we don't have any regrets regarding that. Whether you've followed our project for a while, or whether you've just stumbled upon it a while ago through one of our numerous announcements (by the way, big thanks to Sekai Project for helping us spreading the awareness about Lucid9), I believe it would probably be a good idea to summarize all the stuff you should know about the release. I'm most likely only going to repeat stuff that was already said, but I want to avoid people starting to read Inciting Incident with false expectations. And maybe you'll be able to appreciate our work even more by knowing our circumstances?

Things you should know about the game in general:

• This release is the first part of Lucid9's story. I guess you could consider that Lucid9 is somehow episodic. If you're more familiar with how VNs work, Inciting Incident can identify as a common route, though unlike most VNs, this common route has a self-contained story and is actually plot driven. The next release (which should be a patch to the current release) should continue directly onto the different heroine routes, though we're still a long way to go.
• Inciting Incident is free, and the entirety of Lucid9 will be free as well. Though I can't swear that I'm a hundred percent sure it'll stay that way. The chances remain very high still, it's just that if it happens that going commercial is the only way to lead Lucid9 to completion, we might consider it.
• The voice acting patch is scheduled for 2017. We've been repeating that everywhere, but just to make sure, recording the lines of the voice actors is a lengthy process, especially when considering that all the voice actors are doing it for free as well, we can't expect them to put the recording sessions as one of their priority, which is only natural. Currently, nearly all of the lines for the first in game day has been recorded. We'll make sure to share progress regularly with you about that.

Things you should know about the team:

• The creation of Lucid9 so far has been achieved with a $0 budget. While we're not exactly bragging about it (maybe a little), it's more of a reminder so that you can set up your expectations more accurately, and understand better our limitations. Basically, we have to work with what we have, and the people who agreed to offer their skills for our project. Beggars can't be choosers after all. Though I'm not one bit dissatisfied with how the end result turned out, and tons of people with amazing skills joined us in order to create a memorable and enjoyable game.
• We are all hobbyists working on Lucid9 in our free time. Which ties in directly with the previous point: for such a large scale game, we had to compensate our lack of available time involvement by more manpower. Which in turns can cause some slight issues, mainly some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies in art (male and female sprites), music, writing (though that won't be the case for Inciting Incident, since there was only one writer for 95% of the writing). Some people will argue that we could just have made a less ambitious game, shorter, with less characters, so that it could have required less assets. But to be honest, that's not what we wanted to do. And I believe that precisely because we were ambitious that we managed to interest and gather so many skilled people around us (though there's also luck factoring in the equation).

Things you should know about the story:

• Inciting Incident will be mostly linear. Still, the choices that you'll make can lead you to a bad ending. Those bad endings are quite interesting, and we'd recommend you to try reading one or two.
• You'll have lot of in game choices, but since we didn't want to make the process too tedious for the reader, most of the mystery related sections are forgiving and the choices are set up in a way so that you never get stuck (except for two special instances that we'll let you discover yourself). Some of the choices are more important, as stated previously there are some moments where making a bad decision (or a series of bad decisions) will lead you to a bad end.
• You'll be able to unlock in-game achievements: we hope that it will give some replay value to the game, though we made sure that the achievements wouldn't be too tedious and wouldn't require 10 different playthroughs to complete. We're not really fans of completion achievements, so you'll nearly only find choice related achievements, which ties in with the choice system we opted for in the mystery segments: you'll be rewarded with achievements if you don't end up picking the wrong choices during the investigations (and here is an additional challenge from us, try to earn those achievements on your first playthrough!)
• It has a Japanese setting. And we know that it will probably annoy a lot of people, and even probably instantly repulse some others. "Why not go for something more original?" some people often ask. Well, mostly because at the time, we wanted to make something that takes place in (fictional) Japan. And at the time (though it's still true now), what mattered wasn't what our possible audience would want to read, but what we wanted to do. And the more we progressed with our story conception, the more bothersome and difficult it became to change the setting, so naturally we never really questioned it. I won't deny that us being influenced by Japanese VNs played a big role in deciding the setting. But in the end, a setting is only a setting. At the end of the day, it's only a location, a language, a currency, and maybe a slightly different social system. Lucid9 could have happened pretty much anywhere without many big differences, though if I was given the chance to remake this choice, I'd probably think twice. But if some people want to judge our work and dismiss it solely based on the setting and without actually trying out the actual content, it'll be their loss I guess, they will just forbid themselves to experience our story because of their narrow-mindedness.

http://lucid9.weebly.com/uploads/2/0/3/1/20314597/384990_orig.jpg A big thanks to the members of Fallen Snow Studios who worked very hard to make Lucid9 become a reality, and a big thanks to all the people who supported us up until now. We hope you'll enjoy reading Inciting Incident as much as we enjoyed creating it!

We're all very excited and very anxious regarding the release: it's the result of two years worth of effort that we are finally presenting to the world. But we believe that you, readers, should be the only ones deciding whether our work is something that will stay as a memorable story or not. We've done pretty much all we could to ensure that Lucid9 would be of the best quality possible, and we don't have any regrets regarding that. Whether you've followed our project for a while, or whether you've just stumbled upon it a while ago through one of our numerous announcements (by the way, big thanks to Sekai Project for helping us spreading the awareness about Lucid9), I believe it would probably be a good idea to summarize all the stuff you should know about the release. I'm most likely only going to repeat stuff that was already said, but I want to avoid people starting to read Inciting Incident with false expectations. And maybe you'll be able to appreciate our work even more by knowing our circumstances?

Things you should know about the game in general:

• This release is the first part of Lucid9's story. I guess you could consider that Lucid9 is somehow episodic. If you're more familiar with how VNs work, Inciting Incident can identify as a common route, though unlike most VNs, this common route has a self-contained story and is actually plot driven. The next release (which should be a patch to the current release) should continue directly onto the different heroine routes, though we're still a long way to go.
• Inciting Incident is free, and the entirety of Lucid9 will be free as well. Though I can't swear that I'm a hundred percent sure it'll stay that way. The chances remain very high still, it's just that if it happens that going commercial is the only way to lead Lucid9 to completion, we might consider it.
• The voice acting patch is scheduled for 2017. We've been repeating that everywhere, but just to make sure, recording the lines of the voice actors is a lengthy process, especially when considering that all the voice actors are doing it for free as well, we can't expect them to put the recording sessions as one of their priority, which is only natural. Currently, nearly all of the lines for the first in game day has been recorded. We'll make sure to share progress regularly with you about that.

Things you should know about the team:

• The creation of Lucid9 so far has been achieved with a $0 budget. While we're not exactly bragging about it (maybe a little), it's more of a reminder so that you can set up your expectations more accurately, and understand better our limitations. Basically, we have to work with what we have, and the people who agreed to offer their skills for our project. Beggars can't be choosers after all. Though I'm not one bit dissatisfied with how the end result turned out, and tons of people with amazing skills joined us in order to create a memorable and enjoyable game.
• We are all hobbyists working on Lucid9 in our free time. Which ties in directly with the previous point: for such a large scale game, we had to compensate our lack of available time involvement by more manpower. Which in turns can cause some slight issues, mainly some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies in art (male and female sprites), music, writing (though that won't be the case for Inciting Incident, since there was only one writer for 95% of the writing). Some people will argue that we could just have made a less ambitious game, shorter, with less characters, so that it could have required less assets. But to be honest, that's not what we wanted to do. And I believe that precisely because we were ambitious that we managed to interest and gather so many skilled people around us (though there's also luck factoring in the equation).

Things you should know about the story:

• Inciting Incident will be mostly linear. Still, the choices that you'll make can lead you to a bad ending. Those bad endings are quite interesting, and we'd recommend you to try reading one or two.
• You'll have lot of in game choices, but since we didn't want to make the process too tedious for the reader, most of the mystery related sections are forgiving and the choices are set up in a way so that you never get stuck (except for two special instances that we'll let you discover yourself). Some of the choices are more important, as stated previously there are some moments where making a bad decision (or a series of bad decisions) will lead you to a bad end.
• You'll be able to unlock in-game achievements: we hope that it will give some replay value to the game, though we made sure that the achievements wouldn't be too tedious and wouldn't require 10 different playthroughs to complete. We're not really fans of completion achievements, so you'll nearly only find choice related achievements, which ties in with the choice system we opted for in the mystery segments: you'll be rewarded with achievements if you don't end up picking the wrong choices during the investigations (and here is an additional challenge from us, try to earn those achievements on your first playthrough!)
• It has a Japanese setting. And we know that it will probably annoy a lot of people, and even probably instantly repulse some others. "Why not go for something more original?" some people often ask. Well, mostly because at the time, we wanted to make something that takes place in (fictional) Japan. And at the time (though it's still true now), what mattered wasn't what our possible audience would want to read, but what we wanted to do. And the more we progressed with our story conception, the more bothersome and difficult it became to change the setting, so naturally we never really questioned it. I won't deny that us being influenced by Japanese VNs played a big role in deciding the setting. But in the end, a setting is only a setting. At the end of the day, it's only a location, a language, a currency, and maybe a slightly different social system. Lucid9 could have happened pretty much anywhere without many big differences, though if I was given the chance to remake this choice, I'd probably think twice. But if some people want to judge our work and dismiss it solely based on the setting and without actually trying out the actual content, it'll be their loss I guess, they will just forbid themselves to experience our story because of their narrow-mindedness.

http://lucid9.weebly.com/uploads/2/0/3/1/20314597/384990_orig.jpg A big thanks to the members of Fallen Snow Studios who worked very hard to make Lucid9 become a reality, and a big thanks to all the people who supported us up until now. We hope you'll enjoy reading Inciting Incident as much as we enjoyed creating it!