Half-Life: A Place in the West News

Hey all,

We’re very proud to announce the release of Interlude 7.5 – Castle Okno! It’s eight pages in length and, as is our custom with the interludes, totally free: just boot up the app or check your Steam directory for the PDF.



[h3]What’s it about?[/h3]

Over a year before Leyla and Dreyfus arrive in North America, they infiltrate a Combine weather station in Eastern Europe - Castle Okno - on a secret mission.

It’s brought to you by Ross Joseph Gardner, Michael Pelletier, Kristian Rossi, Ester Salguero, and DC Hopkins.

[h3]What’s up next? [/h3]

Well, that'd be Chapter 8 - Remnant. Unfortunately the ongoing pandemic has contributed to our efforts being slowed somewhat, but we're excited to kick into gear with it in the new year. Chapter 8 contains some big revelations.

We will also have more changes coming! We're going to prioritize reworking the images and PDFs to be a higher quality without hopefully cutting into file size too much. Special thanks to monad for his continued assistance in that regard. Russian translations are still in the works, but we have no update on that front. Separately, our friend Artur Neufeld has also been working tirelessly on a German translation! He has the first 4.5 chapters translated, but there's still a little bit left to do on them before release. Here's an early sneak peek.



In the meantime, check out 7.5 and tell us what you think! Speak soon.

Mike and Ross

Hey gang,

We just wanted to drop a quick word to say that the Steam Autumn Sale is now live and we've discounted every chapter of the comic as well as both volumes of the soundtrack. If you haven't checked them out yet, go go go!

We're also on the cusp of releasing interlude 7.5 - Castle Okno. It's an 8-page story that details a key event in Leyla's past. As a teaser, here's the first page.



See you in a couple of weeks!

Mike and Ross

Hello gang,

We hope you’ve had a stellar summer. As we head into autumn, we thought we’d give you an update on where we’re at and what to expect for the rest of the year.

We want to first take a moment to celebrate our five year anniversary of being on Steam! It's a huge milestone for us - Five years ago, Ross and I were huddled around a laptop together in Boston, pushing out the first build of the app, and preparing for the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle.



A whole lot has changed in the world since then, and that’s true of us, too. Five chapters, two remakes, several interludes – it’s a lot of pages, and puts us squarely at the halfway point in our story. We’d prefer not to take another five years wrapping things up, but comics are an expensive business.

Which brings us to the remainder of 2021. Whilst our original plan was to have Chapter 8: Remnant well into production by now, it sadly wasn’t an affordable prospect. At present, Interlude 7.5: Castle Okno is partway through its production cycle, and will be released before the end of the year, with Remnant firing up in early 2022.

In accordance with the big anniversary, we’ve discounted all chapters and both volumes of the soundtrack by a whopping 75%. The sale will run for the duration of the day, so if you haven’t checked out the later chapters, now is a great time to do so!

We’ll see you in a few weeks. Thanks for sticking with us!

Mike and Ross

The Steam Summer Sale is now live, which means chapters 2 through to 6, plus both soundtracks, are now sale! We hope you’ll take this opportunity to pick up any chapters you’ve yet to read. We're officially halfway through our story!



It's been a real honour to see Chapter 7 – The Dark Between The Stars so positively received. Up next is Interlude 7.5 – Castle Okno, which will be released for free later this year. It’s a flashback to Leyla’s time in Eastern Europe, and takes us to a Combine weather station somewhere in the outlands… We’ll have more details very soon.

We are also still working on getting the Achievements fixed, and would like to apologize once again for the length of time that it is taking. Our friends Vsevolod Stepanov and Pavel Lapinsky are also hard at work on the Russian translations.

In the meantime, do pick up the other chapters – whether it’s for yourself, your significant other, your folks, your cat, your dog, whoever or whatever. Literally anyone.

Thanks for reading.

Mike and Ross

Hey folks!

We’re very pleased to announce that Chapter 7: The Dark Between the Stars has been released. It marks the halfway point in our story and features 38 pages of all-new artwork by Kristian Rossi, Ester Salguero, and DC Hopkins.



It’s an incredibly exciting chapter that sees the comic’s setting, New Franklin, descend into civil war as Long, Rajani, and Banks fight for control of its future.

Next up is Interlude 7.5: Castle Okno, which will be released for free later this year. It’s a flashback to Leyla’s time in Eastern Europe, and takes us to a Combine portal monitoring station somewhere in the wilderness…



But that’s not all we’re working on. We know the wait between chapters is long. It’s not ideal, but comics are incredibly expensive and are funded by our jobs. We can only make what we can afford. However, we want to introduce more content that expands the comic’s world and gives our readers something to enjoy in those months when we’re in production.

First up is a prequel novel written by Ross. It’s called Half-Life: Phase Transition and takes place a few years before the events of A Place in the West. The story follows a helicopter pilot called Ray who is shipped to Eastern Europe in the first weeks of the Combine occupation, where he meets a young Leyla Poirier and joins her on a journey into the heart of City 17. We’ll start releasing it for free, one chapter a week, towards the end of the year.



Secondly we’re putting a third soundtrack volume into production. It will once again come courtesy of the very talented Chris Jolley, whose work you can check out here. The third volume comes with a twist: it will feature a narrative component, exploring the life of a particular set of people in New Franklin.

We’re very excited about all of these projects and the comic’s future – it’s going to be an exciting and surprising year! As ever, please do share news of the comic, leave us a review, and check us on Twitter and Discord.

Mike and Ross

PS: In case you missed it, we have Achievements currently disabled. You can read more about this in our news post from yesterday. We hope to have this resolved soon!