Half-Life: A Place in the West News

Hey folks,

It’s time to ring in the end of the year. And what a year it has been. For us, it saw the completion of our plans to remake Chapters 1 and 2 of our comic, which we successfully released last week. It was an enormous relief, and we’re very excited to start making some real headway on our story, starting with Chapter 7: The Dark Between the Stars.

Progress on 7 is already underway and is slated for a Spring release. It’s the halfway point in our story which sees the battle between Long, Rajani and Banks reach its dramatic and explosive conclusion. Here’s a small taster of what’s to come:



Following up from last week's release, we also have some things we're working on behind the scenes. The Soundtracks have been converted into being actual Soundtracks, and will be made available within the app again. We're also having a chat in the discussion boards about the image quality & compression, feel free to drop by there and weigh in if you have any thoughts on it! We'll be making tweaks there shortly.

Finally, we're also aware of an error that occurs when launching through Steam on Ubuntu (note that the app does work when launched from the folder, and that there are PDFs available). I'm going to be getting one of my machines set up with Ubuntu so I can properly diagnose & fix that.

In the meantime, the Steam Winter Sale has just started, and we’ve discounted every chapter including both volumes of the soundtrack. It's a better time than ever to get into the comic if you haven't before. And if you have, gift it to someone you like. Thank you for your support throughout the year, and we’ll see you in 2021.

Mike and Ross

Hey gang,

We’re extremely excited to announce that the remakes of Chapters 1 and 2 have finally arrived! This release features many things, not the least of which is Chapter 1: Following Portents, Interlude 1.5: The Vortessence, Chapter 2: A Very Modern Major General, and Interlude 2.5: The Hand of Destiny (is charred).

The new chapters can be read by using our app through Steam, or by viewing the PDFs in your Steam → Steam Apps → Common → Half-Life A Place in the West folder. The original versions of these chapters can also still be accessed via the app. If you have already purchased Chapter 2, you’ll receive the new version for free, and if you haven’t, then when you do purchase it you’ll receive both versions. Chapter 1 and the other interludes are, of course, as free as they ever were.



OH, IT’S HAPPENING, KEMP. IT’S ALL HAPPENING.

So, that would in itself be enough for celebration, right? But we’re not stopping there. We’ve also added covers and new pages to all of the existing interludes - typically just one or two here and there that expand on the story. Still not enough? Alright.

We’ve also included Interlude 6.5: The Enemy in the Clouds as part of this release, which should help tide things over until the next chapter. It’s a curious interlude, pulling back the veil on the cosmic nature of our story:

"Close to a century prior to the Black Mesa Incident, two mysterious operatives are dispatched to an experimental Combine science station on a distant world to complete a secret mission. There they discover a hidden transmission that leads deep into the heart of the Combine regime, one which hints at an insidious plot to transform the very fabric of all reality…”



And finally, we’ve also rebuilt the app. We’ll leave you to discover some of the new features on your own, but in short it moves away from the Source-style menus and adopts more of its own identity. It finally has a two-page spread view, as well as support for Mac Catalina, and should in general be a lot smaller and more performant. (We’ve also relaunched our website for anyone who checks those things.)

With well over 100 new pages, this is by far our largest release to date.

The only bad news is that we’ve temporarily dropped support for the Russian translations. We’re working on getting everything over to Vsevolod Stepanov and Pavel Lapinsky but there’s simply so much new content that it will likely take some time for them to get through.

But let me follow that up with more good news - Chapter 7: The Dark Between the Stars is already in production! It will be 38 pages as opposed to the usual 30 (at no extra cost) and should be released sometime around March/April (but don’t quote me on that). It raises the stakes quite a bit as we enter into the halfway point of the story.

We just want to express once more how grateful we are for your patience as we spent this year correcting our past mistakes. We weren’t really sure what the reception would be, and now that the release is out, we hope you agree with us that it was the right decision. It’s all forward from here.

We hope you’re excited about what’s to come. We certainly are.

Mike and Ross

Hey gang!

Today is our anniversary. It’s been exactly four years since we launched on Steam. Where that time’s gone we can’t quite say for sure, but we think we’ve used it well: six chapters, not including the remakes, and several interludes, bringing us just shy of the halfway mark in A Place in the West’s story.

It’s a lot of content, and we couldn’t be prouder of our team, past and present: Kristian Rossi, Ester Salguero, DC Hopkins, and formerly Javier Puga, Ivan Miranda, Heath Heil, and Rachel Deering. We’re so privileged to work with such phenomenally talented people, and each of them, in their own way, have taken our little slice of Half-Life to places we didn’t dare dream of when we set out. So, to them, thank you.

And of course, thank you, all of you—there’s no comic without readers, and we’re so grateful for your time and interest.

We haven’t planned anything big for this anniversary because we are on the very cusp of completing the remakes. In the coming weeks we'll be pushing them out the door, as well as putting our entire catalog on sale. We’re so excited about the remakes and can’t wait to get ‘em in your hands. It’s something like 80+ pages, by far our biggest ever release.



That release will be accompanied by a new website and a new app, both of which were designed to be sleeker and more accessible. The site’s done with the app close to following suit. Here's a preview of the new landing page of the app.



Additionally, we’ve added several pages to our interludes. We call them 'bookends'. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for awhile, but it made sense to wait until the big release. They’re a bit experimental, form-wise. Here, for instance, is a piece of text from Interlude 1: The Vortessence.



I know it must seem like we’ve been working away at these remakes for the best part of forever. And it’s true: we have. But it’s equally true that 2020 has been a trying and difficult year, and it’s delayed our plans somewhat. I think that’s true of everyone on the planet.

We are hoping for a better, brighter 2021. If we’re lucky we won’t just be releasing Chapter 7 next year. But we’ll see. We’ll see…

In the meantime, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts. And we’ll be back very, very soon with the remakes.

Mike and Ross

Hey gang,

Just a quick update from us as we head into the summer. As ever we hope you’re all keeping safe and well.

As you know, the bulk of our efforts this year have been spent remaking Chapters 1, 1.5, 2, and 2.5. Right now we’re approaching the halfway point in Chapter 2’s production, which like its progenitor is quite a bit larger than our standard chapters – it’s 48 pages in total! But we couldn’t be happier with how it’s coming together and we hope to be able to share it with you later this year. The team are doing an amazing job.



The Steam Summer Sale has just kicked off, which means Chapters 2 – 6, plus the soundtracks, are all on sale. We hope you take the opportunity to check them out. Again, if you’ve already purchased Chapter 2 or intend to purchase it before the remake is released, you’ll receive the remake for no additional cost. And, of course, Chapters 1, 1.5, and 2.5 will remain free.



Come the release of the remakes we’ll also be launching a new app (sleeker, smaller, better), a new website, and a couple other things, too. It’s going to be a big release for us (our largest to date!) and we’re pretty excited about it. And then, once that’s done, it’s straight on to the end, starting with 6.5 and then Chapter 7: The Dark Between the Stars… More on those to come.

Thanks for reading.

Mike and Ross

Hey gang,

Firstly, we hope you’re all safe and healthy during what is undoubtedly a very challenging and tumultuous time.



As far as A Place in the West is concerned, we’re still committed to seeing our plans through to fruition for a summer release. Chapter 1 and 1.5 have both been completed, and production on Chapter 2 will begin in a week’s time.

Given summer is so far away and we haven’t been able to release any content since Chapter 6, we wanted to get something into your hands sooner rather than later. So, we’ve made the first ten pages of the Chapter 1 – "Following Portents" remake available on the app! We hope you like them; the art team have done an incredible job and we couldn’t be prouder of the final result.



We also have an update on the latest Russian translations! Our very talented translation team, Vsevolod Stepanov and Pavel Lapinsky, have completed full translations of Chapter 6 and the new prologue! They’re now available on the app. We know this is something our Russian readers have wanted for a long time, and we’re excited to finally have them out there.

I’m sure we don’t have to remind anyone that we are one week away from the release of a brand-new Half-Life game. Alyx is coming, and we at APW cannot wait. We imagine you’re in the same boat. Stay abreast of our Twitter feed for some Alyx-related content!

Thanks for reading, and take of yourselves.

Mike and Ross