Half-Life: A Place in the West News

Hi all,

The store page for Chapter 5 is now up! “The Eyes of the People” will be launching on Monday, but we wanted to give you an early taste of what it’ll be about and what kinds of things you can expect. This is the first time that we’ve put up a page ahead of time, so if you like it, please let us know!



Chapter 5 wraps up the “Masquerade” arc that began with Chapter 3, “The Pit”. When it goes live, we’ll also have an announcement that teases a bit about what the next arc holds. There will be other goodies coming with this release, so add it to your wishlist and check it out on Monday!

Hey gang!

We just wanted to drop a line on where we’re at right now with the comic, and what you can expect over the course of the next few months.

As most of you no doubt know, the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing, so we have accordingly discounted our entire library – Chapters 3, 4 and the Soundtrack are available at 25% of their regular price, with Chapter 2 reduced by 50%!

If you haven’t already caught up with the comic, now is a great time to do so: Chapter 5, "The Eyes of the People" is scheduled for a July release. We’re very excited about this one – the artists have outdone themselves – and can’t wait to share it with you all. It wraps up a few of the arcs kicked off in Chapter 3 and represents a significant turning point in the story.

So what’s it about?

It’s the night of New Franklin’s annual masquerade banquet, and the city’s political rivals vie for dominance amongst a blind and debauched populace seeking shelter from a wicked blizzard. Governor Moore, aiming to install himself as the city’s leader, plots to assassinate Major General Long at the evening’s end, whilst Long himself prepares to move against Sejal Rajani’s Opposition in an effort to apprehend the vortigaunt Dreyfus.

And on the fringes of the city, away from the lights of the masquerade, Albert Kempinski takes matters into his own hands to find his kidnapped daughter – with disastrous results…



As for our plans for the rest of the year, you can expect a new interlude, as well as for production to begin on Chapter 6, sometime in the fall. There may be some more Surprises coming, too.

In the meantime, enjoy the sale, and keep an eye out for Chapter 5 in the next few weeks!

Ross and Mike

Sometimes, even ~5 years in, you still make mistakes.

It was brought to my attention that I forgot to release the Russian translation for Chapter 4.5, "The Vault of Saph". That's been released this morning, so please do check it out! Vsevolod Stepanov and Pavel Lapinsky continue to do wonderful work, which is hopefully not undermined by my stupidity.

This release includes a PDF of the translation as well, as we've begun to do those regularly to allow everyone more flexibility in how they choose to read the comic (especially since you can take it with you on tablets or phones now!)



In other news, we're about halfway through production on Chapter 5, and we could not be more excited about it. Titled "The Eyes of the People", it takes place at a Masquerade, in which the Governor and his wife put in motion a plan to assassinate Major-General Long and have Sejal take the fall!

Look for more information on it as we come closer to release, within the next couple of months.

Hey gang,

Happy New Year! We’re excited to kick off 2018 with the release of Interlude 4.5: The Vault of Saph, a five-page short that is completely free! Saph sheds further light on the cosmic underpinnings of A Place in the West’s story, expanding the strange phantasmagoric dreamscape first glimpsed at the beginning of Chapter 3. As we’ve said in the past, the interludes are fundamental pieces of the story, and we think of them as “mini-chapters”, but something readers can enjoy for free during the wait between the larger entries.

Speaking of which, where is Chapter 5? With its script complete, The Eyes of the People will enter production very soon. It concludes certain arcs set-up in Chapter 3, and revolves around a masquerade in which Governor Moore plans to assassinate the Major-General. It’s an exciting installment and we can’t wait to share it with you in the coming months.

We're also proud to finally release the Russian translation for Chapter 4: A Spy in the House of Long, courtesy of Vsevolod Stepanov and Pavel Lapinsky. The Vault of Saph is soon to follow! This release also includes some bug fixes, including a particularly odd one where reading Chapter 1: Following Portents in German would randomly change to Czech!

Finally, we are also very pleased to announce the inclusion of brand-new PDF files for each and every chapter, so that you no longer have to read the comic via the Steam app! It is something that readers have been asking for for a long time, particularly with wanting to read it on phones and tablets, and we’re happy to have added it! From now on, when you purchase a new chapter, the comic will immediately be made available as a PDF file in your Steam Directory, including all of the languages the comic currently supports.

We hope you all enjoy this update, and as ever, let us know what you think!

Ross and Mike

Hey gang,

We're very excited to announce the release of Chapter 4 of our fan-made Half-Life comic, A Place in the West. Once again coming in at a total of 30 pages, Chapter 4 – titled A Spy in the House of Long – picks up immediately after the events of the third chapter. The fallout from the Pit disaster spreads throughout the city, bringing its competing factions into conflict. Fearing a loss of power, Governor Moore acts to quell Sejal Rajani's Opposition - a group of dissenters with a radical plan for the city's future - forcing Major-General Long to resort to extreme measures to reassert control.

Chapter 4 was created by the same art team that delivered The Pit – Kristian Rossi (pencils), Ivan Miranda (inks), Ester Salguero (colours) and Javier Puga (letters) – and features some of the most visually arresting scenes from the comic so far. We couldn't be happier with the finished product, and we're convinced it's the best yet.

Hopefully you will, too.



The script for Chapter 5 – titled The Eyes of the People – has been completed and is undergoing a few final adjustments before going into production early next year. It marks the end of the present, 3-chapter arc ("Masquerade" as we call it), and brings some of the current storylines to what we hope is a pretty dramatic conclusion!

Of course, before you get to see that we'll be delivering the third interlude (small, 3-5 page shorts released for free) somewhere within January/February. We're really eager to get this one into your hands – it's similarly cosmic in setting as Nal Sidian was, but unlike that piece of Dreyfus' backstory, it really gets the narrative's wheels moving, and delivers something of a game-changer. More on that (and other things) in the new year...

In the meantime, please do enjoy Chapter 4, and, as ever, let us know what you think!

Ross and Mike