#sigcorp series

[jei-rifni]

They are so!! ThEY ARE SOO!!!! RAHHHH!!!!!!!!!

[randomsprinkles]

Probably like 5 people are gonna know what this is referring to but I just played the to the moon beach episode and I’m going absolutely feral over Rosawatts

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Finally got the chance to finish the Beach Episode

I am. in pain.

[breadplate]

What does everybody think the sigcorp series characters sound like. I need to see other people's sigcorp voice claims I BEG

[wybienova]

i dream of lavender fields

[badkunz]

"...Just a while longer, okay?"

[dragonsareawesome123]

[esfersart]

I don’t know what’s real If an ending is ever good enough Maybe it never is Maybe it never was —  World in a Memory 

[sunbloomdew]

ttm beach episode spoilers below!

something about how the game lets you decide when to end it all and come back to reality. press esc to leave. how it would be up to eva how long she'd stay there on that beach, but knowing she could never remain there forever. just a little while longer. something about how it greets you with the same image if you decide to open it again. the truth is, i never actually felt that way. do you begin the cycle again or do you find comfort in that temporary ending? and i just can't get past that it's the one i didn't want.

something about how player's actions represent eva coming back to the machine searching for closure. did she find it? will she? will we?

while it was only my first (of many) playthroughs, i think the way the game portrays dealing with grief is really heartwrenching and beautiful in how real but fleeting it all is.

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

To the Moon Beach Episode will launch on September 20, 2024, and the original To the Moon is coming to PS/Xbox

The Beach Episode is initially releasing in English & Chinese, with more languages coming by end of year ([the team] will try their best to get all the languages from the previous games in there)!

The playtime is approximately 2.5 - 3 hours.

It will initially be on PC (Steam + hopefully Humble & GOG) for sure, but [they] will also try to make Mac & Linux in-time. (Thanks to Ancu & Ali's work from before, it could be doable.)

Serenity Forge has stepped up to bring To the Moon to Playstation and XBox! Hopefully an exciting collaboration for more things in the future too. 😉

In fact, they've also created a memory snow globe of a scene from the Beach episode available when the game launches. d-(' ' d-) ([Kan] thinks there's a preorder open next week too.)

Onto the last mile! Thanks for the support everyone.

Source: Discord

[questioninglogic]

me playing Just a To the Moon Series Beach Episode for the first time: oh this is neat, it's made so that you can replay it again and again to see all the choices you can make!

after finishing the game:

[jei-rifni]

They are everything to me

[mozukumi]

"No, I mean… Of course I'm dead. That's why, you know…all this. But it's just…strange hearing you say it out loud. I guess we just never really talked like this here since then."

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

December Writing Challenge: Day 4

To the three Lynri and Quincy enjoyers out there... this one's for you.

Just a little something cute set during their university days.

Full story below the cut

“No, no…”

“Snrk… you’re gonna miss it if you keep covering your face.”

“No, it’s so bad…”

“That’s the whole point of a bad movie night!”

“I don’t think I can do this,” Lynri muttered, still covering her mouth. She squinted at the screen and her breath hitched. She leaned in closer, uncertain if she saw what she thought she had just seen.

“I think his sword vanished in the previous shot and then reappeared out of thin air.”

“No way, did it really?” Quincy gasped. He reached towards his laptop and eagerly clicked back several times to rewind the movie. The fan whirred a little, apparently not enjoying the load. The movie jittered and lagged before starting up again at the previous scene.

The two leaned in closer as the protagonist, shirtless and with rather ridiculously defined abs, raced into a burning building. The camera very obviously cut away in a janky transition as he raced into the burning building again from a different angle, whipping out the sword strapped to his back to clear away the flames - the sword which was decidedly not there in the previous shot.

“Oh my god!” Quincy exclaimed delightedly.

“Oh my god.”

Lynri put her head in her hands, trying and failing to hold back a giggle.

For a moment, she didn’t resurface, simply listening to the sound of sporadic explosions ring through the tinny speakers, feeling the coolness of the library window at her back, and rubbing away the residual ache of her tired eyes from many nights spent studying. If she ignored the film itself, she could privately admit this had been a rather nice way to celebrate the end of exams for the term. The library was completely quiet except for the quiet sounds of the movie at low volume; empty, except for the two of them. Lynri eased her mind for the first time in several weeks from thoughts of neuroanatomy and memory facilitation strategies and cortical imaging equipment, relaxing into the cool glass behind her, the solidness of the low bookshelf’s ledge where she sat, and the warmth where her friend’s arm pressed into hers.

“Hey,” he said, nudging her a little. “You’re gonna lose the plot.”

Lynri sputtered and looked up at the screen, where it seemed like the ninetieth explosion had gone off in the same burning building.

“What plot is there to lose?”

“Uh, well,” Quincy said, grinning and pointing at the screen. “So, Abs here is swinging his sword. Cutting through the flames.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And there’s bad guys shooting at him.”

“Mm.”

“They must have some weird bullets because every single one has exploded.”

“Okay, but who are the bad guys?”

“Uh…” Quincy adopted a serious thinking pose as he peered closer at the screen. “A gang, I guess? I don’t think they were ever introduced.”

“Well, who needs a set up when you’ve got explosions?”

“Exactly!”

One of the gang members fell from a burning rafter, half his face covered in a very bad attempt at a cybernetic prosthesis that might have been made from tinfoil.

“…”

“They’re the cyber gang,” said Quincy, without skipping a beat.

Lynri peered at the screen again, thinking hard. She snapped her fingers.

“I’ve got it.”

Quincy raised an eyebrow.

“They’re clearly from the future.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“And they run a future technology black market where they trade with people from the past who are in-the-know.”

“Ooh.”

“All this,” finished Lynri, “so they can win an arms race before it even begins and take over the world.”

“Oh, I see, I see,” said Quincy, nodding sagely. “And Abs here is trying to stop them.”

“No.”

“No?!”

“No, he’s just after a challenge,” Lynri shrugged. “He doesn’t care at all about saving the world, he just wants to fight the people with the strongest weapons.”

“An amoral protagonist. Nice,” Quincy nodded approvingly. “We could make our own movie out of this.”

“We could,” Lynri laughed.

“We should! Sets out of cardboard, a cheap video camera, and all the special effects we can afford on a student budget, which are none!”

“And it would still be a huge improvement over whatever this is.”

“Oh, Lyn, Lynri!” Quincy said, nudging her and snickering. “Look at his wig!”

“No!” she gasped, leaning in further and putting her fingers to her temples. “It’s going to fall off!”

Quincy wheezed helplessly.

The explosions finally died down as Abs ran the last of his enemies through with his now-flaming (?) sword. The man fell in slow motion to the floor, where he lay supine, and still obviously breathing.

“Finally.”

Abs stepped over the “dead” body, now on his stomach, and took the previously damaged stairs up two at a time, running into the arms of-

“Wait, wait. Who’s the girl?”

“Pfft, come on, there’s always a girl.”

“…who is missing half her clothes…”

“Well, there was a fire.”

Lynri frowned at him incredulously.

“Yeah, she’s fireproof, but her clothes are not. Unfortunate,” Quincy said, fighting to hold  a straight face.

“Convenient,” Lynri snorted, rolling her eyes.

They watched as Abs approached and reached down to help the girl up. They exchanged a few lines which were clearly intended to be flirtatious, but…

“Oh, they have no chemistry.”

“Yikes…” Quincy cringed.

The girl struck an uncomfortably un-sexy sexy pose and reached up to the lead’s face.

“She’s going to kiss him already? They just met!”

“No, no, clearly she’s just adjusting the wig!”

Lynri choked and started laughing, then broke off mid-way through as the action on the screen took a definitive turn for the worst.

“Oh, that’s not just kissing-!”

“They’re just going for it?!”

“No, no, no!!” she wailed, recoiling from the laptop.

“On the dirty ground?!”

“Ew, ew, ew!”

“Oh no, this isn’t even funny anymore, this is just gross,” Quincy cringed, peeking at the screen from between his fingers.

“Why are you still watching it?!” Lynri yelled, smacking him in the arm.

“It’s like a train wreck now! I can’t look away!”

Just then, some rather uncomfortable noises started up from the tinny speakers.

“AaaaAAAAAAA NO!” Lynri shrieked at the top of her lungs.

“Nope! No, stop stopstop!” Quincy flailed in a panicked attempt to grab the laptop, smacking the mouse frantically and repeatedly to stop the movie. He slammed the laptop closed for good measure.

The library returned to silence except for the sound of the pair’s startled breathing.

“Ohh my god…” Quincy mumbled after a few moments, burying his face in his hands.

“That… was awful…” Lynri breathed out slowly. She nudged Quincy in the arm. “It’s over now.”

“Nope, afraid that’s seared into my brain forever,” he said, pained, trying to hide the embarrassed flush of his cheeks.

“…same.”

Quincy resurfaced, rubbing at his face and looking sheepish.

“Ha, well that didn’t go so well. This was supposed to be fun, not uh, y’know.”

“I know?” Lynri raised an eyebrow in amusement.

“Guess I’ll have to come up with something better next time, huh?” he said, reaching out to pull the computer back into his lap. “Or, at least, maybe I should watch the movie first.”

Next time.

Lynri faltered and stared down at her lap. They had been spending a good deal of time together recently. “Next time” was a perfectly natural assumption to make, really.

…she was tired. Exams truthfully had kicked her in the butt, no matter how well she knew she’d done on them. So, she would cross that inevitable bridge when she got to it. An unfortunate problem for future Lynri.

She looked up.

Quincy must have sensed her hesitation, because he was smiling, face still slightly tinged by embarrassment, hopeful and uncertain.

Oh, this was definitely going to come back to bite her.

“Well, I need a palate cleanser for right now before I even start thinking about next time,” she said, gesturing for the laptop.

Quincy handed it over.

“You still want to watch something?”

“After that? I need to,” Lynri said, typing away at the keyboard. “Don’t worry, I have an idea.”

Quincy exhaled and muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “whew, I haven’t totally blown it”. Lynri bit back a smile.

She picked an episode at random but still recognized it instantly on the opening shot. She’d watched it too many times not to.

…not that she was going to share that information yet.

She set the laptop back down between them and settled back down to watch.

“There. Campy, but actually fun.”

“Y’know, I actually never got around to watching this show before,” Quincy commented, settling back down next to her.

“You have to at least know the theme song.”

“Of course!”

“…”

“…”

“Doo-wee-ooo!!”

[hyaesia]

Hi Cat, I am here to annoy you and ask you about your Beach Ep Thoughts ™

With best,

Lavii :3

oh god okay where do i even begin ... in general that was the most devastating ending in fiction ever i think... and i think the sigcorp series might be the only series ever to be able to pull it off. it's crazy how sounding out what we already knew would happen was still so !!! poignant!!! the music was spectacular. the art was spectacular. freebird's commitment to rpgmaker is astounding and i love it (though i know last hour and onwards will be unity)

more specific thoughts:

i loved being able to see more of rox and rob, particularly i love that rob is just a Really Strange Guy instead of the only normal sigcorp employee like a lot of us thought he would be, i think it makes his & rox's dynamic all that much funnier. two weird and offputting guys on totally opposite sides of the weird and offputting spectrum

even though the plot was very In Your Face compared to every other entry in the sigcorp series (this was made to answer questions about IF, after all), there's still so much to discuss and theorize about! i've spent So much time already discussing how i suspect neil died w/ friends (which i could make into a whole other post. tbh) and whatever the hell was going on with the quintessence cast ?? (more on that later)

i loved seeing eva's walls crumble down. she lied about the journey mattering more to her than the ending, of course she did because she works the worst job on the planet and she has to lie to herself to keep going. i can't think too long about her in the very ending asking such vulnerable questions to neil about if he'd really do all those sweet relationshippy things for her or putting her head into her arms and sobbing after he asked how it happened.oh.my god

i genuinely thought the quintessence guys from the teasers would be cameo characters, which yeah they were for the most part! but lunair was so interesting... what did she mean when she said she's something else entirely!! where did she come from why is she in on the simulation with faye!! the only rational thing i can come up with is quintessence being a side-project by neil leaking into the simulations but then that makes her comment before irrelevant... head in my hands

and i love/hate how the Entire series has been a simulation by eva... god especially minisode 2,,, realizing that party Never Happened and it was just her trying to make a happier memory for herself. do you think that was the last christmas neil ever celebrated? do you think she ever really gave him the sound recorder, or was it her present self playing 4D chess with their memories? it'll be a very long time until i can bring myself to replay any of these games knowing i'm being complicit in eva's unhealthy grief habits. well fucking done kan gao .how did you do it

shorter thoughts that don't need their own paragraphs: the minigames were so fun, the spectator mode for xtreme beach was such a fun touch; i loved the ingame confirmation about colin and river being deskmates; i think last hour will be the last hour of neil's life; after kan's tweet last year about last hour & the beach episode being the good and bad ending respectively, i placed my bets on beach being the good ending. i really hope i'm wrong now actually after seeing it; and finally i've already listened to world in a memory 200 times, it makes me nauseous every time

in conclusion: i need to hug eva rosalene so fucking badly

[the-rift-in-space]

so uh, was that the 'good' or 'bad' end? because it seemed awfully bittersweet to me