- ProAgon - 26 February 2025
Hey Friends! 👋 I hope you had a stellar start of the year! As you recall, we made a big announcement in December. Here's the recap: We're porting AUTONOMY to ANARCHY! It's a big project and a major confrontation with the past. To understand what we're dealing with, we'll take several pit-stops throughout this year. Our first impression hones in on the prologue. We'll talk about the good, the bad and the quirky. At the end of it, we pose a single question: What do we keep, add or rearrange? Method Let's state the obvious: Good and bad are bound by perspective. Any part of AUTONOMY could be irreplaceable to someone, while someone else might find it cringe. One way to deal with that discrepancy is to forgo other people's opinion and stick with your own. It's my go-to strategy for conceptual stuff. I have a clear vision of a scene, people and happenings. If I was content on dreaming dreams…
- LEGACY - 29 December 2024
Hey Friends! 👋 Welcome to the end of the year – again. This time, there are two announcements: ANARCHY's post will tackle active development. AUTONOMY handles big-picture stuff. I composed eight sections filled with meta rants. The trials and tribulations of an indie brand. Turns out we can do better than that! As a matter of fact: AUTONOMY is relevant again! Yes! That's right! We're 100% on-topic for once! 😳 Plot Let's recap the year real-quick! The first three months had me neck-deep in ANARCHY. Somewhere around mid-march, I remembered that my PhD-thesis was due in early 2026. Days spent in Unity slowly gave way to messing around with Transformers (or what the normies call 'AI'). Fast forward to mid-May. TRACHI creeped back into my head. Three weeks later, I set up a bunch of character-based, locally-hosted Discord bots. These bots – Atlas, Daphne, Ganymede & Pandora – feed their in…
- MAYbe - 12 May 2024
Hello Friends and Family! Two months ago, I started hyping AUTONOMY's 5th 🎉 I had big plans for this year – before I remembered that I'm in the middle of a PhD. So let's do away with big, hype-baiting announcements! Instead, here's a story about dreams. A tale of ambition and reality. In the spirit of 21st century post-modern cynicism, let's tell a story about sober, unadulterated truth. ANARCHY Most of you know that ANARCHY is the product of a long-winded back-and-forth. It's a compromise between TRAditional writing and interactive gameplay elements. My plan was to throw myself so hard into development that I'd have every gamer eating out of my hand. It probably took you about 0.5 seconds to understand how absurd this idea is. I'm a slow learner, so it took me 8 months. From September to December we experienced massive growth. The year went out with a bang – and 2024 promised to be th…
- LiberAtion - 4 February 2024
Heyho, long-time friends! 👋 I hope you had a fantastic start into the year! Curiously enough, we're back after just a month. There's a lot of reasons for it – one of them being that it's 2024! This year, both AUTONOMY and TRACHI turn five! 🎉 What a great opportunity to make our stints more of a regular thing! Last time, we took a peek at TRACHI's recent history. In this post right here, I'd like to put our eyes towards the future instead. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2169000/TRACHI__ANARCHY/ Obviously, there's ANARCHY. It's regularly tended through monthly updates – and set to remain a major part of my life for the next four years. However, a lot of you already made your way over there. So I'll leave it at dropping the link above for everybody else. Big A That being settled, let's talk AUTONOMY! Our end-of-the-year debrief had me complain about the game's ability to retain playe…
- All good things. - 30 December 2023
Hey friends! 👓 It's been a damn long while! More than four months, to be precise! I know! Sometimes it feels as if the world accelerates. Today, for example, we're about to kiss goodbye another year. 2023 is on the verge of becoming history – turning moments into memories. Nostalgia Truth be told, it's making me tear up a little bit. TRACHI was in a weird spot, back in January. The first post-AUTONOMY year passed – and I frankly wasn't too content with the things I had to show. Being neck deep into Unreal Engine, the mountain kept growing no matter how hard I tried. It took me not one, but three steps back until I learned to check my expectations. Five months later, ANARCHY was born. Return to Form For the first time in a year, I was making things again. What started out as a run-of-the-mill JRPG quickly transformed into a Tactical RPG. As you can imagine, these things don't just simpl…
- ExcommunicAtion - 25 August 2023
Hey friendos! We're cruising with increasing excitement towards August 28th. To celebrate TRACHI's fourth birthday, I wanted to present my favorite version of you with a little peck on the cheek. 😏 But before we get into that, let's do a tiny itsy bit of context, first! Remember 2022? I certainly do! I also recall that TRACHI got another game to its name. A cute little interactive novel, widely known and feared as InvAsion. Primed and ready to bring AUTONOMY vibes from RPGMaker straight to Unity. Rules of narrative InvAsion embraced AUTONOMY's biggest selling point and slammed all its figurative eggs into the story basket. For about three quarters of an hour, the characters and their words got to carry us through increasingly disturbing events. Structurally I wanted to apply a similar scope to this year's celebration. To deliver a short and straight-forward experience presenting the cu…
- ANARCHY - 6 June 2023
Hey friends! Sorry for being tardy when it comes to updates (yet again). 😳 But today, I'm finally gonna sit down and do these things! 😤 Because AUTONOMY is getting a bit of a sequel, you know. TRACHII I always planned to continue the story of TRACHI. Though I also had my mind set on going beyond the comforts of RPGMaker and dive into Unity, Unreal et al. Most importantly, though: I wanted to tackle AUTONOMY's biggest flaw. Interaction Of all the (very lovely) feedback I received since the game's first release in May 2019, the lack of proper gameplay segments was by far the biggest point of criticism. Which is, in my opinion, completely understandable. So I went ahead and made it my first priority to come up with a system that not only incorporates the overall idea of TRACHI as a world, but also fits neatly into the story we're trying to tell. Labyrinth Granted, it took a bit. I went f…
- ACADEMY - 19 April 2023
Hey friends! I'm back! More importantly: I've got something super important to say! Starting 18:00 CEST on 20/04/2023 , I'll be talking all things TRACHI for a couple of days. If you'd like to hang around and get to know both the game and the underlying ideas a bit better, I'll be more than happy to have you!
- Verbatim - 26 August 2022
Hey friends, today's the day! TRACHI - InvAsion 1.0 (Verbatim) I've said most of the important stuff in the preview already. So I'll spare you that, if you don't mind. Instead, let's try something else. If you've played either AUTONOMY or InvAsion, you know how much I love writing dialogue. And even though I've written more than ten-thousand individual lines at this point, I still can't get enough of it. So let's pretend for a second someone asked a couple of questions. Furthermore, let's pretend that person is you. FAQ What's InvAsion? It's the counterpoint to AUTONOMY. In that sense, it's an expansion, an epilogue and a deconstruction. The first segment aims to wrap up events of AUTONOMY, the second part is a slow descent towards phase 2 of the TRACHI project as a whole. How much content is there? Depending on your reading speed, playtime ranges from 45 to 60 minutes, roundabout. How…
- Vernacular - 14 August 2022
Sorry, friends. But I've been very, very busy. Feature-Complete. That's right. InvAsion has reached the beta stage (hurray)! Until the release on the 26th, I want to put all my efforts into fixing bugs and polishing things. Before I get into that, though, let's start it off with a quick (note to self) summary of what InvAsion represents. In short, InvAsion is a direct continuation of AUTONOMY. It's a narrative sequel, though not in structural terms. Truth be told, it's a bit sus. Initially, I wanted to make a couple of scenes to commemorate 28/08 and throw out some content so people wouldn't forget TRACHI existed. The plan was to do this in RPGMaker, since I was worried about not being proficient enough in any of the other engines, yet. I started getting into Unity around January. And boy, were these last eights months intense. The whole of January, I went through one tutorial after ano…
- AUTONOMY - 19 June 2022
Christmas has come early. TRACHI – AUTONOMY 1.5 (arteria) is now live. God, that's a mouthful. Luckily, I'll never ever have to say it again. From today onwards, AUTONOMY will have to fend for itself. As part of the TRACHI universe, of course. But also as its own product. At any rate, I hope that – for all of its flaws – AUTONOMY will be able to stand the test of time somewhat. I believe that there's tons of stuff to uncover, and I'm incredibly excited to pick up the many pieces and threads in the following instalments. But for now, I want to use this space to say a huge thank you to everyone who's been part of the journey. One year ago, I had a story on my hands. Today, it's come to its conclusion. So one more time, with gusto: To everyone that's reading this. And to everyone who isn't. I love each and everyone of you. But for those of you who love me back, I want to tell you something…
- Can you keep a secret? - 8 June 2022
Because I can't. Advertently inadvertently, TRACHI – AUTONOMY 1.495 is now live on the beta branch. This is the pre-build to 1.5, and as such includes the full range of the latter's features, provided nothing critical surfaces over the next few days. So let's do a quick-wrap up of the things that changed between 1.4 and 1.5: Minor rewrites and rephrasing all over the game to ensure continuity with InvAsion and overall conciseness Additional sprites for specific poses (mostly sitting and guns being drawn) Lighting fully restored (ON by default, can be disabled via the options menu) Full-screen set as default (can be toggled by pressing F4 or via the options menu) Revised credit scenes Massively overhauled score aka BGM As you can see, it's a bit of everything here and there. There's no new scenes, secrets or the like. Though I highly encourage those who have played the game back in Novem…
- InvAsion - 3 June 2022
August 26th 2022 TRACHI – InvAsion has a date. And so do we. The DLC will be an addendum for AUTONOMY, though technically fully stand-alone. A bridge between the old and new. Made in Unity. Take a look at this: Same people, different times. A technical prototype InvAsion tries to recreate AUTONOMY's look and atmosphere as closely as possible, while utilizing Unity's strengths at scalability. As you can see, the RPGMaker-esque blurriness on higher resolutions is gone. This means that everything looks a lot sharper and clean. In most cases for the better, for worse in a few. But that's where polishing comes in. Same people, same times. A narrative appendix Of course, it's not just about showing off new tricks. Because the technical side is just a vessel to tell a story. For that matter, the chief goal of this DLC is to answer some of the questions left over from the main game. This includ…
- Nostalgia - 4 May 2022
Hey party peeps, friends - and potential future roommates! As you've probably noticed, the beta branch has been updated. So let's take a quick look at some of the things that changed. Black & White The build includes a whole bunch of bugfixes, qol improvements and - most importantly - revised credits scenes for Act 1-3. I'm slowly crawling my way through all the scenes from start and finish, so expect most of the current changes in the earlier half of the game. Which is kinda fitting, since we're a bit more than halfway there. In other words, we've got about 48 days until June 20th. Until then, I'll primarily focus on Act 2 & 3, while trying to hunt the last few bugs remaining. So if there's anything you noticed, both in terms of gameplay and performance, please do feel free to let me know. As for everything else: I kinda forget what I've already announced, lol. So please don't be too h…
- arteria - 12 March 2022
Hey friends. A hundred days On the 20th June 2021 - TRACHI: AUTONOMY 1.0 was released. One year later, operation arteria will conclude. And with that, the first game in the TRACHI series is laid to a peaceful rest. To sleep, and to never wake up again. In non-cryptic words: The final build of AUTONOMY, 1.5 (arteria) will be released on June 20th. It's not a huge update. More of a last sweep, before the lights go out. The biggest change comes in the shape of a few new BGM pieces. Or to be more precise, some tracks had to be replaced due to licensing uncertainties, especially in terms of sustainability. For that matter, there is now also a full license document included. The title screen has also been updated to be more in line with the new branding: Smooth, isn't it? Lastly, a couple of character names have been adjusted: Terence Prawnfield -> Teron Pravoskos Johan Fairclough -> Ioanis F…
- Helios - 25 December 2021
Hey friends! I've just deployed a new build. It's a relatively minor update, mainly focusing on bugfixes and some other stuff. Most notably, I've restored the option to turn off Lighting effects for machines with lower specs. The setting is found in the options menu under the "visual" tab. If you've run into performance problems or experienced slowdowns on certain maps, I recommend turning these effects off and see if the issue persists. As always, I'm very eager to hear your feedback. So please do let me know if you're experiencing any issues with the game. On a related note: I've received reports that achievements won't unlock for some people. There's a chance that the issue has been fixed with the newly released build. However, since the problem didn't seem to affect everyone, it's hard for me to isolate the cause of the issue. Around half of the achievements are unlocked in the cour…
- InaugurAtion - 24 November 2021
Hello peeps, now that the game is officially out, it's possible to nominate it for the yearly Steam Awards. And since I'm feeling exceptionally bold, right now... We might as well give this a shot and see how far we can take it. So without further ado, I'd like to ask those who have seen and liked the story of TRACHI to cast their vote. And if you don't feel like it's quite there, yet: Don't worry. Because you can be sure that this won't be the last release of a game set in the TRACHI universe. Until then, I wish you the best of time. And hope that you'll enjoy the game as much as I did making it. Much love Nory
- TRACHI - AUTONOMY - 24 November 2021
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1811440/TRACHI/ Hello, friends! It's finally here! So please - by all means - go ahead. I'll see you on the other side.
- And another one - 15 November 2021
Hey again! TRACHI has just been updated with a bunch of fixes, mainly in regards to bugs and typos. I've also adjusted a couple of key scenes, added a few sprites and a bit of NPC dialogue here and there. And since I forgot write a post for the last update: The first batch of Steam achievements has been fully implemented. So far, I managed to unlock these without any problems. If you do run into any troubles in that regard, please do let me know. Keep in mind, though, that while achievements can be unlocked already, they might not appear on certain pages until the game gets fully released on November 24th. In any case, thank you very much for keeping with TRACHI. I'll probably push another build with a few more minor changes sometime during the next couple of days. Until then, I hope you have an amazing week. Much love Nory
- Small Update - 12 November 2021
Hey friends, I've just pushed a small update. It contains a bunch of fixes for various bugs and typos. The main purpose of this build was to lay the groundwork for Steamworks integration. Most importantly: Achivements. As you can see on the library page, TRACHI now features a whopping number of one (1) achievement. The art and descriptions are placeholders, as I wanted to test its functionality, first. If you want to do so, too, please had over to the Eastern Checkpoint in the prologue and show a cat (aka Ve 1st) some appreciation. In any case, I'll try to have most of the achievements within the main story implemented sometime tomorrow and push a corresponding build on Sunday, at the latest. Until then, I hope you have an amazing weekend. Much love Nory
