I’ll have more news and updates soon. If you’re bored, why don’t you follow Bob the Spider on twitter? Apparently he’s posting all sorts of wise things. If you don’t know who Bob the Spider is, you need to play some Lands of Dream games. Like this one, or this one.

We’re giving it another shot tomorrow – hopefully they’ll have restocked.

Anyway. My hope is that this sort of thing will help me keep in touch with the people who enjoy my games. Part of the problem I have, you see, is that while there are lots of people who like what I do, they don’t all regularly visit this website. So when I have a new game out, it’s fairly hard to let people know about it. This is particularly important in the context of upcoming commercial releases. So maybe having a Facebook page and all that will help; maybe next time there’s a huge surge of visitors, some of them will click one of those buttons, and thus be in a position to find out about the next game when it comes out.

Until then, why don’t you do so?

Those of you waiting for further images in that charming series known as the Oneiropolis Compendium – the main flaw of which is its lack of focus on Katsouli and cat-related matters, though the entry about Dogpuncher was appreciated – should know that more stories and images will be revealed very soon, and that most of the orders will have been processed in a few days. If your order is one of those still not processed, my humans hope that you will not be annoyed that they have taken so long to finish them. As previous posts show, a great deal of work and love go into each image and story, which is surely better than just taking money from people and giving them hastily-made nonsense. Well, that’s what they think. They are quite wrong, of course, but you must forgive them, they are such simple creatures.

If you are nonetheless displeased, or bored with your existence (how do you survive without butchering a mouse every now and then?) then I suggest you spend some time enjoying the deep, intellectual pleasures of classical music.

Sincerely,

Cat Kyratzes

Every day caravans leave from the Edge of the World that take travellers to the Lands of Dream. The caravans are free, but there are other costs the traveller must consider; not least of all the cost of spending so much time away from the obligations of our world.

We have done our best to bring something of the Lands of Dream into your lives: by opening a window to the House at Desert Bridge, by setting down a tale of the Book of Living Magic – and even now we are preparing to tell you the troll’s tale known as Ithaca of the Clouds.

But now, unfortunately, the costs of travelling so often to the Lands of Dream have caught up with us, and we are in need of assistance. However, we do not wish to simply beg (again), and so we have concocted the following plan.

When we asked for donations for what was then simply the untitled Troll Game, we didn’t know it would turn into quite the massive project it has turned into, considerably delaying the donators’ pleasure at seeing themselves in the game. So we’d like to offer you something else, something more direct, in exchange for your support.

For each 10$ donation we receive, we will seek, examine and describe a creature, plant or location from/in the Lands of Dream. The images will be in the style of our upcoming children’s book – i.e. like The Book of Living Magic, but much smoother. The text… well, you know what the Lands of Dream are like.

For slightly bigger donations (25$), we will even frame the image and send it to you. Yes we will.

For those of you who have even more money at your disposal (50$), larger framed images are also an option (approximately A4-sized). They are quite lovely to have on one’s wall. International shipping costs are included, of course. (Same goes for the 25$ option.)

In all cases the image and text will also be posted here, and later perhaps on a separate website. Unless you want to donate anonymously, this will also include a link to your website and a thank-you. If your regular email and your PayPal email don’t match, make sure to let us know!

Think of it like this: you can help support two people who are doing everything they can to create unique and interesting stories in many artforms, and at the same time help create a compendium of the weird and wonderful creatures of the Lands of Dream.

[To see the results of your support, have a look at the Oneiropolis Compendium.]

The password on our contract: XXXX.

That’s right, folks, they blacked it out as personal information, like they did with our bank account and a few other things. The password we were supposed to enter wasn’t there. I bet Kafka got his internet connection from these people, too.

Eventually we managed to get through to the tech support hotline. Theoretically the verification process has begun and at some point we’re supposed to be able to access the internet. After several hours it still wasn’t working, though we can’t tell if this is due to the account not being verified or due to a lack of network coverage. If it’s the latter, nervous breakdowns may occur in the vicinity of my head.

I’m writing to you from my father-in-law’s computer, which is refusing to recognize my external hard drive, making it impossible to upload the images for our children’s book so our publisher can finally download them. And since the Stencyl 1.2 download still isn’t available separately, I can’t even update Traitor.

A couple of nights ago, after watching several episodes of Red Dwarf and Goodness Gracious Me, I dreamt I was on a spaceship, taking an exam about Hinduism. The second task was to write a definition of “avatar”.

Am I going insane? If not, should I be?

Well, it was never sent. Because the order wasn’t processed. You see, we ordered after nine in the evening on the last day of a special offer, and while this was perfectly legal, the team responsible for processing had already gone home, and on the next day failed to check whether any more orders had gone in. Brilliantly, however, the system autogenerated an order confirmation, making us think that everything was fine. And so we sat there, desperately hoping today would be the day…

I lack the words to express my feelings about this.

We may be getting an internet connection on Monday or Tuesday. Not a proper one, but it’s better than nothing. This situation has been very damaging for our work, pushing back release dates and turning things that should be simple (like uploading the image files for our children’s book) into huge problems.

Random fact of the day: when we were in the supermarket today, they were playing a song about bondage. I have nothing against bondage or any other form of sexual activity, but the combination of bondage lyrics and regular interruptions calling for Mr. Dennis to come to the drinks department was bizarre and amusing.

Yes. This is true. Now go play some of those newfangled video game thingies.

Not next week, as I had hoped.

Not in two weeks, as I had feared.

In December.

Yes, dear reader: the kind-hearted Deutsche Telekom has decided to hog the phone line and make it impossible for our new provider to, well, provide us with an internet connection. Until the 9th of December. Even though we’re perfectly happy to keep paying them and the new provider until then.

I make my living on the internet, so you can imagine what this means to me. And no, there’s no way around it. This is one of the typical methods the Telekom uses to terrorize its customers into not leaving. It’s shameless and it’s a fucking disaster for us. My new game (the working title is Traitor, and I hope I can keep it, though I have some alternatives) is going really well, and we really need the sponsorship money, but it’s not exactly going to be easy communicating with sponsors without a connection at home. And then there will have to be integration with the sponsor’s site, which will have to be tested, and all sorts of other things that can’t just be quickly done in an internet cafe.

We’re currently investigating the possibility of getting some kind of internet-on-a-stick prepaid shit thing, which will be expensive and slow and unreliable, but still better than nothing.

This really sucks. Especially now that I have a game which is somewhat more commercial (a shmup with slight RPG elements) and might help us get out of this crappy financial situation, and Catroidvania right after that…

The title of this post may be slightly overblown, but it really does feel awful to be unable to do one’s creative work because of the idiocy of the corporate bureaucracy that runs our lives.