The Murky Isle

Firstly, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all who have been following our journey so far. Now, as you have no doubt noticed we have been very silent the past year; it has been a rough one in many ways. And so our development time was limited; however, it never stopped us from continuing to spend our free time on our joined passion. The project we presented and the one you know as Lethe 2: Origins is designed with Episode One in mind, and takes part of its lore and presents a new experience with familiar elements. After some time we realized its scope was outside of our reach as a two-man team and couldn't be reduced without compromises we were not willing to make. We ended up stashing the project to come back to it in the future and came up with something fresh that still adheres to our design philosophy, gameplay preferences, and used existing code architecture. As we were developing, a game was released that closely resembled the core of our story, and we felt we ...

Today we at Faber Interactive and KoukouStudios are very happy to celebrate the first year since the release of Lethe: Episode One and a   50% anniversary sale will be running on Steam as part of the week-long deals. If you didn’t have a chance to play the game yet, it’s a great time to try it out now. There have been several updates since day one, including Steam Achievements support and several optimizations and improvements. And some exciting news: The announcement of Lethe 2: Origins . In game screenshot of Lethe 2: Origins Lethe 2: Origins Lethe 2: Origins is our new title currently in development. The game takes place in a remote village on the same island as Lethe: Episode One but 30 years earlier. If there’s one thing that we think we nailed in the first game , it is the atmosphere and that’s something we are passing over to Lethe 2 . There’s a great difference between the two games though. Unlike its predecessor, in Lethe 2: Origins, storytelling is ...

We've recently noticed some problems with playing offline and having spent some time figuring out the problem last week, we're now releasing this hotfix to solve the issue. Just a reminder for those who participated in the Public Beta and have been subscribed to its branch, to not forget to opt-out of the Beta branch. We've been keeping the Beta branch up-to-date with the latest patches, but we'll no longer be maintaining it and will eventually deactivate it. So please make sure that you're opted out to prevent any possibly complications. PS: We've also changed some settings in the back-end which will hopefully reduce some problems a part of the players have had with the updates.

We have collected the most commonly asked questions about Lethe: Episode One and compiled them into this FAQ. If you would like to know more, don’t hesitate to contact us at contact@koukoustudios.com . What about <insert language here> localization? As mentioned before, we would very much like to support multi-language localization for Lethe: Episode one; However, as a small company we’re relying solely on our product’s sales and this kind of (big) overhaul is currently simply out of reach. Because we know there is a demand, we would like to extend an invitation to localization groups who have already made a localization for Episode One or worked on quality translations before, to contact us and provide us with their material, so that at a later point in time we might be able to make this a reality. What about motion sickness? Previously there have been requests for a way to limit the amount of camera sway, in case of motion sickness or nausea; Because of these request...

Today marks the update of the game with the 1.2.12 update/hotfix that will solve the reported issues with the Librarian and Escape Artist achievements, plus a minor save system improvement. If you meet the two achievements' criteria, they will be unlocked as soon as you load your saved game in the final map. We've also taken the opportunity to give our website a facelift and updated our blog accordingly: Main website:  koukoustudios.com Game page:  koukoustudios.com/lethe/ PS: We're still working on the Press page, so expect it to be up again soon. If you face any issues please refer to this guide . If the problem persists please let us know in the support forums or contact us directly at support@koukoustudios.com .

Lethe: Episode One gets updated to version 1.2.10 introducing several game improvements and 19 steam achievements . 1.2.10 Changelog Enabled Achievements for the default branch; Minor tweaks. 1.2.9 Changelog Resolved some reported and unreported issues with the Achievements; Small improvements to the frame-rate at the start of some levels; Added anti-Nausea mode in the config. Check out the details here . Minor improvements to stability. 1.2.7 Changelog Added support for 19 steam achievements .; Upgraded to the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit; Smoother character animation blending; Minor AI improvements; Fixed sound issues. With the game’s engine upgrade to the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit a lot of files have been modified. The configuration files will be recreated and your in-game settings will most likely be reset. If you face any issues please refer to this guide . If the problem persists please let us know in the support ...

A video game is nothing without its community these days. Every time we visit Lethe’s community section on Steam we are reminded of that and we’d like to thank you for your contributions! While videos and "Let’s Plays" are the first things to catch the eye, we decided to make a post about the hidden gems of our community: Screenshots! There’s a great number of high quality user screenshots available on steam and as you understand, making them all fit in a single post is nearly impossible. By ignoring their current community rating, we decided to create a top ten of what we believe to be the best user screenshots to date. The main two judgement rules were the color palette and how well each shot connects with Lethe’s theme, mood and philosophy. We also picked only one screenshot per creator and one per in-game focal point and/or character. Don’t forget to share your own screenshots and videos! Enjoy! Created by Skyline : Created by Fobeus ...

We’re glad to announce that Update 1.2 is now available on the new Public Beta branch on Steam! This update also contains support for the long-awaited Steam Achievements. Changelog: Added support for 23 Steam Achievements;  Upgraded to the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit;  Smoother character animation blending;  Minor AI improvements;  Fixed sound issues. We wanted to share the improvements with you sooner than we otherwise could, thus we chose to release this update as a Public Beta. To switch to the Beta branch check out the instructions to access the Beta . We’re very keen to receive your feedback in the new Beta forum on Steam !

KoukouStudios and Faber Interactive are proud to announce that after four years of development, our debut title, “ Lethe – Episode One ” has now been released! The Game is currently available on Steam and through the Humble Widget for Windows PC . There is currently a 10% discount during first week to celebrate its release!   Keep in mind that by choosing the latter you have additional options of directly supporting our studio and through that the development of future episodes and games . We plan to expand the amount of stores in the near future to improve availability. An OS X version is planned for later this year . “Lethe – Episode One” was built with the Unreal Development Kit and although we’d love to see a Linux version too, without access to the engine’s source code it is technically impossible right now. Although that could maybe change depending on how well the game will be received. Press & YouTubers are welcome to contact us at contact@koukous...

Quite some time has passed since being Greenlit , so we thought it was about time to make our Store Page public with all the new media we have been collecting. And in case you might have missed it, we released our new trailer last week. So check it out if you haven't already: Some of you might have noticed we have updated the descriptions on our pages, because some aspects were too vague and could easily lead to misunderstandings about the nature of the game. We're currently focusing on a PC-only launch, while aiming for an OS X release some time later this year. Currently we split our time between the Closed Beta, the patching of bugs, finalizing content, doing promotion and whatever else shows up along the way. Thus we might not reply to your messages right away. Now that all of the previous is out of the way, we are happy to announce that Lethe - Episode One will be released on Steam for PC on August 1 st 2016 ! For all matters regarding Press and Reviews, we...

In an effort to be more consistent with our updates and to keep you guys up-to-date, we're going to try to be a bit more pro-active with our communications! And now we are ready to share with you something new and exciting! As part of our ongoing development as a studio we're happy to announce that Lethe - Episode One will be published by none other than Faber Interactive, a company founded by KoukouStudios co-founder and developer Rick Faber. This decision solidifies our current position and commitment as an independent developer and means that nothing will actually change for the game and the team behind it. Since the game has been in development for about four years now, things have been updated. This is why we have recently uploaded some new screenshots to our website (and our previous post ). And what could be a better way to show you our progress than to share with you our new Trailer! Now, considering all that we've said, we're hopi...

There was this particular morning last week... Like every other morning, after preparing an enormous cup of coffee we booted up our computers with tired eyes, barely open from previous night's work. We went to check our daily tasks list like we used to do every day for the past four years. It took us a while staring at the lists, but we finally realized that Lethe was practically ready for some serious Beta testing! We just couldn't believe it. Could it really be true after all that we've been through? As I'm writing this, Lethe is being played on Steam by a few lucky people from outside the Studio. It has now been a week since we officially launched the Closed Beta and so far we're more than satisfied hearing people's first reactions! It seems like the time and effort we've invested in this project and the countless sacrifices are starting to pay back. So, when will we announce a release date you might ask? At this point we have to admit that du...

This has been quite a long period of silence, we have to admit. Maybe way longer than it should have been. And rightfully, some of you have complained about it. We decided to remain silent and show up again once we actually have something to say, and Halloween seems like the right time. Let's start with some good news. We're finally in position to talk about a release date. For now all we can say is that it's set for early 2016. We will reveal the exact date in the very near future. And since a lot of people ask, yes we are indeed considering the option of pre-orders as it could help us with further improving the product during the pre-release period. So what's going on, how's Lethe coming along? Let's see. Lethe is currently in Pre-Beta state. You know, that magic moment when somebody is trying your product for the first time? You got to love that moment. The first testing sessions came back very positive. Probably extremely positive compared to what we e...

Since the release of Lethe's official gameplay teaser last week, we've been tracking your comments and feedback and based on your questions we set up the following F.A.Q. that aims to answer the major ones. Can you share some more info about the story? Robert Dawn is a young journalist with an unremarkable career. After his step-father's death, Robert was left to deal with a major debt and while looking through the piles of documents entrusted to him, he came across adoption papers that revealed his real parents. With his back to the wall due to the debt, Robert stumbles across an old article about an incident at a pharmaceutical facility on an isolated island. When he realizes that it involves the names of his parents, he decides to take the chance to investigate the unusual incident. And that's all we can share without spoiling the story for you. Will the entirety of Lethe be in dark underground tunnels as seen in the latest trailer? No, besides unde...

Since “Lethe” went “green” on steam, we start our days by saying. “What about a blog post?”. But then we check our development task lists and never mention it again for the rest of the day. Being an independent game developer requires a lot of energy! There are so many things to consider – art, graphics, animations, gameplay, human psychology, bug-fixing, testing, concept, story, audio, registering a business, your girlfriend who's constantly asking about what are you going to do with your life... – and many more terrifying things (well, maybe not as terrifying as the last one). There's barely any free time left for anything. Getting on a blog and talking about your project sooner or later becomes part of that “anything”. Here's where I'd like to say that, even if we don't always reply your e-mails or your comments on social media, keep in mind that we always read them and in fact, we take them very seriously. A big portion of how we designed Lethe's gamepl...

Check out the new alpha gameplay trailer for "Lethe - Episode One" and tell us what you think! More news coming soon, stay tuned! Also a huge thanks for your support and feedback on the social media and especially our friends on Twitter !

Hot off the press: the long-awaited teaser trailer is finally here! Enjoy this real-time video taken straight from our upcoming debut title "Lethe - Episode One". Let us know what you think!

It has been some time since we first thought about creating a place where we could share our thoughts with you and receive your feedback, but with an enormous amount of work in our hands we never did get around to do it … until now. Welcome to the KoukouStudios blog! Since you're here we guess you already know who we are and what we do, but for those who don't: KoukouStudios is an independent video game development team. And although we're currently working on our debut project, we've been around as members in modding communities since 2007. A lot of things have changed since then: our lives, our style and our goals. But there's something that remains the same, the one thing that we have in common: The passion we share for video games! That's why we would also like to share our games related thoughts with you on this blog. A big thanks for reading and we look forward to reading your comments below!