The Smoke Room - Build 1.5 (Patreon)

WIN: https://www.mediafire.com/file/5msoxzpos1hz56q/1.5-1.0-win.zip/file

MAC: https://www.mediafire.com/file/7l05qq3f639guis/1.5-1.0-mac.zip/file

Linux: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ee8867ah30tig1w/1.5-1.0-linux.tar.bz2/file

Hey guys, sorry about the later-than-expected release. Most of the assets are new, so I had a little difficulty implementing them. Because of this, there may be more errors than usual. If you come across any, please let us know in the comments so that we can fix them before the public release (note that errors in the first build may not yet have been fixed, though we have noted all of the ones that were reported).

This build features writing from a new member of our team, George. He wrote this second half of the common route, and will be taking on Murdoch's route. He wrote the following to introduce the build and to also help you get to know him better:

Hello to the Echo and Adastra Patrons. My name is George. I wrote most of the prose for this Smoke Room update, although the majority of the planning was a combined effort between me, Howly and Reedinfox. I've written stories for a long time (even published more than a few), and this will be my first stab at the VN medium, so I hope that my first attempt is a strong one. The following update has some graphic sex, some violence, and the inclusion of homophobic slurs, so please brace yourself or avoid this update altogether if that will affect you negatively.

I took to Echo because I've always been interested in folk tales, small town horror, and the lives of LGBT people who grow up outside of urban environments. I think that so much of Echo's themes resonate strongly with many people; the frustration from arguments with former childhood friends, misplaced nostalgia in comfortable coping mechanisms, and the creeping dread of losing everything from your past that meant something to you. These themes stoke very real fears that affects lots of people today. Folks are losing their childhood homes, losing their loved ones to unaffordable medical bills, and losing themselves to waves of generalized, crippling anxiety— often because of greed, waste, or entirely avoidable and preventative malice: a human malice which can feel bigger than us, older than us, and inescapable, often leading to its personification as an ancient entity in so many different kinds of stories.

I think visual novels, especially dating sims, pair especially well with horror. Something that I noticed about the horror genre is that it often includes romance and fleeting eroticism— be it Doctor Frankenstein's loss of his wife and the monster's murderous obsession for a love he could never have, or losing Lucy (and nearly Mina) to Dracula's seduction, power, and subsequent entrapment. This duality of horror and romance may be common because it's so easy to be afraid to lose the things we love, and we have to learn to love first before we can feel the dread and powerlessness that accompanies loss. 1915 was Echo's last chance in time to make it big with the gold rush and the transcontinental railroad, and for a time, things seemed to be going well. But we already know that it didn't.

That bright, shiny, new Echo was lost to time, and so too its inhabitants, by the time the original Echo story takes place. One of the titles of an echo track is "Vanishing Paradise," and it made me think about not just how many locations have been lost to time, but the happy, precious private moments of people who lived before us that were never recorded and never will be. What is most important about these people isn't that they're gone, but that they loved, and lived, despite everything that may have worked against their happiness or their survival.

So here's something bright, shiny, and new.