TL;DR: The translation is not cancelled, in fact we’re making great progress on future Episodes, but we need some more time.

It’s been half a year since our last release. Some of you have been asking us through different channels whether or not this project has been cancelled. It has not, in fact we’ve been very busy and have some surprises in store for you guys later this year. We’ve hinted on this very page as to what they might be.

So what’s the holdup?

Well, to be frank: we were about to release Episode 3 about a month ago. It has been polished and beta tested by some of our friends and we even went and fixed many errors you guys reported (and some we found ourselves). We’ve improved the interface further and some screens look much nicer now than they did before. While working on one of our surprises to release along with Episode 3, we’ve encountered some issues that were not easy to fix with our resources. This confronted us with the choice to either delay Episode 3 until we were able to fix this or release Episode 3 and turn the users of our patch into “beta testers”.

Before we were able to reach our decision, a dear and valued member of our group disappeared. It has only been two weeks and other members have disappeared before; but even though we would be able to make a (slightly bumpy) release without him, it just wouldn’t feel right.

Obviously we still hope he’ll return to us soon and in good health, but until then we’ve decided not to release Episode 3 for now and instead concentrate on Episode 4 and some other things we’ve put aside for a while now:

• We’re currently in the process of changing the fonts in the game, which sounds much easier than it is. We will have to fine-tune and adjust UI and dialogue to make it fit. This is to remove the requirement of the Dual Destinies font and to finally give DGS a more fitting typeface.
• Preliminary work on the (optional) dub has begun. More on that in a bit.
• Our toolset needs to be improved to better support our translators/editors in their work and to streamline our testing procedure for all of our new projects/platforms.
• An alternative to our current patcher for 3DS is close to being ready for public use.
• Some additional editing to give the characters’ lines more personality (we’re not rewriting what they say, but try to match their personality better in how they say it).

This will keep us busy until our friend makes his return. Translation and editing is chugging along independently from this, as different people are working on that. Episode 4 has recently passed 50% status and we’re strongly considering a double release, since Episode 5 is very long and will take considerably more time to finish.

As mentioned, we’ve begun preparing for the English dub for DGS. This will be optional for the player, you don’t have to use it if you prefer Japanese. We’ve already reached out to some people we’d like to voice certain characters, but we didn’t have much luck yet. If any of you guys knows how to best reach ProZD besides e-mail, we’d absolutely love to talk to him.

We know some of you would love to participate in the dub and DGS has much more lines than AAI2 did. That’s why we’ll hold a casting in which anyone can participate, but we mostly need people who can do a convincing British accent (native speakers have an advantage, of course). Not all characters are British though, so others can certainly apply. The conditions (like having a decent mic) and manner in which we’ll conduct the casting will be announced shortly.

Last but not least, we’re re-opening member applications for some positions (if you’ve applied to us before, you can try again now):

• We can always use people with skills in reverse engineering, specifically ARM assembly. If you don’t know what this means, you don’t qualify.
• Translators. Since DGS has some tricky passages, you should be at least at N3 or equivalent. Applicants will be tested.
• A Creative Writer. As mentioned, we’re trying to match the character’s personality better in their dialogue while still remaining true to the original. If you’re interested, we will give you a sample passage to improve to assess your skills and determine if you’re what we’re looking for.

That’s it. Sorry to disappoint the people who expected this to be a release post, we promise to deliver as soon as we can.

Update July 24th: We’ve recruited enough Translators and Creative Writers now, thanks! Oh, and our friend returned safely.