Notes from a voyager

Happy Monday folks!

After a hectic weekend previously, it's been a little calmer around here this last week. Or, at least, it was calm up until last Friday. Those of you on Twitter may have seen Tim Meredith's intimation that a Stellar Firma album could be in the offing if his follower count crossed a threshold. Suffice to say, the commentary got a little wild. And then this ensued. What this means for future musical forays... well, we'll keep you apprised ;-)

A little of sad news though, as we bid a fond farewell from Rusty Towers to Stellar Firma lead editor and all-around audio wizard, David Devereux, whose work on soundscaping for the show has been, well, stellar! Follow him on Twitter @devereuxbass to see what fantastic projects he'll no doubt be involved with next. And kudos to Maddy Searle who will be stepping up to take on the 'unique' challenges that Stellar Firma brings.

One biggish piece of Patreon news: As of the end of February, we will be closing name shoutouts at the beginning of our shows. Unfortunately we've got to the point where - and it feels really weird to be writing this - we've picked up up way more support than we ever thought we were going to. We know we've got a huge backlog (including a slew of missed names from early on), especially on The Magnus Archives, which is - being completely honest - where we expect the bulk of our supporters will want to hear their name.

Whilst we've looked at ways to address the backlog, it hasn't got us through it nearly as quickly as we would like. We've sat down, done some calculations and realised that we were rapidly approaching the point where we would run out of TMA episodes to actually do shoutouts on.

So, we've had to take the hard decision that this is a reward that has to be retired at this  point. If you have never been a Rusty Knight or Noble and still want to have your name read out, then you will need to upgrade your membership by the end of the month. We will then be working though the lists to ensure that everyone who is/has been eligible for a shoutout gets theirs by the time Season 5 of The Magnus Archives comes to an end.

Again, our thanks go out to those who continue to support the RQ Streams project, and everybirdie who tuned in on Saturday to the chaos continue as I subjected Mike to his first ever experience of school dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend, and actually managed to render him practically speechless. If you missed it, the VOD will be available on Twitch for 2 weeks.

This week, we head back into space to take on the exploration/survival genre with much-commented upon game, No Man's Sky!

And talking of horizons, we can look ahead to what the rest of the inter-season TMA break will bring us. We've got one more episode of the Duskhollow PD game from MacGuffin and Co that Jonny is running, and we hope you've been enjoying this somewhat-less-dark-than-was-intended offering. After that, we go behind the scenes of the production process and discuss the most-involved episode from Season 4, with The Making of MAG158. And we'll round off the hiatus with the 2 winning entries from Rusty Fears 3: Fearsome! All before we return to The Archivist on Thursday 2nd April (day before for Early Access listeners).

And, here's what you can expect from us this week (all shows release at 4pm UK time, unless otherwise stated):  

Tue 11th February
RQG146 - Organic Matter* (Patreon)

Wed 12th February
RQG146 - Organic Matter* (Public)

Thu 13th February
STL035 - Planets and Protagonists (Patreon)

Fri 14th February
Knights/Nobles Bonus - TMA Fluff Competition #1 - Epiphany
STL035 - Planets and Protagonists (Public)

Sat 15th February
RQ Streams #4 - No Man's Sky (3pm GMT)

(* Provisional title, subject to change)

Have a great week all!

Anil
Community Manager