The Layup

I came through the festive period successfully balancing having more free time to work on STH with having more free time to spend with loved ones, don’t ask me how. Now that we are in 2025, launch year, the countdown really feels like it is on. Our creative writer Alexandra finished her world building which introduced new and original names for elements in the game which had previously had placeholder terms from generic sci-fi games and movies. As an example we have renamed the Respawn Queue the Spiritweave :

Spiritweave - A network of connections formed by the souls of ancestors, woven together through shared experiences and memories, a tapestry of guidance for those that can interpret it.

This brings more solidity to the universe and really encourages escapism, which is a big part of why we play sci-fi games of course. A focus this month will be presenting this more front and centre on the website to newer players.

Having volunteered to do all the print layups since I have a background as a Graphic Designer, I have had the fun task of preparing all the punchboard templates to send to the manufacturers. It doesn’t seem to matter how inspiring the names for the components are I still wasn’t able to escape into the universe whilst setting 3mm bleed borders on everything, cry.

What am I most excited about this week? Xavier (our concept artist) will be sending in his concepts for the third faction 3-World Alliance (3-WA). These young worlds have not experienced war but do know all about crowd control having endured small scale civil unrest, hence there might be a bit of a theme of faceless oppression about them - can’t wait to see what he conjures up.