It’s finally here! Episode 4: The Cain Killer, and the full season of Cognition, is available now in our store, as well as on Steam & GOG!

AND we’re having a huge sale to celebrate! Everything Cognition is discounted for one week only, and we have new exclusive items and bundles! Get Episode 4 at 25% off plus the exclusive Cain Killer Soundtrack, or the Detective Bundle, featuring both Cognition and Face Noir; or get the Season Pass Soundtrack Bundle with the e-comic, soundtrack, and the Cain Killer soundtrack for only $19.99! We’re on sale in the iTunes store as well!

Don’t forget to join us at 11 AM PDT/2 PM EDT today for our livestream launch party on our YouTube channel to celebrate the release with us, hear some Q&A, and maybe win a prize. 🙂

And, enjoy the trailer!

The End Begins. In just two weeks, Erica Reed’s investigation will come to an end and all your burning questions will be answered: What happened to John? Where is Cordelia? Will Erica catch the Cain Killer at last — and when she does, will she choose justice or revenge?

On the 19th, not only will the final episode launch on the Phoenix Store and other online retailers, the full season will be available at both Steam and GOG as well! And in case that isn’t exciting enough, we’re having another livestream launch party on our YouTube channel on September 19th at 11 AM PDT/2 PM EDT featuring live Q&A with the directors, giveaways, and not one but two special guests: Amy K. Browne, the voice of Cordelia Smith, and the one and only Jane Jensen! Join us to hear more about the behind the scenes of Cognition, ask about our other projects, and hear what’s ahead for Phoenix Online Studios.

For now, how much is levitra enjoy the latest trailer and screenshots!

The wait is over! Cognition Episode 2: The Wise Monkey is now available for the iPad for just $3.99!

When someone close to Erica is kidnapped by the Wise Monkey, a serial killer fixated on the gruesome mutilation of their victims, Erica is in a race against time to save his life. With the Wise Monkey case in her hands and the FBI’s resources already stretched thin, she’s on her own to find the killer before it’s too late – again.

To celebrate, Episode 1: The Hangman is on sale for $.99 for one week only!

Cognition Episodes 1-3 are also now available on the Mac App Store–regularly priced at $9.99, for this week they’re on sale for $7.99:

• Episode 1: The Hangman
• Episode 2: The Wise Monkey
• Episode 3: The Oracle

I am very excited to announce that Cognition has finally gotten through Steam Greenlight! Check out the official announcement from Steam here, and congratulations to all of the game & software devs also on the list.

The whole team is thrilled about this news — what a way to start the weekend! — and we are also incredibly grateful to all of you for supporting us, voting us up, spreading the word, and making this happen for us. As always, we could not best selling price for levitra have done it without you.

I also want to thank our development and social media team members for tirelessly promoting the Greenlight page and getting the word out there, and we send our best wishes to everyone still in Greenlight. If you’re on Steam and haven’t checked it out yet, there are some truly great games there and all it takes is a quick thumbs up to help them out–check out the catalogue and you’re certain to find another game you’re interested in!

As we get Steamworks incorporated into Cognition and get closer to releasing on Steam, we’ll keep the news coming, both here and in our Steam group. Thank you once again!

Cognition Episode 2: The Wise Monkey is now on sale at IndieGameStand! Available for the excellent price of “pay what you want”, if you beat the average price, you’ll also get Episode 1: The Hangman!

Plus, 10% of the profits will go to the very worthy cause of One Fund Boston, a charity supporting victims of the Boston Marathon Bombings.

The sale lasts through May 31st, so get over there and get your copy now!

Cognition Episode 3: The Oracle is now available in the Phoenix Online Store, and for the next 24 hours, we’re having a sale to celebrate!

When a trail of clues—and bodies—lead Erica to the luxurious Enthon Towers, her post-cognitive powers leave her unable to escape the dark betrayals in its past. The shocking truth about the Oracle’s identity is revealed, along with the killer’s connection to Erica’s own tragic past. No longer sure who she can trust, if anyone, Erica is determined to find the truth, no matter what the cost.

From now until 3 PM EST/12 PM PST on Friday May 17th, we’re running an exclusive sale on the following items:

• Episode 3: The Oracle for $9.99 and an exclusive collection of 5 songs from the game!
• Cognition Season Pass for only $19.99, a savings of $10!
• Cognition Episodes 3 & 4 Upgrade for only $9.99, down from the regular price of $14.99!

Jump into the penultimate chapter of Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, where you get to play not only as Erica, but also step into the shoes of the mysterious Oracle!

The last few days of any game project are hectic. We know it, we have to work hard, and it’ll be long hours. Yet it seems that every time we reach this stage, I feel so overwhelmed by things that I always think that we’ll never make it.

Episode 3: The Oracle is a special one for me. Even though Nick Bryan took more care of the episode than I did, I always wanted to stay close to this episode because I knew it would be my favorite of the bunch. It’s such a critical one because this is the episode to reveal it all, the one where all the story comes together before the frantic ending that will be Episode 4: The Cain Killer.

To me, The Oracle has the better plot twists and some of the most gut-wrenching stuff in the series. It’s the episode that will make you torn about the motives behind the killings, and will make you see that everything is not as black and white as it seems. If we did our job right, by the end of the episode you might feel sympathetic towards characters you never thought you would feel sympathetic for.

So this episode needed the utmost care, and that’s why I never let it drift out of my hands too much. I was there when puzzles were being designed, dropped in the general outline for the episode, designed some of the puzzles myself, and took care of Act 4 (the ending section). I put it the hands of the very capable Nick Bryan, and stepped back to take care of Moebius or some non-fun business stuff that always requires my attention. (continue reading…)

On Thursday May 16th, Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller continues in Episode 3: The Oracle! In this episode, you won’t just be playing as Erica, but also as the killer who’s been playing games with her. Meaning we’ll finally know the answer to one big question: Who is the killer? 

Plus! Join us on May 16th at 11 AM PST/2 PM EST for a launch day livestream! We’ll be on Google Hangout, taking your questions, talking about Episode 3, and doing some exclusive giveaways at our YouTube channel. Just go to to http://www.youtube.com/postudios and hangout with us!

I hope you’re ready to put on your sleuth hat!

Cognition Episode : The Oracle just around the corner, meaning we’re officially in crunch time: long hours, nights and weekends, all hands on deck and everyone’s neck-deep in testing and bug fixing to make this Episode ready and looking good. So this past weekend, I stepped into the role of playtester and finally got in my first full playthrough of Episode 3.

Episode 3 has been designed & directed by Nick Bryan, our assistant designer, and Cesar, so while I helped outline, edit and review the script for the Episode 3, I haven’t been as deeply involved with its development. And it was really fun to play a game I both knew and didn’t know for the first time!

Much like The Hangman and The Wise Monkey, The Oracle has its own unique feel and pacing. This time around, I found myself thinking of it more and more as a haunted house mystery. It’s got all the classic highlights:

• A new death reopens an investigation into a building with a bloody past
• Betrayal, secrets, and family drama lie at the center of this mystery
• Everyone has something to hide and no one can be trusted
• The past is intricately tied to Erica’s present in ways she couldn’t have anticipated
• Ghosts! (Well, Projection ghosts)
• There’s even a suspicious-looking butler! I mean, come on, look at this guy!

As soon as you enter the haunted house , the Enthon Towers, you know something’s changed. It’s subtle, but the whole tone of the game shifts as Erica digs into the grittiest of details here. Her post-cognition is really worked into every inch of the design in this Episode, which is so very steeped in discovering the secrets from the past of this place. So get out that sleuth hat, and you’ll want to bring a notepad and pencil for this one, too, because there’s a lot of detail to review and all of it is important. Get ready for some old-fashioned true detective work and an intriguing mystery; you’re not going to want to stop until you’ve figured it out!

I can’t wait for Episode 3 to be out there and to hear everyone’s reactions to the puzzles, new characters, and the mysteries in this one. Not to mention their theories on Episode 4, of course!

Today’s post is written by Gavin Greene, Production Coordinator for Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, taking some time out of his very busy day to tell us about his role on the team!

Coordinators are the harbingers of red tape and re-prioritization, a bureaucratic middle man that can be respected, but never entirely liked. And that’s exactly where you need to be.

Artist's interpretation

Also known as an Associate Producer in teams that can afford such titles, a Coordinator’s lot in production is one of constant readjusting. The proud owner and operator of the master schedule, every week brings subtle transformations to your perfectly planned testing passes and animation blocking schedules. Game development is a process of constantly revising your prospects, as a thousand little variables are always in flux: Unity crashes and stubborn shoulder rigs, re-exports and complex renders. Add the fact that your entire team is satellite and around the world, and it makes the film production background you come seem like the most refreshing of breezes.

Luckily then, the day job of the Production Coordinator is to be everywhere at all times, or as close to it as humanly possible. One of the earliest things I learned is to remove the sound of Skype pings, my first few hours on staff was riddled with tiny chirps from a dozen conversations. You have an ear in every department during office hours, ready to rush in to solve any number of daily problems that can arise.

In between arranging and hosting all manners of department meetings and dailies (where everyone shows off their days work for their respective leads), you can be called upon to help get a recently approved prop into a character model’s hand or confirming a logic editor has the latest 3D layout of the scene he’s working on. It’s being on call on a phone line that’s always ringing. Given that we have departments in Italy and India, it also means daily midnight conferences on modeling procedures and approval processes.

Redmine: "From up here, you all look like little, compulsively organized ants."

Once (or if) you manage to quiet all immediate concerns for a moment, you shift from the microscopic back to the macroscopic. And at my position, that means going from firefighting to data entry. We at Phoenix Online use the SCRUM style of scheduling on a milestone delivery schedule – for at least one of our projects – all of which means a lot of organizing and updating spreadsheets and scheduling software documents. While each staff member sees their individual priorities in a shared “To Do List” Google doc, I primarily employ Hansoft for the grander plan. To my eyes, a game looks like a massive array of nodes and interconnected lines long before it takes manifests into something playable.

Once we establish a foundation of logic and everyone has a foothold in their department, minute bugs and polish assignments can be tracked using Redmine, a program which helps store and prioritize everything from a character with a spinning chest to a background that needs final shading. An average game project can run anywhere from 600 to a couple thousand of these little tasks, all of which come through your inbox at each stage of being fixed.

It’s certainly a mountainous amount of information to take in and process, be it day 1 or 1,000. But all Coordinators (or Associate Producers) learn fast on their feet, and I was impressed just how quickly I was employing a unique bag of tricks. Despite my intimidating introduction, my greatest asset is my team. If you have a wonderful assortment of people, your job becomes a whole lot smoother (if not less complex). The staff at Phoenix Online – my little schedule nodes – are a wonderful, truly dedicated bunch, with their own little brand of insanity that I’m proud to be contributing to.