As the second-to-last book in the Republic of Pirates arc, it draws a number of subplots to a close while laying down the foreshadowing and hints needed to make the final book (tentatively titled Starfarer’s Dream) satisfying. And of course it still contains all the fast-paced action, investigation, romance, and banter that is the heart of Triple Strike!

To celebrate, I’m including a couple color versions of the illustrations and art in Threads Unbound here along with an excerpt below. Enjoy, and if you want more content like this on the regular, please join my Discord! I’m going to do my darndest to get Starfarer’s Dream out later this year, so look forward to it!

Threads Unbound Illustrations

Threads Unbound Excerpt

Dunn hesitated before asking, “What should we do with the humans we’re holding?”

“Dispose of them,” Steele answered without hesitation. “And dispose of any others you’ve taken previously. We can’t have word getting back to the HIA. Make it look like an accident, or ‘send them off to the mining colonies’ if you’d prefer. I don’t really care how this gets resolved, so long as you take care of it. I am trusting you to handle this.”

“As you wish, General. Thank you.”

Dunn saluted then stepped back as he touched his earpiece. He started walking toward the facility gates, no doubt in the process of delivering orders to dispose of the captives.

With Steele still in earshot of Alan, Alan couldn’t risk speaking, so he typed out a terse message on his pocket communicator. Greta, you need to get them out now. They’re about to be killed.

There was only the briefest pause before Greta responded. “Understood, Beringer. We’re almost out. So far we’ve avoided enemy contact, but we’re prepared to meet resistance.”

As Greta cut off communication, Alan returned his attention to Steele. The general folded his arms as he regarded Dunn’s retreating back.

“I can see why Hilde wanted to cut ties with the separatists,” he muttered.

“We knew we’d have to clean up this mess sooner or later,” the woman replied. Alan couldn’t make out her features, but from her dark skin and hair, she didn’t seem to be Fimmel.

“Sooner at the rate Dunn is going,” Steele muttered. “I suspect these Fimmel groups have almost outlived their usefulness. The least they could have done is finish building out this system’s infrastructure before I disposed of them. It’s my fault for expecting too much, I suppose.”

The woman started to respond, but something must have come in through her comm, because she stopped talking, her hand unconsciously going to her ear. At the same time, Greta’s voice came through Alan’s own ear piece.

“We’re taking fire! They’ve blocked our way out.”

“I’m finding you a new route,” Colin said at once. “Sending a recommended path to you now.”

Alan’s hands clenched into fists. His heart was already racing, but it all but leapt out of his chest when the woman turned to Steele and said, “General, we have a problem.”

“Another one?” Steele muttered. “What’s happening, Captain?”

It took all of Alan’s self control to stay in place. From the sounds coming through Greta’s comm, her team was barely able to handle the Heritage Keepers already engaging with them. If Republic forces joined the Fimmel separatists, there was no way Greta’s team would get out safely — with or without the hostages.

“Colin, we need to get them out of there,” Alan whispered into his comm, voice low and urgent. “Steele is here, and he’s about to send in his forces. Our team will be pinned in.”

Alan could hear gunfire through Greta’s line. She was directing Nimi and Petr to escort the humans down some corridor as she provided cover, but it didn’t sound like she’d hold out for long — especially not if more soldiers were on their way. Alan glanced nervously at Steele’s captain, who was directing her soldiers toward both of the facility’s entrances.

“Okay,” Colin acknowledged. “I’ll create a distraction.”

Something about Colin’s laconic response made Alan hesitate.

“What does that mean?” Alan asked in a low voice.

Colin didn’t say anything else, but a moment later, Alan got his answer.

There was a distant explosion before the whole of Biosphere 9’s power grid went down. Moments after the lights dotting the dome flickered off, an urgent wail pierced the darkness, and red emergency lights pulsed to life.

A pleasant robot’s voice announced on the sphere-wide communication network, “Power to Biosphere 9 has been lost. Please begin evacuation procedures to your nearest neighboring biosphere. I repeat, power to Biosphere 9 has been lost. Please begin evacuation procedures to your nearest neighboring biosphere.”

“That’ll work,” Greta murmured, not bothering to hide her genuine admiration at Colin’s methods.

Alan was less impressed. “Colin…”

“It’s fine, Alan,” Colin insisted. “There’s no need to worry. This biosphere should have at least two days of life support in the reserve system before we all die.”

This somehow made it feel both like a lot of time and not very much time at all.

Questions or comments? Want to talk about novel writing or indie dev? Please contact me at gmgray@akula-games.com, or join the Akula Games mailing list to hear when a book is released!

The most noteworthy feature of Pyre is that it’s tidally locked to the sun it orbits. Since one side always faces the star, while the other side always faces away, both sides are effectively unlivable without biospheres: one too hot and the other too cold. Life thus developed mostly along the strip of the terminator zone between them, and this zone exists in varying states of twilight having no day-night cycle.

Throughout Pyre’s history, life (with the exception of extremophile bacteria) was limited to some distance along this strip of land. And given that the planet’s water is mostly locked in oceans of ice on the far side, even this terminator zone supports relatively little life – its primary biomes being desert, steppe, and mountains.

Another feature of Pyre that falls out from this is that relatively little biomass has accumulated over the millenia. Since Pyre never developed fossil fuels like those of Earth, the first several industrial revolutions of Pyre were solar and wind-based – two resources the planet has in plenty.

A final feature of Pyre is that, while it has higher gravity than Earth, it also has a denser atmosphere. Thus airships and high-altitude balloons were both more prevalent and earlier-to-appear in the recorded history of pyreans than that of humans. Between this early means of travel and communication, the relatively small planetary footprint pyreans could occupy before the development of biospheres, and the pyreans’ nomadic tendancies, the tribes of Pyre did not culturally diverge as much as humans did on Earth.

Human xeno-anthropologists speculate that this, along with a lack of natural resources, are part of why the pyreans have no formalized concept of war. That said, skirmishes and raiding were certainly common practice throughout their history, and these activities reaching their bloody peak during what the Merdael call the Dark Times.

Questions or comments? Want to talk about novel writing or indie dev? Please contact me at akulagames@proton.me, or join the Akula Games mailing list to hear when a book is released!

1. Machine learning in TS universe hasn’t progressed much beyond what we have currently, so it’s unreliable in edge cases and still has issues with hallucinating etc
2. Knowledge is highly distributed, as there is no “Internet” connecting the colonies (despite point-to-point quantum communication), so “big data” training sets would be impractical
3. Spacefaring favors reliance on analogue and mechanical solutions over digital and software technologies, so while AI provides assistance for many human and pyrean processes, biological operators and manual controls are always preferred and at minimum included for redundancy
4. I have another book series (Entropic Son) which extensively explores dystopic AI, and I wanted to do something else lol

This means, of the numerous human and pyrean languages used across the colonies, there are 3-ish languages that are heavily used in trade and interspecies/international/intertribal relationships: International Human, United Pyrean, and Interplanetary Standard…and Ma’jenn(…ish?)

International Human (IH): A conlang (constructed language) that developed about 700 Universal years ago during early human space colonization. It’s basically space Esperanto. As such, it’s the lingua franca across the human colonies. Any human planning to participate in interstellar trade or travel would be expected to speak it proficiently at minimum, and organizations such as the Elite Academy conduct all classes in IH accordingly.

When Alan and Colin talk to each other, they’re probably using IH, since Alan’s “first” languages are English, French, and Drakeean, while Colin’s “first” languages are Mandarin and Portuguese.

United Pyrean (UP): A pidgin/trade language that developed 3000 Universal years ago and is now its own fully-developed, completely independent language. It’s been used as a trade language between pyrean tribes since before escaping the gravity well, and it continues to be the standard in the IPC. It would be unusual to meet a pyrean who is not at least proficient in UP. For example, Alan has spoken UP since his childhood on Nibel despite it not being one of his “native” languages, and he continues to speak it fluently. Colin also speaks UP (as is expected of Elite inspectors), but he has a noticeable human accent.

Most of the dialogue is in UP, since large chunks of the series take place on the Merry Swallow, which is an IPC vessel. While some Piracy Division crews might speak primarily in Fimmelian among themselves, Sven discourages this since he has a number of non-Fimmel crew members.

Interplanetary Standard (IPS): Another conlang formalized for trade communication between pyreans and ma’jenn, and (as of 300 years ago) reworked to include humans. This language is designed to be very simple and easy to learn, and it communicates concrete ideas well but has little room for nuance or abstract/intangible concepts. The language is primarily taught in academies focused on international relations, but people in regular contact with other species often pick up at least a little of it. Both Elite cadets and Pyrean Navy cadets learn the language, and bureaucrats on mixer colonies would be expected to be proficient as well.

Dialogue in IPS is always explicitly described as being IPS in the books, since it’s only spoken in very specific, usually formal, circumstances.

Ma’jenn(??): Very little is known about the Ma’jenn language even among the pyrean xeno-anthropologists, who specialize in the ma’jenn, and the human ma’jennophiles, who are obsessed with ma’jenn culture (yes, there’s a strong overlap with furries, and yes, they have ma’jennsonas). Most experts (from both groups) agree that ma’jenn vocalizations, which is called Ma’jenn, are only part of ma’jenn communication, which likely also includes body language and pheromones. Some ma’jennophiles think the ma’jenn are also telepathic, but that’s a highly contentious theory even in the community.

No one is quite sure whether the greater ma’jenn hives (such as the Moon Empire) share a common language, or if the language identified as Ma’jenn is just the language of the Moon Empire, as it’s the primary hive in contact with pyreans and humans, and most of the other hives use Moon Empire routes when engaging with non-ma’jenn.

Questions or comments? Want to talk about novel writing or indie dev? Please contact me at akulagames@proton.me, or join the Akula Games mailing list for blog and product updates.

Like all the classic “vaguely-to-extremely xenophobic” space elf stereotypes in sci-fi, the ma’jenn consider themselves more advanced and intelligent than their spacefaring counterparts: the pyreans and humans. That said, they are hive-minded and eusocial (loosely based on naked mole rats and honey bees), so how they view alien life is a bit different from humans.

Like pyreans, ma’jenn are animistic. This means planets hosting life are considered a form of super-organism, and ma’jenn believe a wider range of life are sentient than humans might. Because of this, the ma’jenn do not terraform planetary bodies if it puts the native life at risk, and both pyreans and humans abide by these policies to maintain as good of relations as possible with the ma’jenn.

Ma’jenn do consider pyreans and humans to be exceptionally intelligent among the known species, but they do not classify pyreans or humans as Civilized Ones. Civilized Ones are species the ma’jenn believe to have a civilization. While the ma’jenn don’t deny that pyreans and humans have societies, the ma’jenn believe a civilization definitionally requires participants to be eusocial.*

Earth, with its incredible biodiversity, hosts a number of Civilized Ones, and despite the Moon Empire refusing to participate in formal trade with humans, they have some interspecies, scientific exchange to study Earth’s Civilized Ones.

Civilized Ones of Earth include a number of species of bees, wasps, termites, and ants, as well as several varieties of mole rat and shrimp. Supposedly there is a hotly contested scientific debate in the Crescent Court whether coral species should be classified as Civilized Ones, but ma’jenn scientists have yet to come to consensus.

Another ma’jenn classification of life is Honored Friends. Honored Friends are species the ma’jenn consider to lack civilization but have some notable quality making them worthy of “friendship” with the Empire. Earth’s Honored Friends include a handful of whale species, parrots, elephants, gorillas, and, for some reason, jumping spiders. Humans did not quite make the cut, but Corandisham y’Llaunau d’Helva does seem awfully fond of Alan (admittedly, whether they think of Alan as a friend or a pet is unclear).

Strangely, while ma’jenn do not consider cephalopods either Civilized Ones or Honored Friends, members of Cephalopoda have their own unique classification of “Voice in the Dark.” Voice in the Dark does not appear to be used for any other species in the galaxy, so what this means remains unclear to both pyrean and human xeno-anthropologists.

*Over the years, a number of human ma’jennophiles have tried to convince the ma’jenn that human society is interdependent enough that it should qualify as eusociality, but ma’jenn scientists remain skeptical.

Questions or comments? Want to talk about novel writing or indie dev? Please contact me at akulagames@proton.me, or join the Akula Games mailing list for blog and product updates.

In my personal opinion, the physical versions of the books remain the best experience for reading. I say this having spent many an hour working to get the page bleed just right, and putting the images at the most natural, seamless places along the page breaks – not to mention the additional art created just for the hard copies.

But I do also love this little banner Itch so nicely created to embed in my webpage!

If you do purchase through Itch, be sure to leave me a comment – would love to chat – and of course any ratings/reviews on Amazon are appreciated as always :).

Questions or comments? Want to talk about novel writing or indie dev? Please contact me at akulagames@proton.me, or join the Akula Games mailing list for blog and product updates.

With her typical no-nonsense sharpness, Le Guin said this conflation of story with conflict “reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options.” While I certainly don’t disagree with that assessment, I think the other half of it is that creating a story that doesn’t center around conflict is harder than making one that does.

If that is true in literature and film, then it’s even more true in video games. There is a reason so many games feature violence as a central mechanic. The act of hitting things is very tangible, and it provides a satisfying interaction created by pressing a button. Imagine if Doom had the exact same level design, enemy layout, and weapons feel, but instead of shooting demons, you popped different types of confetti on cute critters. The timings and interactions would be roughly the same, but it would have a completely different vibe with much less tension. While it might be a cute experiment at a game jam that evokes a few chuckles, I doubt it would have the longevity of the Doom franchise.

I suspect making a game without conflict requires focusing on that as a core tenet of the game. There are whole genres for these styles of games, and some obvious games that come to mind are Animal Crossing, the Harvest Moon genre, and Journey by thatgamecompany. Death Standing has very tangible conflict, and while the game nominally exists as an open world, third person shooter in Triple A space, it’s really like nothing else in those genres.

Hideo Kojima said, when discussing the game “the stick is the first tool that mankind created to put distance between himself and bad things – to protect himself. The second tool mankind created is a rope. A rope is a tool used to secure things that are important to you. Most of your tools in action games are sticks. You punch or you shoot or you kick. The communication is always through these sticks. I want people to be connected not through sticks, but through what would be the equivalent of ropes.”

It’s an interesting twist on the typical third-person shooter style of conflict, and you can see this idea reflected in all aspects of the game – not just the enemy encounters and weapons kit Sam Porter Bridges has, but in the way multiplayer works and even the world design and quest system function.

Of course, Capybara Cafe is no Death Stranding. Capybara Cafe was conceived at the start of the pandemic as a stress-free game. What does a game with no pressure at all look like? With this as the starting concept, I designed it as simple puzzle game where capybaras express the sort of dessert they’re looking for and the player constructs a parfait according to the requested flavor profile. It was expanded to include coffees and teas, but the basic game loop is the same.

An example of a parfait the player can create for a customer in Capybara Cafe.

The player opens shop for a day, capybaras come at random intervals to request drinks, the player fulfills the order and receives a score (hidden) based on how well you met the capybara’s request. Since the goal is “no stress” you are always making progress even if you make something the capybara isn’t looking for.

It’s intended to be impossible to run out of money, and the “friendship” you build up with the story-based capybara will always grow (albeit slowly if you can’t figure out their orders). Even the day-night cycle, while it limits the ingredients you can use since the player can only purchase ingredients at the start of the day, is not locked behind time-gating or energy mechanics, which often lead to stress around “properly” managing your time.

Lily Pond and Beachside Resort are two of the locations where you can choose to set up your drink stand.

Neko Atsume was a big inspiration for the concept, and Capybara Cafe definitely has more in common with that and Stardew Valley than it does with Death Stranding in terms of player stress levels, but I am fascinated by this idea of “ropes” that Kojima is playing with, and I tend to like a little more narrative tension to keep me coming back.

The tension in Capybara Cafe is built around anticipation. Certain capybaras can build up friendship points, which allows you to learn more about their daily lives and hidden issues they’re struggling with. These issues are intended to be relatively gentle (they’re capybaras after all), but there’s a balance between so casual, the story feels meaningless and so much story, the pacing feels off since progress is semi-random depending on which capybaras choose to visit that day. Thus the conflicts ideally should be compelling but not complicated.

An example of one of the regulars, Texas Toast, versus one of the random capyabara visitors.

Since the story is only conveyed through the conversations between the capybara and you, a guinea pig barista, the dialogue needs to capture that interest while being self-contained. Hints into the capybaras’ personal lives need to be short. It must fit within the same space requirements as a standard request and response.

The only large chunk of dialogue comes during each capybara’s story climax, which happens when you’ve both maxed out friendship and discovered the capybara’s favorite drink. The capybara asks for advice and it’s up to you to help them. Thus the tension comes from the story of the capybaras’ lives, while the play mechanics themselves (i.e. the drink mixing) remains a low-key casual activity. Just playing through each capybara’s story won’t take long, but with plenty of recipes to discover, the drink mixing itself should have a longer tail of play.

While Capybara Cafe is certainly no art house game, even in the casual space, I think there’s room to explore interesting concepts and approaches to media.

Questions or comments? Just love capybaras? Please contact me at akulagames@proton.me, or join the Akula Games mailing list for blog and product updates.

My hope was that Triple Strike, a semi-episodic sci-fi action comedy adventure about alien space pirates and the human who joins the crew after being “accidentally” kidnapped, would lend itself to the light novel format.

Triple Strike: Threads of Fate cover featuring pyrean captain, Sven Jiordson, his genetically modified iguana, Eric, and the (mostly) human inspector, Alan Beringer

What I wrote (and am writing) is not isekai, but to say it’s not related to Japanese media would be a bit of a lie. Triple Strike was originally a high school comic heavily inspired by the works of Leiji Matsumoto (namely his space operas about pirates written in the 1970s), and to a lesser extent the action-comedy anime of the 80s and 90s (think Yu Yu Hakusho among others).

Even if you don’t recognize the name “Leiji Matsumoto,” you may be familiar with the Daft Punk movie, Interstella, where he acted as the visual supervisor. If you are familiar with Matsumoto-sensei’s manga works, you likely know the name “Captain Harlock.” While it was the incredibly edited-to-the-point-of-incomprehensible dub of Galaxy Express 999 that first left its indelible imprint on my childhood psyche, how could I not fall in love with characters like Captain Harlock and Queen Emeraldas as I branched out into his other works?

These space operas are dramatic to say the least (everything about the narrative is beautiful, wistful, and tragic), but that wasn’t the angle I took with Triple Strike, despite my love for the over-the-top drama of old anime. Triple Strike was meant to be more light-hearted – a good, fun romp.

Bad things happen (and being conceived in high school, the propensity for melodrama runs high), but at the end of the day, what I tried to take from Matsumoto-sensei’s work was his Peak Aesthetic of old-fashioned ships sailing in space, a unique sense of anachronistic sci-fi world-building, and the romantic, ongoing themes of freedom and fate (if pushing a little less on the “tragedy” side of those things!).

An example of the original comic. The overall plot line has changed pretty dramatically, but Sven and his sister, Natalia, arguing while Alan sighs in the background will continue to be a feature.

The original version of Triple Strike was a comic, and while I continued to pick at it for years and years after high school, the project was ultimately too time-consuming, and I’d grown as both a writer and storyteller, so the existing narrative structure didn’t work for me anymore. Last year, a couple things changed.

1) An old friend from high school, who is without question Triple Strike’s biggest fan, asked me to finish the series, if not as a comic then at least as a book.

2) I discovered the work of Mo Xiang Tong Xui (colloquially known as MXTX).

I fell in love with MXTX’s work in the same way I’d fallen for Galaxy Express 999 all those years ago. MXTX is both really funny, and a master of Peak Aesthetic. (Seven Seas Entertainment is bringing over all of her works, and they are all beautifully illustrated and translated, so maybe consider checking them out!)

Her danmei/BL romances exist within these expansive, compelling plots full of action and intrigue. They are romances, sure, but they’re also thrillers, horror, mysteries, action, adventure, comedies etc, etc.

Essentially the works of MXTX represent the lack of compromise I want Triple Strike to have: I want it all. I want it to be a good old-fashioned rollicking adventure with swashbuckling, crime-solving, sentient lizards, exciting planets, fun aliens, and of course a healthy helping of queer romance.

But I also wanted to create a universe that has its share of problems, yet takes place in a future where humanity has grown just a little as a species. Fossil fuels and wars are considered antiquated. There are no longer political attempts to regulate another person’s gender or sexuality. The most powerful human organization is a transportation regulatory body. Now if only the technologically superior pyreans would stop insisting they’re robbing vessels out of love for human literature on the Age of Sail.

A preview illustration from Threads of Fate. Sven’s and Alan’s relationship gets off to a rocky start when they first meet.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, the first book Triple Strike: Threads of Fate is fully rewritten and illustrated with the second book, Triple Strike: Pasts Revisited, scheduled for release later this year! Please consider picking up digital copy of Triple Strike: Threads of Fate through one of these stores:

Amazon
Kobo
Barnes & Noble

A physical copy is coming soon as well (more on that soon!).

Questions or comments? Want to just chat about how amazing Queen Emeraldas or Heaven Official’s Blessing are? Please contact me at: akulagames@proton.me

You might be thinking “if you do all that, the name ‘Akula Games’ won’t really fit anymore, will it?” You’re probably right, but as a counterpoint, the more I think about “games” the more I think about the Latin word for “games” which is ludus. Ludus, interestingly, is also the word for plays, sports, and school. That is to say, it means “fun.” Games are fun, creative pursuits are fun, learning is fun.

So in that spirit, Akula Games fits just fine – and mixing Russian and Latin for an English-speaking company would be a bit overdramatic, right? (Also let’s not think too hard about trying to decline “akula” and “ludus” together in a sensible way).