And so, a mentally exhausting journey (for us as much as our characters) finally comes to a close - the spell is broken as a new day arises, the dream ends, and so does the game. But we're going to make you cry all over again just one last time!

Like the previous part, this is wondrous. After making a final rush for the finish line and producing nearly three hours of video that Saturday, we're all in a state of what might be described as exhausted relief here, and incredibly fragile in many ways. We joke our way through the bittersweet ending until it all gets too much, and my favourite moment is when everyone sets everyone else off and even the Bird Reaper can't get through it without breaking down, inducing a sort of hysterical laugh through my own tears. Then we get to say goodbye to all the characters one by one, and the game takes the opportunity to snare us just one last time.

This whole collection of stories was brilliant. If you've found these posts in the future, make sure to buy it yourself, and if DLSite doesn't work for you, pay Moa on her Fundrazr and then get it off a torrent. Thank you Moa, thank you Nazerine, thank you to everyone on the team for acting and cooing so magnificently, thank you to me for editing TEN AND A HALF HOURS of pigeons across twenty-eight videos... I've no idea what else to say.

Except I don't know why I'm acting like it's over, because we've still got five shrine scenes, three short stories and two radio sessions to do, and I'll be caught among pigeons for the rest of time. Once you have stared into the beaked face of Hatoful, peeled aside the layers of the onion of madness and seen its true form... there is no going back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz4vaLgLxPU

0:15 Field of silver grass
0:55 Fine
1:45 Thanks, Sakuya
3:20 Pushy peasants
4:40 Lost King
5:55 RETURN TO THE STARS
7:40 Galactic Railroad
9:00 The fossil
10:15 The amber
10:35 MOTHER
11:00 Crying Reaper
11:35 Nageki's decision
12:40 Black and bitter
13:50 Your adventure has continued here
14:40 Last call for the Southern Cross
15:30 Home
15:50 Kazuaki
16:15 Okosan
16:40 Sakuya
17:05 Ryouta
17:45 Miru, Kaku, Yuuya and Shuu
19:10 Tohri
19:50 Leone
20:30 Anghel and Teo
21:50 Nageki
22:00 THE END

In part eight, which holds the record for the Youtube video with the most consecutive "W"s in it, the game reaches at least two of a series of several climaxes that it's going to go through over the next hour of gameplay. Almost uniquely, it also has us making a correct decision at one of the branch points - I made a slide to stick in for when we were saving, and it was just after I'd added it to the video that I remembered that virtually none of our audience will know what it's meant to represent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f43ovWwww4w

0:30 Legion
1:10 Mapping pen
1:50 Regen buff
2:25 I should...
3:30 What's going on
4:15 A Japanese thing
6:50 SALVATION
8:20 Laughing through the tears
11:55 A better King
12:35 Merry Christmas!
14:20 A bit strange
15:20 Smash! Bump! Thok!
16:05 One more
17:15 Migrant
18:25 Speechless

And this time, it's my turn - a large portion of this episode is me monologuing, punctuated by a series of disbelieving squawks of "WHAT?!" as another of my characters kills everybody once again. He isn't named here out loud, but there's a quite striking point where you can tell from my voice that I've realized exactly who it is.

Then, in the best of Hatoful traditions... things start to get even worse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGvD1mhRe1w

0:15 Stormtrooper
0:35 Hope
1:35 Mental institution
1:55 Transformation
3:15 Not evil
4:25 My guess
4:45 The King's story
7:20 Interlude
11:40 Betrayal
12:20 Realization
14:45 The King's Picture Book
18:15 True throne room
18:45 We don't like this
19:10 Not the time
20:50 Dark metamorphosis
21:30 FORMAT C:
21:50 What we're dealing with

Today's episode starts off with an unusual narration change, and we get a nice, frantic, outraged scene with Yuuya and Sakuya the Piano. Being Hatoful, though, this mood doesn't last long - xaq has been quite quiet throughout this chapter, but when he gets a scene, he really does a scene. He got a massive amount of praise for these Ryouta lines in the chatroom as it was going on, and from us shortly afterwards - just like at the end of BBL, the amount of emotion here is amazing, as evidenced by the sort of feeble sobbing noises coming constantly from the rest of us - and the... actual quiet rage after our poor decision is actually quite chilling.

But not as chilling as what happens afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG6EHn35hbE

0:08 Yuuya
0:45 Eggclipse
1:10 The Decorated Picture Book
2:55 Apologies in advance
3:55 Coo
6:10 The other Shuu
7:05 Smirk
8:25 Sakuya stained glass
8:40 Electrical wires
9:55 Shirogane Sakuya Le Bel
10:45 The Black and White Picture Book
11:00 A sunflower
12:50 Predictions
15:25 The saddest thing ever
21:25 SAVE
22:05 Picking up the pieces
23:05 Loves/doves
23:35 Gone
24:30 No
24:50 LONG LIVE THE KING

Top of my list of worries when beginning to edit last Saturday's videos was what to even call this chapter - once its nature was made clear to us, I chose to name the stream "Dark Day the Night Slept" in the best of Silent Hill traditions, but that was a temporary measure. With xaq's help, we do have a possible name for it, but as we're likely not supposed to know this yet, I think I'm going to continue referring to it as the Unknown Episode. Or maybe "Hellstar".

Here, then, is another fragment of it - in this part, things start to be explained, and subsequently make less sense than ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e5nYRAHJHo

0:20 Straight in to Yuuya
1:30 Egress
2:00 Foppy dove man
3:05 Pure of heart
3:35 Potheads
4:30 Big mouth
5:50 Disaster
6:35 ***KING***
7:55 Queen
8:20 Moon
10:25 Exterior
11:10 Attention
12:20 We know who this is
14:05 Stop thinking
15:55 Himantophid
18:25 Bob Ross
19:20 One step closer
23:05 Longer dungeons
23:30 Not much of a lady
23:55 Narrative
24:20 A Japanese thing
25:15 Professional

Welcome to the shortest part ever! I hadn't realized when I started editing this section that it consisted mostly of technical difficulties - and so, the actual remaining content in the chapter turned out to be only about five minutes. However, entering the realm of dreams gives Hatoful the chance to loosen its already tenuous grip on reality - we knew this was a dangerous situation for us all, but we weren't to realize just how dangerous until the game had its true Ecco the Dolphin moment. Our reactions are recorded here for posterity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0BmEyIxfI

0:13 Friends
1:35 The fire
2:05 New Game Plus
3:10 Better judgement
4:40 When morning comes
5:45 Hope to die
6:10 In your dreams
6:35 Goodbye
8:30 NNNNNNNN

kjorteo is emerging as quite a star in this chapter of the game, having been largely on the sidelines during the second story and now voicing four prominent speakers at once! In this, the second of potentially many mini-stories in the chapter, Sakuya gets a turn, and is shown being indignant for a change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HeVkEj1ms

0:08 Solved
1:00 A dream come dream
2:40 Reward
3:15 King's Quest II
4:00 Blown away
5:30 Panicking citizens
6:10 Sakuya's tea party
8:30 Enemies
9:20 Explosion
9:35 Speculation
10:10 A sign of something
10:40 No time for salutations
11:40 Finding the entrance
12:05 Adieu
13:00 Rabbit hole
13:40 A kind of completion
14:25 Time
15:00 Dreamweaver
15:40 Tea party
16:55 Magnobindle
18:05 Nageki and Ryuuji
18:30 A little bit off

The game begins to turn quite special even by Hatoful standards here, with an episode in which (to coin a phrase) we buy a one way ticket for the celestial ghost train and blast off straight past Crazytown. A new character, the Dreaming King, serves as an introduction and a warning of what is to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1FVtPFR6LQ

0:10 ???
1:50 Cygnus
3:00 Nothing going on
3:40 Spacesuit
4:10 Window
5:10 Astronomy
5:55 Dream
6:50 Conductor casting decision
7:40 Shadowgate Reaper
8:10 Nageki Nanaki Kazuaki Nanaki Nageki
9:00 Scorpion Flame
9:20 Never ever ever
10:05 Tickets
11:50 Poll
12:50 Off the train
13:50 Gone
15:10 Leave it to me!
15:30 Holiday Star
16:25 Our lord
17:05 Throne room
17:40 The King's Speech
18:40 Down and to the right
19:50 Selfish
20:50 Troubled
21:30 In out in out
22:30 Kill some time

It's a veritable smorgasbord today, after I set Powerdirector to ludicrous speed - in advance of starting The Day The Night Slept tomorrow, a chapter that has been built up to a frankly terrifying degree by the fan community, here are all the bits and pieces that we went through after the stunning conclusion of Fallen Chronicles: Absolute Zero last week, including the extras (retakes and alternative routes) that I forgot to announce when I posted them.

Extras for chapter 1

Extras for chapter 2

Short Episode 1 - Legumentine's Chronicles

Shrine Visit with Nageki

Radio 3 - Special Talk Show
Check the video descriptions for the highlight lists, I'm not pasting them all in here! But I will say that each and every one of them are fantastic in their own way - Tohri/Rainbowbeaks is really coming out as a star character by now. As is the game itself.

I have two hundred subscribers. More accurately, you - kjorteo, ravenworks, budgiebin, xaq - have two hundred subscribers, becase I'm well aware that about a hundred and ninety-nine of those are for the Hatoful broadcasts and the remainder are for the channel's original intended purpose (which is still stated in the description even though Hatoful videos outnumber normal videos at least two to one). We have one hundred thousand views, with about three hundred being added every day.

We have a Tumblr for the effort, with a name decided not by us but by consensus among the fans that we picked up during this bizarre project. They are decorating themselves with this name. They are creating fanart of us. (I am very pleased to have been gifted quite such a generous amount of hair.)

In all my endeavours on the Internet, in music, games and everything... this is the one that's taken off. My friends feed is now almost exclusively a complete pigeonfest. It's captured us, it's captured people who listened to us or even discovered the game through us... I would never, ever have guessed that I would enjoy being part of it quite so much.

Thank you, Moa. And here's to the next two Holidaystar stories :)