As you may have heard, Journey was recently shown at Austin’s annual Fantastic Fest!

The game was featured on several stations at the Highball Lounge – which is just next to the Alamo Drafthouse (where the festival takes place). The Sony portion of this event featured several of PSN’s upcoming indie releases – including Retro/Grade, Okabu, Papo y Yo, PixelJunk 4am and Closure. And the Fantastic Arcade showcased even more indie greatness!

It was great to have this opportunity to share the game to the Austin public – and to host our third fan meet-up.  We shared the game with some fantastic people, and also met developers from Junction Point, Arkane, BioWare, and several other local studios. Thanks to everyone who came out – especially folks who drove long distances to come and play the game!

A heartfelt thanks goes out to the staff of the Highball and of course, the organizers of Fantastic Fest & it’s Arcade showcase. Their hospitality and excitement about Journey was visible in every aspect of the event. If you live in/near Austin, definitely put it on your calendar for next year!

For more info on the event, check out the panel coverage over on Gamasutra, and our chats with the Austin Chronicle,  G4, and VG24/7.

So, it’s been a year since we posted the last piece of fan art on the blog, as we’ve been posting them on our Facebook and Twitter pages instead.  Here are some highlights of the past few years, but there are plenty more where that came from!  Check out our Facebook Fan Art album and the deviantART Fan Art group to see even more amazing fan art!

As seen above, we’re starting out with a Journey costume made for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by forum user Natterforme.  Even though his computer crashed, he still remade and finished the costume for public use!  As a mod, it’s always a work in progress, so keep looking at the thread here if there are any more updates.   And click on the image after the jump to download the file:

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Cross-Posted from the PlayStation Blog

Hi all,

This is Jenova Chen from thatgamecompany. First of all I would like to thank you for your support during the closed beta for our upcoming game Journey. It was a great success!

For the past few months, we kept getting asked about Journey’s release date. Yes, we haven’t said anything about our release in a while mainly because we really couldn’t tell. And we don’t want to throw out a date that we are not sure about, and later disappoint our players.

Fortunately, the online beta went very well, and our continued playtests have given us great feedback on the work we have left to complete. While there is still a ton of care and polish needed, we can’t wait to finally deliver Journey, TGC’s take on an online adventure game.

Like all our games, Journey is an experiment. In the end, it’s what you think that matters. We are happy to announce Journey will be released Spring 2012, so you can experience the adventure for yourself.

(Posted by Aaron on behalf of Jenova.)

It’s been a busy few weeks for us, traveling around with Journey. Our most recent stop was PAX Prime, held in lovely downtown Seattle. While in town, I met with press, fans and fellow indies, and Chris participated in a panel at PAX Dev.

Being a fan-focused event, PAX was the perfect place for our second official meetup. After enjoying lunch with these delightful folks, and chatting about all things TGC, fellow indie Kevin and I headed to the conference center, to see about handing out a few Journey t-shirts.

My first stop was to check out Warp and FEZ, who had a slick stand-up booth on the 2nd floor, just outside the main halls. Great to see kids and parents enjoying these fun puzzle games, together. Venturing further into the main hall, a quick peek inside confirmed that The Bohemoth’s booth (and everything nearby) was jammed with fans, so after a quick t-shirt drop, I jetted up to the 6th floor indie area.

Upstairs was definitely hopping! In addition to visiting with Alexander Bruce (developer of Anti-Chamber) and other teams of the Pax 10, I had the chance to stop and stop in at the booths for Retro/Grade, Monaco, Minecraft and Skulls of the Shogun. Hooray, t-shirt swaps! Even bumped in to Amir Rao of SuperGiant Games, and congratulated him on shipping their very first title, Bastion – featured in last year’s PAX 10.

With so many great people and games to see, the day really flew by. But it was great to get out and remember just how vibrant and exciting the game community is these days. It’s probably our last trip for a while… but we’ll keep you posted on future meetups and Journey events, including my upcoming trip to Game City in Nottingham this fall.  Till then!  - r

Robin Hunicke and Kellee Santiago went to Germany to speak at GDC Europe and Gamescom and to present Journey to the European press and fans.  At Gamescom, Kellee spoke about the next ten years of gaming on a panel with Sony executives and other famous developers and Robin spoke about the history of Journey.

One of the highlights of the trip was the TGC Community Meetup held during Gamescom.  With just a few days’ notice of the event, about a dozen people came to the event.  You can see most of the attendees in the picture above.

Click the “More” button to check out some links from the week:

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