To the Moon dev releases free holiday episode

To the Moon developer Freebird Games released an update for the game today, adding a free "minisode" to the interactive story from 2011, the studio announced on its website.

The downloadable Holiday Special, which Freebird developed over the past month, stars two characters from the original game: Dr. Watts and Dr. Rosalene. Freebird released the Holiday Special on its website, but To the Moon director Kan Gao said on Twitter that the studio's website is crashing due to hosting the file. According to Freebird's announcement post, the Steam version of To the Moon should be patched with the Holiday Special soon.

"The minisode is just about 20 minutes long, and is meant to be played front-to-end in a little marathon, as there is no save feature (or menus, for that matter). It takes place around the holiday season, at the local branch of Sigmund Corp where Eva and Neil are employed," said Gao in the blog post.

Gao also provided an update on the progress of A Bird Story, the follow-up to To the Moon that Freebird announced this past March.

"To be honest, I don't really know when exactly it'll be finished," said Gao, apologizing for the game's repeated delays. "It's not that long of a game at all, but there are things in it that I'm just still trying to figure out. It's also something that means a lot to me personally, and I don't want to compromise how it turns out."

He added, "It will be finished when it's ready." In the meantime, Gao added a few tracks to the original soundtrack for A Bird's Story; the album is available on Bandcamp.