We had a big increase in site traffic over the holiday break, which makes me think that many of you received either Dark Prophecy or Dark Origins as a gift. I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you to the site and tell you a little bit about how this whole thing works.

What you have in your hands is a Digi-novel. A what? A Digi-novel. It works like this: as you read the novel you’ll reach the end of a section where you’re given a code. On the right side of this website, you’ll see a box for inputting that code (respective to whichever book you’re reading) that will unlock a cyber-bridge (a 3-5 minute piece of motion picture footage that enhances the reading experience).

Dark Origins and Dark Prophecy work a little different. Dark Origins acts as a literal bridge, as if we’ve removed a section of the book and filmed it. Dark Prophecy actually has a separate, though related, storyline that takes you deeper into the character of Steve Dark. You can choose to watch it when prompted or not. You can watch them all at once or not at all.

Either way, we’ve built an engaging and interactive experience here at Level 26 and want you to take part. We have a number of exciting things coming up soon as well.

In the next few weeks we’ll be releasing the iPad app for Dark Prophecy, which will contain the book, the cyber-bridges as well as a bunch of extra features and content. Essentially, the dream of the Digi-novel in its truest form has become a reality.

We’ve also begun work on Book 3. We will have a big announcement with more details later but for now we can tell you that it will be coming out later this year, in October 2011. Give you guys something to look forward to.

In the meantime, enjoy the first two books and be sure to let us know what you think!

Zuiker