(Also known as TLF)
The Logic Factory are a computer games company based in America (somewhere?). Their best known games are Ascendancy and The Tone Rebellion; actually, let me rephrase that, those are the only games they have made to date!
They are currently working on a game called Seeker, which is a sort of weird action/RPG combination that sees you transported into some other poor creature's body on an alien planet. Details on this are still a little sketchy (not least because TLF are rather bad about talking to their customers :-/ ), but as far as can be seen, it's due to become some sort of online multiplayer game. Because we don't have enough of those already.
Ascendancy II has been in the planning stage for some time now (ie. years), and there is still no sign of it even getting started, thanks to Seeker holding everything up. There is a thriving Ascendancy community, which is currently hacking away at the original game, trying to piece together a homemade sequel.
The origin of the now-infamous phrase "Check Back in January" is in the dark, dark time when TLF pulled their entire website (including the discussion forum, which was the focus of the community at that point) down for an extensive redesign. This took about six months or so, during which they simply posted up a placeholder page telling you to "Check Back in {insert next month here}"; every month, people would rush to see if it was finished yet, but TLF would just have pushed it back to next month. This went on for some time, until eventually the page just froze at that phrase until the new site finally went up around March.
Ever since, the Ascendancy community has used the phrase whenever they need to say "I don't want to do that/I'll do it later/It'll never happen";, etc. A case in point is the Ascendancy Island website, which has been under construction since the dawn of time; therefore, whenever someone asks its webmaster about launch dates, he tells them to (surprise surprise) Check Back in January!
I know external links are bad, but sometimes they're appropriate:
- The Logic Factory's website can be found at http://www.logicfactory.com, although at the time of writing it was offline for maintenance. Or something.
- You can also find the Ascendancy Community JumpStar at http://www.geocities.com/greyknight3/jmp_asc.htm, which links to every Ascendancy website in existence