SiN Episodes

SiN Episodes
Boxart of the European retail release, showing Jessica Cannon in the foreground and John Blade in the background.
Developer(s)	Ritual Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Ritual Entertainment
Distributor(s)	Valve Corporation EA Distribution
Designer(s)	Shawn Ketcherside
Programmer(s)	Ken Harward
Artist(s)	Robert M. Atkins
Writer(s)	Shawn Ketcherside
Composer(s)	Zak Belica
Engine	Source
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	May 10, 2006
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

SiN Episodes are a planned series of episodic games for Microsoft Windows that would have expanded upon the 1998 computer game SiN. A total of nine episodes were planned with only the first one released. Developed by Ritual Entertainment and powered by the Source game engine, the first episode "Emergence" was the first computer game by a major developer to both be produced episodically and delivered over the Internet without the intervention of a publisher. This was accomplished through Valve Corporation's Steam content delivery system.

In 2007, Ritual was acquired by casual game developers MumboJumbo, stalling the franchise and leaving the future of the series uncertain. With the sale of Ritual to MumboJumbo and departure of several employees, all future development of Sin Episodes appears to be delayed indefinitely, if not entirely canceled. MumboJumbo has already tasked Ritual to develop "high-quality casual content."

Arena Mode is a single player mode and was designed to run a contest at E3 2006 as part of a promotion alongside Vigor Gaming. In this high score mode the objective is to survive as long as possible among the steadily spawning and increasing enemies. There are time limits to the maps and it is possible to survive an entire round. The scoring system is also tied to the Personal Challenge System which runs at a much higher rate than in the main game. The challenge level changes every few seconds depending on the player's performance and the higher the challenge, the higher the rate of points that are accumulated. This mode was introduced into the game on June 26, 2006 with four maps available. An update was released on July 18, 2006 which included three further maps.

Freeport City is a bustling, futuristic megacity with a population of 27,000,000 and described as a mix of New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Areas that are featured in Emergence include the Freeport Docks, Sintek Supremacy Tower, and Radek's hidden drugs lab on board a beached, derelict oil tanker.