December
almost 2 years ago – Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 06:02:57 AM

Hey everyone! It's nice to check back in with you all again. I'm excited to let you know what I've been working on since the project ended, and what's up next.

As always, I'll keep this brief. Ask away in the comments if you've got questions that aren't covered here :)

I. Rest

Most of November was dedicated to rest. Running a campaign is exhausting, especially given the success of this one (thanks!) and everything else going on (day job, family, etc).

Over the past couple of weeks I've felt excited and energised to get properly stuck in, and I think the break has really shown its value in the work I've created.

II. Writing

Those of you who receive my newsletter will know that I've been trying to write in a text/writing app, rather than directly into layout software (e.g. InDesign).

I won't repeat what I said in my letter, but I can tell you that so far it's working really well. Ulysses has a tonne of great little features, including daily goals and rich markdown support, that make it a very frictionless writing experience. I've been working through the sections pretty consistently, and it's nice to see the chapters start coming together.

III. Music

Something else I've been doing that blurs the work/rest boundary is getting back into music creation. I played a lot of guitar throughout my childhood, studying music up to A-level, and got into electronic music in a big way throughout University. Somewhere along the way though it all kind of dropped off the radar—adult life makes it harder to spend all day noodling in your bedroom I suppose!

I was inspired to do the Koriko soundtrack myself in part because I was yearning to reconnect to those old skills and enjoyment. I'm really loving using the OP-1 (pictured) to record little sketches and demos of potential track ideas—free of the pressure and overwhelm that more feature-rich software can incur. 

I'm looking forward to sharing some tracks with you over the coming months.

IV. Backerkit

I've also been getting everything set up in BackerKit, ready for surveys to be sent out. There's a couple of things that have been delaying that.

Firstly, I'm trialling a new feature with BackerKit to charge shipping costs separately (and later), after a survey has been complete. Usually you can only send out your surveys once you've set fixed shipping costs, which are then charged as surveys are completed. However, I'd really like to get the surveys out to you all asap, rather than waiting until I'm ready to ship (and thus know exactly how much to charge). So this new feature, which allows me to input a range of shipping costs (which are on the Koriko campaign page) and charge the exact price later, is hopefully going to work really well. We're just testing it to make sure it's perfect. 

Secondly, I was waiting for final pricing on Artefact and Bucket, to offer them as add-ons in BackerKit. I got that today, at last, but it wasn't great news (far too costly!). I'm going to go back to the drawing board with those books, and the likeliest outcome is that they won't be available as physical books for this campaign (I don't want them to delay everything else).

I am expecting to send surveys out in January.

V. Art

Finally, when they're not battling trolls on Twitter (!), Deb has been working through the interior chapter art for the book. 

I absolutely love getting a new email from Deb, because it always blows me away. The first chapter illustration is now complete (top left split) and we're moving through sketches and rough colours for the second (bottom right split). I really can't wait to get these pieces into the books and in print.

~

That's it for December folks. I hope you have a safe and nurturing time over the holidays, and I'll be back again in the new year.

Jack

09: Onwards & Upwards
almost 2 years ago – Wed, Nov 09, 2022 at 12:35:46 AM

Phew! After a busy month, I'm happy (and a little relieved) to say that we've made it over the finish line.

Thank you all so much for supporting my project—the response has been miles beyond what I had ever hoped for 😊

I'm looking forward to sharing more about the project over the rest of the year and into 2023. Just as a reminder I'll be posting an update once a month, every month until it's all delivered.

I'll have more concrete information to follow (add-ons, preorders, surveys etc), but for now I'm going to take a little break, tackle my inbox and enjoy the peace and quiet.

Thanks again, and speak soon 👋

J

08: Big Numbers
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 02:33:01 AM

Hey folks,

Still feeling very groggy here, but I'm happy to confirm that we've breached the £200,000 mark and have now unlocked all planned stretch goals for this project!

We've still got a few days left of the campaign, and I'm excited to see where it finally settles. I don't have any more stretch goals to announce because I never thought we'd get even this far—the big 6,000 backer / £200,000 fancy paper goal was my 'wildest dream' idea (haha, what a weirdo). Any extra funds we raise now will give the project a nice buffer for things like paper price increases and other surprise expenses that inevitably crop up with a book of this scale.

I have a pretty firm rule against adding extra unplanned stretch goals to the campaign once it's running—it's hard to do proper costings and they have caused a lot of problems for me in the past! 

~

Koriko Preview #3: Arrival

With your witch created, it's now time to describe their arrival into the city of Koriko. This is the last part of the game's 'setup'—a word I use in quotes because it's as much about play and story as any other part of the game.

The framing of your witch's arrival is a letter—one they promised to write home when they got settled. You'll follow a series of questions and lists to create this letter, building out a picture of the city as you do. Notably, this is your Koriko. It might be a familiar pastel-toned seaside town but it could just as easily be:

• Split by a frozen river, with hot chocolate vendors on every corner.
• Built across ancient stone temple grounds, nestled in a bamboo glade.
• Carved into a craggy cliff face, with chuffing funiculars and mossy gardens.
• Anything else you can imagine, really.

Once you've established the broad strokes of your city, you'll flesh out its four districts. These correlate to the four suits in Tarot—swords, coins, cups and wands (it doesn't matter if your deck uses different words)

• The Sword district is about power—usually the civic centre.
• The Coin district is about commerce—shops and bustle.
• The Cups district is about families—homes and comfort.
• The Wands district is the fringe—liminal spaces, wild magic.

Again you'll have flexibility with these districts to make them your own, giving them each a name, some distinctive features and a notable location.

Finally, you'll decide where your witch lives in Koriko. As part of this process, you'll create your first Confidant—in this case, the person who extended their kindness to your witch and helped get them set up in the city. Everybody needs a friend.

Confidants aren't the only people your witch can meet and interact with. You'll have all kinds of fleeting or transactional conversations, little jobs, and so on. But Confidants are special—they're people who your witch can develop a deeper relationship with.

Mechanically, there are three parts to a Confidant that make each one unique.

• A description, a bio that you'll fill out in the same way you created your witch (though it'll be shorter!)
• A list of unique questions that you can discover (answer) about the Confidant as you spend time with them.
• A special moment that you can unlock with them once you've answered enough of their questions.

In this way, each Confidant brings their own flavour to your witch's life in Koriko, and progressing their side-stories can be a major goal of your time with the game. The 'moment' is a pivotal narrative scene—a dramatic change, a secret revealed, a love professed, etc. As well as discovering what happens, you'll usually get some kind of bonus for your witch when you resolve it, like a skill advance, special ability or even a new Confidant to spend time with. They're pretty rad!

With that, we're pretty much ready to talk about the main flow of the game—drawing prompts and choosing activities as you work your way through the seasons. I'll cover that next time :)

~

That's it for now folks, I'll post at least once more before we're done with another Preview. Hopefully I'll have news about Artefact & Bucket, but increasingly it's looking like something we'll sort out in BackerKit instead.

All the best,

Jack

(I still feel like crap, so apologies for typos & nonsensicals!)

07: Final Week
almost 2 years ago – Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 02:28:05 AM

Hey all, and happy Halloween! 🎃 

I've been sick for the past few days (a vintage, non-covid flu, remember those?).

It has sucked—I can't remember the last time I've been so utterly wiped out by illness. But you all seem to have been doing fine without me, and we're (!!) steadily approaching my final £200,000 stretch goal for the fancy paper. I hope we make it—this is the last week!

Still no news on Artefact/Bucket reprints I'm afraid. Worst case scenario though, they'll be available to add in BackerKit after the campaign. I'd rather that than try and guess the pricing and get it wrong! There's a good chance the little folios will be impractically expensive and I'll choose a more conventional option—the joys of making physical objects!

That's all I've got to share with you at the moment (going to crawl back into bed now), but I had already written another preview—so here it is :)

~

Koriko Preview #2: On Witches

With all your materials set up, it's time to talk about creating your witch. Most of this process is narrative, making decisions about your witch's life up to this point and their ambitions for the future. We'll talk about the more mechanical parts at the end of this preview.

You'll fill out a bio to introduce your witch to the story. Across the paragraphs, you'll see bracketed text which you'll replace with choices from lists on the opposite page.

This is a process I first employed in Orbital, and I think it's really effective. You get the speed of using pre-written lists, inspired by games like Dream Askew, and you also get a complete paragraph of text to introduce your witch and refer back to. It's a kind of teen witch mad-lib!

Of course you're always free to modify, replace or ignore the lists I provide and go with your heart—but I find it's much easier to be creative like that when you've got a firm starting point instead of a blank page.

With your witch created, you'll move through a few steps to describe their departure from home and their journey to Koriko. Both these sections follow a similar format—you choose activities for your witch to undertake or encounter. The activities you pursue (and your answers) will expand the picture of your witch as you begin the story of their magical year—what motivates them, what they are leaving behind, what they yearn for, and what they fear.

Alongside this flowery narrative, you'll also be building a mechanical representation of your witch—some stats! Growth and change are fundamental to the game, so I wanted to go a step further than some of my previous games in terms of how your witch's abilities are presented.

The system is simple. Your witch has a number of skills: currently eight, as above, though this may change during testing (as may the names). Each of these skills is graded from Novice -> Practiced -> Adept. At the start of the game, you'll pick a couple to mark as Practiced, and the rest will be Novice.

At points in the game, your witch may need to do something risky—brewing a dangerous tonic, standing up to a local bully, chasing down a pair of wandering seven-league boots, etc. At these moments, you'll be asked which of their skills they'll use (typically choosing one of two approaches). Then, you'll stack a number of dice on your tower based on your skill level—3 for Novice, 2 for Practiced and 1 for Adept. Knocking over the tower means failure (to be discussed in a future update!), stacking successfully earns you a mark for that skill. Get enough marks and you'll raise the skill up a level.

Taking a risk and pushing your witch like this is most often a choice—and you can tell a brilliant (and perhaps achingly familiar) story of someone turning away from these pressures if you choose not to engage.

Next time I'll talk about your witch's arrival into Koriko: creating the city and making it your own. 

~

All the best for tonight! 👻

Jack

06: Fancy Sheets
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 07:37:38 AM

Hey folks, lovely to have an excuse to speak to you all again so soon. 

We had a spell on the front page of Kickstarter earlier this week, which I think helped propel us towards A Magical Sandwich sooner than I'd imagined.

Now I get to make my hack a reality, and you'll have a good excuse to tell another story with the game when it launches. Hooray!

~

‌Stretch Goal #9: Premium Paper Upgrade

This is the big one—a goal that I really hoped we'd reach, but never truly thought we could.

If we hit £200,000, I will upgrade the paper we use in the book from the standard recycled stock to a premium recycled paper. I'm still exploring a few different options for the exact paper, a process that involves poring over physical samples and getting test prints made by the folks at Solent Design. Current contenders include Fedrigoni Old Mill Eco 40 and G.F Smith Neenah Environment PC100 Natural, though I'm still ordering samples.

If you're not a paper nerd like me and this is all a bit meaningless, that's fine—you'll still be able to appreciate the texture and character of the paper in the book when you hold it in your hand. It really does make a huge difference.

It also adds a lot to the cost of each book, which is why it's only feasible at the kind of volumes we're now looking at producing. Like all of these stretch goals, they're only possible because of your incredible support—so thank you!

~

Koriko Preview #1: Setup

I'd like to preview Koriko, the game, so you have a better understanding of how it plays. To avoid a bloated update, I'm going to go section-by-section, walking through the book across updates. I'm aiming for brevity, so if you have further questions about this section I'm very happy to chat in the comments :)

-

This first one is going to be about setup—a quick process. We talked in a previous update about what you need to play (a tarot deck, some dice, writing materials), so here I'll talk about how you get it ready.

First, the deck. You'll separate the Minor Arcana from the Major. The Minor cards are the main driver of the game—you'll use them to generate all of the prompts that will challenge and inspire your witch over the course of your story. For the uninitiated, the Minor Arcana are (plainly-speaking) similar to a standard deck of playing cards—four suits, Ace through 10, but with four face cards instead of three.

The Major Arcana represent Confidants, characters who will play an important role in your witch's story. Each of the twenty-two Major cards ('The Fool', 'Justice', 'The Moon', etc) have a special page in the book to help you create a unique character (I'll talk more about this in a future preview!). 

The Major cards are split into two sets. Roughly-half of them are shuffled together to create a deck, which you'll draw from to create new Confidants at various points in the game. The remaining Major cards can only be encountered when the game explicitly tells you to introduce them—often as the result of something you've done in the game. For example, if you ever manage to successfully stack twenty-one dice in your tower, you'll encounter the ‌Wheel of Fortune, a strange character who is obsessed with luck and chance. Conversely, if you knock over your tower enough times (intentionally or otherwise!), The Tower may arrive in a shroud of black silk and eyeliner to save you and insist that you go home (don't worry, you're free to ignore them!). These characters are sprinkled in hard-to-reach places across the game, and encountering them can either be a surprise or the result of hard-won pursuit.

Setting up your dice tower couldn't be simpler—you'll get your dice together and practice stacking. I've been testing with different sizes and shapes of dice, and so far they haven't had a significant impact on how difficult it is to stack. However, I might introduce some kind of 'calibration' here to account for different levels of skill and challenge. (and, as mentioned in a previous update, we'll have options to modify or replace this more physical aspect of the game).

Finally you'll get your writing materials ready, marking out pages for your witch's biography, your map of Koriko and your letters home.

Next time I'll talk about the process of creating your witch and introduce skills.

~

That's it for today folks, speak again soon :)

J