January
about 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 09, 2023 at 07:13:04 AM

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you had a nice end to 2022—I'm feeling pretty positive about this year, even though we've been experiencing a perpetual grey mizzle since January 1st...

I. Surveys

If you've not used BackerKit before, it's a third-party service that most creators use to help manage the delivery of their campaigns. It collects and verifies your addresses, and lets you add-on items to your order if you wish. I'm also using it to collect shipping fees. You handle all of this through a survey, sent to the email you used with Kickstarter.

These surveys are ready to go, and I've sent out a 'smoke test' this morning. This means I've sent out a few hundred surveys early, with the hope that we'll catch any issues before it's too late (!). I've already found one (!!)—I had forgotten to hit the 'place add-ons in backer's carts' button, which meant that if you'd bought an add-on in Kickstarter it wouldn't be there in your order. 

That should be fixed now—if you're affected by this, back out of your survey and try going through it again. You should be asked to confirm your add-ons. If you're part of this early cohort and you notice anything else strange, please let me know!

Something that might seem strange, but is actually intentional, is that there are currently no shipping fees to be charged for your order. This is because I'm using a new (beta!) feature from BackerKit, which allows you to complete your survey without shipping fees being finalised.

Why is this good? Well, mostly because it means that I can send out digital downloads ASAP, without having to wait until later in the year when I can confirm final shipping costs. It also lets you add additional items into your cart so I can order enough stock. I've given the same estimates for shipping as I had in my campaign, and I don't expect those to change. BackerKit will then notify you when shipping costs are added, before cards are charged, and I'll update you here too.

If you would rather wait until they're confirmed, that's fine too! Unfortunately there's no way for me to turn off those annoying chaser emails from BackerKit though.

The rest of your surveys will go out over the next week or so, once I've confirmed that we've ironed out any other issues :)

If you use a 'private relay' email with Apple (to keep your real address hidden), then your survey will be bounced. Please drop me a message on Kickstarter or to [email protected] and I'll update your email for the survey.

II. Art

That was pretty heavy stuff, so here's some pretty artwork to ease your mind:

As you can see, Deb is continuing to smash it out of the park with these chapter illustrations. We're working on Chapter 3 now :)

III. Writing

Writing and design work continues to tick along nicely. I'm still working on the setup process, with lots of editing and adjustment to give you the best introduction possible to the game.

These adjustments are almost all to do with how my prompts are written, and how much support they provide. If you want a player to decide something like 'what does this neighbourhood look like?', there are countless ways you could ask them. Your approach will be somewhere on the scale of open vs closed—for example, you could:

• Simply ask the question, openly. This offers boundless freedom to the player, but might be a little intimidating and create friction as they struggle to decide.
• Ask for some keywords, with examples provided. This is still fairly open, but you give more support and structure. However, you might make it 'too easy' to pick from your suggestions rather than engaging someone's creativity more deeply.
• Provide a series of short descriptions, and ask them to choose a few. This is much easier for the player, and gives you as the designer more control over the tone. However, it can be a lot to read (and write!), and will limit the player's creativity compared to more open approaches.

As I go through the process of helping you create your witch, their hometown, the journey and Koriko itself, I'm thinking about where the approaches that I offer sit on that scale. Making the game approachable, but also replayable and creatively engaging, is a fun challenge. I'm hoping I can share the opening parts of the game with you soon, so you can let me know how I'm doing.

~

That's it for the January update, folks. See you next month.

Jack

December
about 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
about 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
over 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
over 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