07: Final Week
over 3 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 :)

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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. 

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All the best for tonight! 👻

Jack

06: Fancy Sheets
over 3 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!

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‌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!

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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 :)

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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.

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

J

05: Special Delivery
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 12:36:15 AM

Good morning all, and welcome to another Koriko update. It's been a week since the last one, so I'm glad to be back again to sprinkle a little magic into your Monday.

We met the 🎗 double ribbon 🎗 stretch goal yesterday, and I'm excited to talk about the next one. Triple ribbons! No, no, not really. Two is enough.

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Stretch Goal #8: A Magical Sandwich

Koriko is a game about witches. But, more than that, Koriko is a game about teenagers who are both outsiders and a little bit magical. I'm excited to see what kinds of hacks people make with the game when it's released, but there's a small one that I'd like to include as part of this campaign.

Please note that this will be a digital stretch goal, so it won't be printed in the book. It will be just as loved, and unrestrained by page count concerns.

A Magical Sandwich is a silly name for a fun idea. I tried to think of something better, but in truth I didn't try that hard—part of me just wanted to write 'A Magical Sandwich' in big bold letters. Anyway—in the UK we have this idea of a 'sandwich year', where you break your three-year undergraduate study with a year spent in industry. That's basically what we're doing here (it'll be fun, I promise!).

You'll get an alternate setup for the game where, instead of a witch, you'll create a budding young wizard studying at some faraway magical college. Forced by their professors (for their own good, of course) to leave the warm embrace of their charming dormitory, you'll tell the story of the challenging 'year in industry' they spend in Koriko. Most of the prompts and structure of the game will remain unchanged, but a few parts will be lightly hacked to fit this new framing. Mostly, though, it's a chance to tell a different kind of story within the same game. I think it will be fun!

If we hit £160k, I'll add this to the digital downloads for the game when it launches (or shortly afterwards).

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The Slow Knife—Now available to add-on!

I had a small amount of boxed copies of The Slow Knife left over from my previous campaign, but they ran out almost immediately (to my surprise & delight!)

I'm happy to announce that the game is now available to add to your order (in an unlimited quantity)!

However, this reprint is going to look a little different. I'll, briefly as I can, explain what the game is and what the book is going to look like. Please ask away in the comments if you have further questions—I love talking about TSK :)

The Pitch

The Slow Knife is a story game for 2-4 players, inspired by tales of patient revenge like The Count of Monte Cristo. You'll tell the decades-long tale of a young soul's revenge against those who betrayed them, all from the perspective of the villains. You'll answer card prompts about your scoundrel's life as you add notes and connections to a growing pinboard of sin and scandal—which will become their undoing as The Knife, the victim of their long-ago crime, returns.

By the end of the game you'll have each constructed the conspiracy that destroys your wretched character as they find themselves broken and utterly ruined.

It's a serious game, in that it's about wretched rich folk ruining someone's life, but it's also (I've found) a deeply, darkly humorous game. The way you entangle your awful, self-serving characters in their creeping demise is entertaining and strangely cathartic—in the real world our villains rarely get such poetic comeuppance. It's also easy to play, requiring almost no rules explanation, and it produces the most incredible artefact of play—the conspiracy board.

If you want a better understanding of the game, you can watch an actual-play I did with the folks at Plus One Exp. I had a blast telling stories with them, and it should give you a great idea of what it's like to play.

The Book

‌Now, formats. The original printing came in a small box containing 80 cards and a compact pair of booklets. I really like this edition, but it's proven pretty tricky to produce. In short: card games that are made in an environmentally-friendly and labour-ethical manner are expensive, and the one place that I could find to do it left me with a few frustrations.

So, instead, I'm now offering the game as a hardback book. It's the same game, and it also contains the three playsets (quick-starts) that previously came in separate booklets. Instead of a deck of custom-printed cards, you'll need 13 cards from a standard deck (or a tarot!) to draw and correlate to the prompts for each Act. 

I think that's a pretty good trade-off for being able to provide this game at £24—almost half the price of the boxed game.

It'll be printed with Solent Design like everything else, and the base spec of the book will be A5, laminated, foiled, smyth-sewn with recycled paper. If enough people pre-order the book, I have a few further print upgrades I'd like to add (of course!).

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First chapter sketch

Thanks for making it this far! Here's a treat for you—the first sketch from Deb for the chapter art they're making. Even at this stage I'm pretty elated with how it looks—I can't wait to see it developed further :)

Truly, commissioning art is one of my favourite parts of making these project. Thanks to all of you for making it possible.

J

04: Freshly Baked
over 3 years ago – Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 02:30:34 AM

Hey everyone, I hope you had a good weekend. Ours was a typical mix of breakfasts, lego and chaos.

Stretch Goal #7: A Second Ribbon

We hit the endpaper stretch goal over the weekend, and we're well on our way to the next one. At £140,000, I'll add a second ribbon to the physical book. This book is not so complicated that it needs two ribbons and a bookmark to navigate—in fact I'm putting a lot of work into making sure you'll do as little flipping around as possible as you play. But for those moments where you do need to refer back to a different section, it will be even easier if we hit this goal. Plus I think that ribbons just look fancy, especially in a couple of colours that compliment the beautiful cover illustration.

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Good vibes 

I just wanted to explicitly thank you all for being so kind and considerate in your comments on this project. It's been lovely reading through them each morning, even those that raise valid questions or feedback. For those of you who missed it, I talked a little about my expectations for communication in my first update—I'd encourage you to read it so we're all on the same page (though, as I said, so far so good!).

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Retailers

I've had a few messages about a retailer pledge—basically a wholesale preorder, for those of you who aren't familiar. I love visiting independent game stores and I'm happy to say I've now created a pledge that offers 5 copies of the Koriko book at a heavily discounted retailer price. I'll need to confirm shipping costs when I have the books, and it will be charged in BackerKit like everyone else (I'll ensure it's as inexpensive as possible).

Please note that retailer pledges are only available to actual retailers. You will be asked to present your company organisation number when confirming your pledge in the pledge manager.

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That's all for now, thanks everyone.

Jack

03: Clear Skies
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 08, 2022 at 04:14:37 PM

Hey folks! We're three days into this campaign now, and as we go into the weekend it feels like that point on a flight when the ear-popping, turbulent climb is over and things get a little more refined. 

Drinks, anyone?

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Stretch goals

We've passed another one of the stretch goals I revealed in my previous update, and I'm very excited to be able to commission even more art from Deb. It's all thanks to you and your support!

By Monday when I check back here, I hope we'll have passed the £110,000 mark too (which is wild) and I can add printed endpapers to the spec. It'll be nice to start the experience of reading the book with a bit of surprise beauty, right?

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Back catalogue

I should also, hopefully, have my previous games Artefact, Bucket of Bolts and The Slow Knife available to add to your pledges again next week once I get final pricing from the printers. I'm looking forward to talking more about my plans for them, as I think they're gonna be pretty cool :)

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Two more things...

Just two more quick things before I leave you to your weekend:

Artefact and Bucket of Bolts (my other two solo games) are currently available in a 'Bundle of Holding'—a collection of digital titles at a reduced cost. Of particular note to you all, the bundle also includes a copy of Apothecaria, Anna Blackwell's solo potion-making RPG.

Ross Cowman and Taylor Dow are currently crowdfunding a card game here on Kickstarter, which you should definitely check out. They made BFF! together a few years ago, a beautiful game about friendship and adventure. This game has a very different tone, but it looks to have the same characterful artwork and tight design. Richard Garfield says it's good, so...

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Right, that's it for now all. Speak to you soon.

Jack