It’s June and like many gamers I’m off to UK Games Expo for a weekend of wandering the trade halls and that dearly missed in person gaming, something I’ve not achieved since… last Expo!
I’ll be at the convention all weekend including spending a substantial chunk of time over at Games on Demand. Friday (today) and Saturday afternoons I’ll be offering two hour sessions of Paris Gondo, Stealing the Throne and my very own Project Cassandra. These are just a few of the games that will be on offer so if you’ve got a couple of spare hours then grab a ticket, swing by and try something new.
In development
My own work this month has been focused almost exclusively on the first draft of Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound which will be going out to backers soon. I’m keenly aware though that we’re approaching halfway through the year and I’ve yet to release anything. It bothers me, not because I'm feeling the pressure to release but because I’d like to have 2-3 new products on sale by the time Dragonmeet rolls around. So I’ve been looking over my project list to start thinking about options. Right now that includes:
Final Intercept - A solo exploration RPG telling the tale of AI probes sent out to explore the stars. This may turn into my ZineQuest 2024 game if I can nail the gameplay loop I'm struggling with.
Big Blue Fish - Another Firefly inspired short adventure along the lines of The Kandhara Contraband and easily adapted to the Dyson Eclipse.
An untitled lightweight generic sci-fi game to act as my ‘house system’ for use with the adventures I release.
The Cyclic Void - A supplement/hack of Stealing the Throne that adds a new phase onto the game, set during a future period of the Dyson Eclipse.
Red Roots of the Rose - A mythos adventure I designed for The Cthulhu Hack. With the imminent release of the second edition of the game the stars are right to revisit this.
Check Out
Outliers
Outliers is a Wretched and Alone game by Samantha Leigh of Anamnesis fame and published by the Far Horizons Co-Op. It’s a solo RPG in which you play a research assistant trying to simply do their job while surrounded by the challenges of academia and an increasingly absurd environment such as cryptids, time travellers and clones of the participants.
It’s inspired by the author's own experience of working as a research assistant and as an academic I can attest to how close research environments are to absurdity at the best of times. You can find Outliers on itch.io and it'll be available in print layer this year.
Wreck this Deck
An urban fantasy solo game of demon summoning and deck crafting from Becky Annison of Black Armada Games. It’s a really interesting take on the solo genre as it requires you to purposely deface your deck of cards as you summon and bind demons into them. The campaign is running on Backerkit until the 29th June and has already hit its initial goal.
The Classic Explorer Layout Template
One of the many challenges of being an indie designer is the level of multi-tasking that is required to go from an initial idea through to a final product. The layout and presentation of a game can make or break a release as gamers rarely have the opportunity to take more than a cursory glance at the text. If, like me, this is an area that you want to work on then you should check out The Classic Explorer template by Clayton Notestine, a professionally produced layout template for fantasy focused products. The template included files for InDesign and Affinity Publisher but the most valuable file is probably the included guide that explains the rationale behind the templates. Clayton provided invaluable suggestions for how to improve the layout on Project Cassandra when I was developing it and this template (which I hope is the first of many) is worth every penny if you want to develop your own layout skills. Grab it directly from Explorers Design or on itch.io.
The Wrap Up
That's it for another month. I've got a couple of hours of traveling ahead of me so I'm going to dive back into a rulebook and revise the games that I'll be running. With all the new shinys on sale at Expo I expect to have plenty to talk about next issue. But mostly I'm just looking forward to catching up with too many friends that I only see at conventions. So if you're at Expo come say hello and if you're not then have a great June!