Satellite Descent is live!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 11:33:37 AM

Hey everyone!

Satellite Descent is a collection of bonus content for Orbital, funded by you all as a stretch goal, and it’s available now! You can find it in the Orbital downloads on itch.io.

You’ll find four games for solo or duo play, letting you explore your station further after your Orbital game is complete (you can also just play them as standalone games!):

•  Passing the Blowtorch, in which you play the apprentice of the Wrench trying to hold the station together in their absence.
•  Spatial Delivery, in which you play an interstellar postal worker with a strange parcel to deliver to the station.
•  Starflung Missives, in which you play together as two people: one living on the station, one fighting on the frontlines of the Interstellar War.
•  Unreasonable Demands, in which you play a day in the life of the Source—wheeling & dealing.

You’ll also find two new character roles to choose in your Orbital games:

•  The Teen, a Strand-touched student with an attitude (by Viditya Voleti)
•  The Reformed, a former gang leader turned legitimate (by Jason Price)

I hope you enjoy the new content! It’s been really fun taking a sideways look at the game. With Satellite Descent launched, this'll probably be the last update from me on Orbital—it's been a pleasure, thank you all so much.

J

May: Satellite Descending
almost 3 years ago – Thu, May 27, 2021 at 03:23:34 PM

Hey folks! Just a quick one from me this month, on the 1 & 2 player game collection Satellite Descent.

I've now written & laid out three of the four games in the collection. It's been really fun, but also way more work than I anticipated. Maybe promising four other whole games as a stretch goal was a bad idea Jack...?

Anyway! Here are the games:

• I already shared Spatial Delivery, my Alone Among the Stars hack that has you play a courier visiting the station for the first time to make an important delivery.
• Next up we have Passing the Blowtorch, a solo Wretched & Alone game where you play the newly-promoted apprentice of the Wrench—trying to shoulder their burden and not balls it all up too badly.
• Finally (for now!) we have Starflung Missives, a hack of Say What You Mean by Riley Rethal (@rileyrethaI) for two players that has you play two people in a close relationship, separated by stars. One of you is on the station, while the other is on the frontlines of the War.

I'd love it if you checked the games out in their pre-release state, and if you have any thoughts or feedback (especially typos!) drop me a line at [email protected].

We're getting close to wrapping up now, and I'm hoping June will be our last update for Orbital. It's been so much fun seeing let's plays & reports of games happening—if you bring Orbital to your table I'd always always love to hear how you got on with it. Drop me an email if you have the energy.

Thanks all,

J

April: Books out, back to work.
about 3 years ago – Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 10:55:09 PM

Hey everyone,

I'm back juggling full-time work and childcare again, so I'm a little rushed about at the moment... Still, I didn't want April to pass without an update. Here we go!

Books delivered! 📚 

I've loved seeing all the pictures & kind words as copies of Orbital have arrived around the world. Thank you all so much! If you're still waiting on your copy, you should've received tracking information about your order so check that first. If you're still at a loss, send me a message. I get a nice notification & can access all your pledge details easily, which doesn't happen if you leave a comment on this post/project. The same is true if you're looking for your digital files.

Satellite Descent

I'm still plugging away at the second solo game in the collection, and it's taking shape nicely. There's a fair amount of writing still to do for this one, but hopefully I'll have something to share soon. Once I've completed all the games, I'll send them over to Yubi for accessibility wizardry before uploading to itch & sending out codes.

Bonus Characters

This one has also been delayed, unfortunately. I'm still hoping for one of the guest playbooks fairly soon, and the other one I'm going to write myself now. We've got art & music for both though, which is rad!

Supplement Shoutout

My pal Jason, of A Complicated Profession fame, was inspired a few weeks back to write a couple of playbooks and a mini-game for Orbital. You can check out his supplement here, and if you're interested you can pick it up for just a couple of bucks.

Cheers everyone!

J

March: digital launch, physical copies.
about 3 years ago – Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 04:15:48 AM

Hey everyone,

It's been a fun few weeks here coordinating the last few bits for launch. And now we're here!

Orbital v1.0 Launch 🚀

Yep, we're here! If you head to Orbital on itch.io you'll find a bunch of new files to download. There's the book, the playkit, and a few permutations to support printing & a range of accessibility needs. There's also all the musical themes for the characters & aspects, which you can also stream here.

I'm really happy with how the game ended up, and I hope you'll enjoy it to. In particular, playing online with the Miro board (which I assume is how most of you will be playing it for the foreseeable) is really fun and much easier than juggling google docs or trying to ram it into a traditional VTT.

If you've got any feedback on the files, or if you've not received your code for the game, you can message me here or at [email protected].

Physical Copies 📬

Alongside the digital launch, physical copies have started dispatching from the fulfilment centre. 

I got mine yesterday, and I couldn't be more happy with how it looks. The printing is crisp, the ink is vibrant, the paper is beautiful—it's fantastic. Hopefully you'll all enjoy the words inside, too 😅

They'll be working through them over the next week or so, so you should get your copy in the next few weeks depending on where you are in the world. I've already seen a few copies arriving in the UK! If you have any issues, please drop me a message. I'll have information about missing / lost copies in next month's update.

What's Next?

Next up, I'll be working on the remaining Satellite Descent solo / epistolary games (number two is nearly finished). I'm hoping to get it done in the next month or so.

All the best, folks!

Jack

February: printers, pdfs and parcels.
about 3 years ago – Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 08:06:33 PM

Hi everyone!

Another big one this month! I’m gonna try and keep everything brief, so let me know in the comments if you want more detail on anything.

Physical Copies

I could watch this video all day. For those that can't watch it it's showing one of the chapter illustrations, of someone looking out at ships manoeuvring in space, being printed from the riso machine.

So yeah, printing hath begun! The interior pages are done, and the cover is being done today. Then it’ll go to the finishers, then into envelopes to your door!

As such, you’ll be getting an email from BackerKit in the next couple of days warning you that your address is going to be locked. Please double check it! If your copy ends up going to the wrong address it’ll make me sad and mad.

Hoof folks, this book is seriously beautiful. Torben did such a stellar job 😉

Digital Release

We’re so close now! The book is set. Everything is text-complete, edited and the margin illustrations are done. I delayed things a little with some last minute edits, but Yubi is now about halfway through the accessibility work and once that’s done we’re good to release. I'll post an update next month when it's all live.

This extra time has meant a couple more things are gonna line up nicely too. 

First, the character & aspect theme music is going to release alongside it. They’re so great, and Chris is just working on mastering & polishing up the finished pieces now.

Here's one of my recent favourites: The Unaffiliated. This aspect represents all the normal people who live on the station and their needs—the families, workers and refugees who make up your diverse society. I really like how uplifting and playful the theme music is, especially with the environmental noises dropped in there.

Secondly, I’ve been working on the digital tabletop version of Orbital. Because the game doesn’t use dice or cards, a lot of the benefits of traditional virtual tabletops (such as Roll20) don’t really help us. Plus, they generally kinda suck from a usability perspective. So instead of making character sheets for a traditional VTT, I’ve made a custom, totally rad board in Miro. 

It’s got a guided setup presentation, copies of all the playkit content, and places to organise & record your story as you play. My aim is to make it as easy and fun as possible to play Orbital online. We tried it out for the first time on the weekend and it worked great. I really liked that we could just drag images onto the board as reference during play.

You’ll be able to make a copy of my board with a free Miro account in one click, then you’ll be good to go. It’s gonna be rad.

Satellite Descent: Spatial Delivery

I've also been working on the first solo game for Satellite Descent. For those that don't remember, this is the little collection of solo & epistolary games that you'll get for free alongside the Orbital digital files.

The first game is called Spatial Delivery, and it's a solo game where you go around meeting people trying to track down the recipient of a parcel. It's a very chill way to view your station from an outsider perspective.

If you’d like a sneak peek, click here (it's done, it just hasn't gone for accessibility conversion yet). I’ll be releasing the collection separately from the main game, so look out for another download key at some point.

and finally...

Just a quick thanks to all of you who backed Bucket of Bolts earlier this month. The project was wildly successful, and a big part of that was your support. So yeah, thanks!

See you next month.

Jack