Surveys | Print Proofs
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 02:45:08 PM

Hey folks, I hope you're all doing okay. We've had a nice week of weather here, and I'm looking forward to spending some time out in the woods over the weekend.

BackerKit Surveys

Surveys for BackerKit have been sent out. You'll be able to add you address, select any add-ons you might like, and enter your card details.

What kind of extras can I purchase?

Maybe a cool art print to go alongside your print from Artefact? Or perhaps you want to add some extra community copies to both Artefact and Orbital, so those who are hard-pressed can still play those games? There's a few cool options, and I'm happy to see so many people are showing an interest already. But y'know, I'm also totally cool if you just want the zine!

Why is international (non-EU) shipping so high?

Because of the current global shipping situation, in particular issues with the USPS, I'm upgrading all international (non-EU) backers to tracked shipping. This gives me far more confidence that your rewards will actually get where they're supposed to be going. With my previous project, ARTEFACT, I had more than 50 packages returned to me from the US alone due to issues with shipping. I'm hoping we can avoid that this time! If the cost is prohibitive, please let me know and we can sort something out.

What! No Artefact physical copies! 😞

I'm sorry! I've not got that many copies of ARTEFACT left after the campaign, and I'm reserving what I've got to make sure all those backers get their rewards. I've got a mailing list set up that you can sign up to, and I'll let you know if I have some stock to sell in a couple of months or so. As a little bonus, I'm offering the Digital Edition of ARTEFACT to ORBITAL backers at a discounted cost (£6).

I haven't gotten my survey yet!

Sometimes they take a while to come through. If you haven't received your survey by this time next week, send me a message here & I'll investigate.

If you could complete your survey by the end of October (the 31st! a spoopy deadline! 🎃) that would be great as I'm hoping to go to print in November.

Print proofs

The first round of print proofs arrived last week. It's always really exciting to see the book coalesce from digital to physical form through this iterative process of  endless combinations of paper, ink, process and art tweaks. There are a few kinks to work out, but that's why we do these things. Also, I've been tempted to spend a little extra for EVEN FANCIER PAPER because I am a sucker for quality. 

Gosh it's pretty though. You're gonna love it. Until next time!

J

We made it! Thanks everyone!
over 3 years ago – Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 10:10:39 PM

£21k! Blimey.

As we sat ordering burgers and fries last night, I watched the campaign steam past our final £20,000 stretch goal (woohoo!) and almost to £22,000! No doubt in part thanks to a mention from Shut Up & Sit Down, we ended the campaign with more than 1,900 backers. Pretty exciting for a little indie like me!

Now we've got a couple of quiet weeks as pledges are collected and I set things up in BackerKit. The work doesn't stop here at Mousehole HQ though — I'm hard at work getting the game reworked into its best possible shape. I'll be in touch soon.

All the best and thanks again!

Jack

Approaching terminus, tiny little letters, and a new (final?) stretch goal
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 07:44:01 PM

Hey everyone! We're nearly over with this campaign, with just 30 hours left to go. I've got a few final bits to announce before we have a little celebration at the terminus.

Online/VTT Support Stretch Goal Met!

So we've blasted past £17,500, meaning I'll be supplying everyone with files designed to make the experience of playing ORBITAL in a virtual tabletop (or just online more generally) as easy as possible. I'm not sure exactly what shape this'll take at this point, but I'll be including a question in BackerKit after the campaign to gather your thoughts about how I can best support you.

A Very Tiny Letter

I try to keep these Kickstarter updates fairly brief, since I know how hard it can be to keep up if you're supporting a lot of projects. But perhaps you'd be interested in a deeper dive into the design of ORBITAL, as well as a more general look into my design process — including early access & previews of upcoming games? Well, today I've launched Little Mouse Letters, a monthly newsletter that will give you just that. You can check out the website for more information :)

Final (?) stretch goal

We've got a little ways to go to hit this, but if we can reach £20,000 by the end of the campaign, I'll be able to fund our illustrator, Torben, to fill both the game book & playkit sheets with little margin illustrations. White space is great, but sometimes when you're laying out a book you end up with an annoying little gap that's hard to fill with text. So once the book & playkit sheets are laid out, I'm going to hand them over to Torben and he's gonna add little scenes of ships & folks where they're needed. I think it'll make the book much more enjoyable to read (as clearly we're not going to compromise on readability either!) and tie the chapter art pages together.

Tell your friends! And if anyone wants a second copy for a pal, you can just add £12 to your pledge that you can spend in BackerKit after the campaign. Let's do this! 

J

Satellite Descent funded, next stretch goal revealed (sort of!)
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 10:13:41 AM

Hey folks!

We've smashed past £15,000, so I'm happy to confirm that the solo & epistolary games supplement for ORBITAL that I'm calling SATELLITE DESCENT is now funded. I already announced a couple of ideas for the games, but how could I have forgotten the most obvious — an Alone At the Table game (in the vein of Alone Among the Stars or Alone in the Ancient City by Takuma Okada) where you play a new arrival entering the station for the first time, exploring its varied locations & people.

I'll continue sharing more ideas & drafts over the next few months. What a cool little side project!

Next Stretch Goal - Online Play

I was holding off talking about this one because it's hard to get a straight answer quickly about exactly how it'll all work. But if we hit £17,500, I'll commit to making dedicated resources for playing ORBITAL online, either through Role or Roll20 or simply with a bunch of images & files to make it as easy as possible.

It's likely that most of our group play will remain online for the foreseeable future, so it seems wise to make it the most straightforward, fully-featured experience that I can.

Thank you all for your continued support!

Jack

Print proof sneak peak, ambient OST stretch goal met, solo games revealed!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 04:07:07 AM

Hey! I've got a few exciting things to reveal today and I'm reaching the point in the day where my brain starts to pour out of my ears, so I'm going to keep things punchy.

PRINT PROOF SNEAK PEAK!

Craig over at Dizzy Ink sent over a photo of the first print proof today, fresh off the printer. What a beauty! This is one of the chapter art pages, with Risofederal Blue & Flat Gold RISO inks on Context Birch premium recycled paper (the same used for Artefact). I can't wait to hold it in my hands soon, but I thought I'd share the reveal early. We're just putting together the cover files now for a test print, so I'll hopefully have more images to share soon.

MORE MUSIC IS GO!

We've passed £12,500, which means we've met our second music-related stretch goal. Now, in addition to the playbook themes, Chris will be composing a series of original ambient pieces to set the tone during play. He's got a fancy brand new computer arriving tomorrow and I'm looking forward to seeing what he can make it sound like!

SOLO STRETCH GOAL REVEAL!

I'm really excited about this next stretch goal, which we'll hit at £15,000.

So, I love playing small-scale RPGs, games that you spend just a few sessions with before moving on. They're great as an 'end of season' refresher to play between longer-running campaigns, allowing players to kick back and stretch their creativity in a lower-stakes environment. They're also really fun to use as world-building games, enriching the setting of your main campaign.

But, sometimes we're not ready to leave these cool little worlds we build behind! That's why the next stretch goal will be a collection of solo & epistolary (letter writing/asynchronous) games to play after your game of ORBITAL is finished. I'm calling this collection SATELLITE DESCENT.

I've got two ideas so far, and I'm aiming to expand that to five by the time I'm finished. Ideas are cheap, and don't always turn out as we intended, but I'll share them anyway so you can see what I'm thinking about:

• a solo journalling game where you play as a delivery runner, taking parcels between people on the station.
• a letter writing game for two players where you play as two friends, one who lives on the station and one who is away at war.

The idea is that you can dip into these games to continue exploring the station you build during the main game, either on your own or with another one of the players. I think it's gonna be rad! SATELLITE DESCENT will be released as a digital download on itch.io when it's ready.

THAT'S IT!

The liquefaction has begun, so I'll sign off now before things get messy. All the best, folks!