Winter Wanderings

It has been an age since I last blogged, and many things have come and gone. It's time to put out an update and let everyone know where I'm at.

Let's start with some basics. I've gotten Running Late to a state that could be released, but have been wrestling with the executable size. It's kinda too much for a quick play-once-and-then-uninstall experience. I'm not sure what to do about that yet. Unreal is great for making a game, but not necessarily for distributing that game.

Equally, I'm still ruminating on the Crow game. I've laid out a few pages, and done a few playtests but it does feel a bit underbaked. I don't want to release something that isn't up to my own standards. Which is not to say I'm done with the game, but rather that I need to put it in a drawer and think it over.

That leaves me with two things I want to get into!

First, I'm on the hook for a stretch goal for Blades '68. I'll be cooking up a leaflet full of conspiracy theories and drama about the powers at large. If you haven't backed the game yet, head on over and back it! There are a TON of cool people doing stretch goals. I'm genuinely excited to play the game when it comes out.

Secondly, things are really cooking with Piece of Work.

I've speculatively laid out my first draft and the page count for 6x9 has come to about 150 pages. I still have another 20 pages of setting material, and probably I'll end up with another 30 between things like explanatory text, examples, sidebars, and so on. I'm currently working on making cool locations for future São Paulo, such as Antro, the nightclub and birthplace of Bossa Mesh - a take on Bossa Nova that incorporates network traffic as samples.

I've been considering what all to include in teasers. It's worth pointing out I'm still technically writing this game. The core systems are all in place, but I need to hammer out progression and how to do one-shots, and lots of little things besides. The core mechanic is mostly built but I did make a slight change to it recently I still need to test. There's WORK to be done.

But it's all work I'm super excited by and want to finish. I have a scheduled internal playtest starting next month, and then probably I'll talk to some people about getting this published somewhere. I really want to share it with you all.