A Few Degrees of Warming First Draft and Other Updates

Hey patrons,

Woof, been a while huh? Sorry about that. I've been hard at work testing Neon Black and finishing my submission for the Hot Horror Game Jam. That game is now called A Few Degrees of Warming and will be finished and available for patrons by the end of the month.

A Few Degrees of Warming took me a while to get my head around. I struggled with creating game mechanics that produced the feeling of a climate apocalypse and impending doom I wanted, games that Pandemic and Forbidden Island excel at and that I was trying to emulate. I ended up with a prototype that I didn't really feel confident in. You can take a look for it yourself, its attached to this post.

But then I played The Quiet Year. Holy shit what a revelation. That game had the design solutions I had been struggling to cobble together on my own for weeks. Now, A Few Degrees of Warming is basically a hack of The Quiet Year and I'm proud of what I managed to put together.

I also recently read through Lady Blackbird and Always/Never/Now, two games that I am going to take a lot of ideas from to make my still-untitled-agnostic-singleplayer-rpg. That won't be coming this month, maybe not for a few months if I'm honest.

Right now I'm spending what time I can finishing A Few Degrees of Warming, as well as the newest update for Neon Black. The next update is going to have some substantial changes to the rules and tone of the game. A little preview for all you lovely patrons, the next patch is called "The Capitalism Sucks Update". So, pretty good idea of where my head is at these days.

As for bigger picture plans, going forward I want to commit to one release a month. That will be either a $5 small rpg or a larger $10 rpg. I'll try to sprinkle in a few things here and there, I'm close to a second draft on a short comic on Nikola Tesla that I'm really happy with. But more than one rpg a month isn't sustainable on a part-time basis. I have some solid ideas for new games I can release and work on in the coming months including a tribute to the Fast & Furious movies, a cyberpunk solitaire game, and that setting agnostic solo rpg.

Also, one RPG a month! That's a lot to cram into a month! That's awesome! I'm really happy with the work I'm doing!