February: Collector's Editions Imminent, The Slow Knife, ZiMo
about 2 years ago – Sat, Feb 19, 2022 at 10:29:42 PM

Hey! Another exciting month for us here at Mousehole Press... let's get to it!

As is often the case with the start of the year, we've been spending a fair bit of time indoors waiting for better weather. This has, however, provided an ideal opportunity to start playing RPGs with my eldest! I am really conscious of trying too hard to get my kids to like the things I like, but seemingly just by exposure he's obsessed. I bought him a set of purple (favourite colour) polyhedral dice from Dragonmeet last year, and we've been using them to tell stories using Amazing Tales—a game I picked up when he was just a newborn! So there we go, a budding roleplayer in the making 😍

SHIPPING UPDATE

We're continuing to lock and ship orders in batches. It's going a little slower than anticipated but we're getting through them, and the Collector's Editions are now on their way to the distribution centre as well. Craig and the team at Dizzy have worked tirelessly to get them all packed, and I can't wait to get them to you.

This means all rewards will soon be at the warehouse, and every backer can have their order shipped as we get to it. Keep an eye out for that email from BackerKit giving you 48 hours notice to double-check your address! If you know you'll need to change your address, you can do it now by going back into your survey.

THE SLOW KNIFE

With Bucket of Bolts (and friends!) on its way to backers, I'm looking ahead to my next project, THE SLOW KNIFE—a game of wretched scoundrels and patient revenge for 2-4 players.

It's inspired by stories like The Count of Monte Cristo, where a simple death is too good for all those years the villains took from their victim. This isn't a John Wick-style action flick, no—this is curt whispers over fine wine, jewelled masks of jade and bone, half-buried scandals and half-heard truths, and yes - sometimes - a quiet blade in the dark.

You'll establish a promising young soul who's life is ruined by a handful of grasping scoundrels, then you'll tell the decades-long story of the victim's overdue and inevitable vengeance. You'll tell this story from the perspective of the villains, with the protagonist - The Knife - moving in the shadows or behind disguises.

You'll answer card prompts about your villain's life as you add notes and connections to a pinboard (yes, an actual pinboard!) of sin and scandal. These prompts are split into four acts to help guide your story to a satisfying conclusion. As you progress through these acts you'll also tell the story of The Knife as they rise from depraved captivity to high society and begin to enact their revenge.

By the end of the game you'll have constructed the conspiracy that destroys your wretched character as they find themselves broken and utterly ruined, face-to-face with The Knife for one last reckoning.

Then, as the sun rises on a land free of those avaricious scoundrels, you'll consider what solace - if any - The Knife might find for the rest of their days.

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We're aiming to launch on March 7th, when you'll hopefully all have your Bucket rewards safely in hand. I think going to be really cool, and I hope you'll join me on my next adventure!

Zine Month

Zinequest didn't happen this year, but lots of cool zine projects still launched this month. I thought I'd shout out three of my favourites quick in case they got lost in the noise.

• LAST SENTINELS is an RPG that tells a very specific kind of tragic story about a doomed mech pilot. It's one of those games that does one thing really well, which I think is kind of perfect for the zine format. It also lets you shout challenges at your friends in a controlled, mechanised fashion, and who doesn't want to do that! OH! And Torben (of Orbital and Bucket of Bolts) is doing the artwork, so you know it's gonna be good.

• The Fall of Home is a diceless collaborative storytelling TTRPG for 2-5 players, about the home you left behind, and returning there in the wake of a great calamity. It seems like a really nice, contemplative game—and possibly a great one to cap off a long-running RPG campaign. It's really close to funding, so if we could push it over the top that would be awesome.

• ORC BORG clearly doesn't need any help (!), but it's worth mentioning nonetheless because 1) it looks rad and 2) it's being riso printed by Dizzy Ink. Can't wait to see those colours jump off the page at me like a horde of RAGING BOYZ!

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That's it for this month! More than enough, ha. All the best, folks.

J

January: Zines, Zines, Zines!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 04:04:34 AM

Hey folks! Happy New Year.

I've got a lot of exciting news & photos to share with you today, so I'll keep the preamble short. Let's go!

ZINES!

The team at Dizzy Ink have been incredibly busy this month!

They've printed more than 5,000 zines, had them die-cut and pre-folded and taken on the gargantuan task of folding them—ready for your enjoyment. 

Bucket of Bolts is all done, and Artefact should be done by the end of the week. Meanwhile, they've also got all the materials ready to print the bonus content for the Collector's Editions, which will be another epic task to assemble in the coming weeks.

Once the zines are all folded they'll be shipped to our fulfilment centre and processed, and then on their way to you! This means that if you're a backer who only has some combination of Bucket/Artefact/Orbital zines (e.g. not a Collector's Edition), you will be getting a notification in the next few weeks to double-check your address before I lock it for shipping.

• I expect to start shipping these orders starting next week.
• I'll be locking the addresses in batches of about 200 as I upload them daily to the fulfilment centre.
• You'll get 48 hours notice via email from BackerKit before I lock your address.
• If you want to check your address now, you can view/update it via your survey. You can get the link again here if you've deleted the original email.

Collector's Editions

As I said, the bonus content is being prepped now for printing this week. Then the sheets will need to be cut, and Dizzy & their team of keen hands will assemble the sheets together with a zine in a fancy ass envelope. 

They cost about ten times more than I was planning, but I think they're worth it! I'm hoping we'll start shipping Collector's Editions towards the end of Feb. Apologies that you'll need to be patient a little longer, but I think it'll be worth the wait.

Soundtrack + Audiobook Rules

Both of these have progressed significantly this month, and I'm super excited to share them when they're ready. I've not got anything more to tell you right now, but I just wanted to make sure you knew they were still on my radar!

Thanks everyone!

J

December: Paper Present, Bonus Content, Year's Relent
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 28, 2021 at 09:36:14 PM

Hello!

We are fully into the festive funk here, stumbling our way over leftover pigs-in-blankets and too many desserts as we attempt to keep our kids from eating chocolate and shouting all of the time.

Anyway, we're all pretty exhausted here so let's get on with this!

PAPER.

The paper has arrived at Dizzy Ink HQ, and we're all ready to get going in the new year. Exciting times!

Fingers crossed we might be looking at shipping towards the end of next month! (I'll give you plenty of warning for things like addresses, don't sweat it!)

BONUS.

The bonus content for the Artefact & Bucket of Bolts Collector's Editions is now complete, including some fantastic contributions from guest designers. Once they've been set up as accessible files I'm going to do a big shake-up of the Bucket of Bolts downloads over on itch.io, adding the accessible & plain text files and providing some better options for printing at home. For now, enjoy these buzzy little GIFs!

Those of you with Collector's Editions will be getting these cards in your fancy envelopes, but everyone will have them available as digital downloads. I'm really happy with how they turned out!

2021.

We're almost done with it, thank god. This year has felt like two for us, and has blurred messily with 2020 in our memory. Congratulations to all of you reading this for making it through this year, and thank you again for all your support since the project launched back in February. I'm working on some really exciting stuff for 2022 that I'll hopefully be able to share with you soon.

All the best!

J

November: Artefact, Soundtrack, DragonMeet
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 02:59:00 AM

Hey folks!

Autumn is my favourite time of year—I love all the celebrations & the sense of people coming together. We've been enjoying a run of crisp, clear days; getting outside to enjoy the season before things turn altogether grey & gloomy.

We've been doing some fairly substantial home renovation this month, buried under a pile of furniture and brick dust, but we're almost out the other end. The oft-aimed for 'done by Christmas' might actually happen, which would be a nice end to the year.

But what about the ZINES!, you ask, spraying my face with a fine mist of ardent spittle. Okay, okay! Let's talk zines.

ZINES.

This morning I got the final proofs through in the post for Artefact & Bucket of Bolts, and I couldn't be happier. Craig cut & folded them properly with the die-cut machine, and they're significantly fancier than my homemade 'scissors and guesswork' approach. The folds are clean & sharp, and they really do feel like premium items. Artefact, which I'd yet to see in beak form, is a delight to see in particular.

There's one small change to make from these proofs (we tried overprinting with the Artefact cover but I prefer the original!) and then both zines can commence printing. 

The Orbital reprint is all ready & waiting to be sent out alongside your beak zines, but don't panic about shipping & addresses yet—I'll contact you when we're ready.

SOUNDTRACK.

Meanwhile, Chris has been working away on the Bucket of Bolts soundtrack. I gave him a bunch of references and I'm super happy with the direction he's taking it. We'll hopefully be replacing the software guitar with a live recording for the final release, but hopefully this short clip (for the 10 second Rest) will give you a sense of the tone we're shooting for.

DRAGONMEET.

If any of you in the UK are planning to attend the DragonMeet convention in London next weekend (4/12), I'll be there with the Rainy Day Games crew and a bunch of other wonderful indie RPG folk. I'd love to see you, and I'll also have some limited stock of Orbital to sell.

FIN.

That's it, that's all. See you all next month.

J

October: Riso go-go, Covid no-no (also: envelopes).
over 2 years ago – Sat, Oct 30, 2021 at 05:52:36 AM

Hello! How are we all? 

We are entering the 'mild and wet' season here in the UK, which lasts for about ten months, so we're all coats & jumpers in this house as we stubbornly hold off against putting the heating on.

We've had a bit of a strained month here at Mousehole HQ, with our youngest (and subsequently, my partner) getting covid. Everyone has been mostly fine health-wise, just various shades of miserable and gelatinous (thanks, vaccines/youth!). As you might imagine, though, it's been quite difficult getting our work done with no childcare and two cooped-up boys in the house...

It's Riso Time

BUT! 

Luckily for you all, most of my work on this project was done a while ago. So while I've been busy building elaborate train tracks and cutting vegetables into small pieces, Craig has been busy printing zines.

Orbital's second print run is complete, and the spreads are being carefully stitched together at the finishers. The beak zines are next, with the bonus sheets for the collector's editions rounding off the order. There's a lot of stuff to print, but we're getting through it. Good stuff!

Envelopes

Right then. I'm not sure if you imagined you'd get envelope chat today, but here we are.

I've been working this week on specifying the envelopes that will store the zine & bonus sheets for the Collector's Editions. 

My initial plan was to use glassine (translucent paper) envelopes. However, at lighter weights they are too fragile, and at heavier weights they become opaque. The other thing that bothers me is that pretty much all stock envelopes you can buy are a little too big for the zine and have a 'peel & seal' strip. 

These are minor annoyances, but if you're going to support me by purchasing a premium edition of the game I want to make sure you're getting a premium product! As such, I've been working with a specialist company to commission custom-made envelopes with, naturally, fancy Italian paper and gold-foiled designs.

These are, of course, a little pricier than stock envelopes, but I think they're going to look great and prove an enduring item nestled away on your bookshelf. 

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That's it for October. I'm looking forward to sharing more with you in November. As always I'll be publishing one update, every month, till the project is delivered. I hope you find them interesting!

Cheers,

Jack