The Monster Must Be Fed
New game release for Halloween, and my plans for the next one!
The Monster Must Be Fed
Only a week after I began the project, sharing it with all of you in this newsletter, The Monster Must Be Fed has been released to the general public! Despite my best efforts, it came out to be just under 200 entries (that’s ~120 pages) in length, with over 30 unique endings for you to find. It was… a lot more work than anticipated.
I am also, unfortunately, immensely proud of it. Here’s a few of my favourite endings:
If that sounds appealing to you, or you just like free things, I’ll include a link at the end of this section to where you can get The Monster Must Be Fed for free during the Halloween Sale! It sells for $1 a copy, so you’re getting massive savings, clearly. Jokes aside, though, it’s a great way to support me and share my games with more people without spending any money. Get it, play it, leave a comment about which ending you got, and share it with a friend! Plus, that monster is looking awfully hungry…
My Next Project
After making The Monster Must Be Fed in seven days of spite-filled scribbling, it feels like time to take a different approach for the next one! I’m going to announce my game plan, post regular updates here and on Tumblr, and chip away slowly at the writing process over the course of several months. A truly revolutionary method.
That being said, here’s the next project I’ve got in the works:
GLITTER ZOMBIES
A multiplayer, grid-based TTRPG about surviving the zombie apocalypse through the power of arts and crafts! Play as one of a colourful cast of students in the after-school craft club, using your unique artistic talents and quirks to provide a help in defending against the undead. Your crew will be accompanied by your trusty teacher and beloved class pet, and your only goal is simple: survive long enough for your parents to pick you up and take you to safety.
I imagine this game is going to be a fun new challenge for me, as someone who loves horror and hates running and playing combat games! I want to take the parts of combat I do love, cut the bits I don’t, and top it off with a silly & chaotic feel all around. Balancing the horror/death elements with the fact that all the main characters are in their early teens, though… That may prove a more different balance to strike.
Updates on Playtesting
We’ve got 8 people who’ve filled out the playtesting interest form so far! I’m so excited to work with y’all (and some other playtesters I’ve got lined up) to turn ‘til it kills us into a proper game that people can truly run for their groups. I want to sort out those aforementioned other playtesters before I start talking with those of y’all that have done the form, so I think playtesting will begin in late November or early December!
You guys will, of course, be the first to get any updates on any progress I make :)
Trick or Treat!
Over on Tumblr, I took part in the Tabletop Trick or Treat event. I had four Trick-or-Treaters, who all got to hear either a creator or game recommendation! Might as well summarise those over here for the perusal of anyone who doesn’t follow me:
The Greatest Mafia Movie [N]ever Made: A Lasers & Feelings hack inspired by Goncharov (1973), with fun features like a random motif generator for GMs and the ability for players to “check the script” for insights into the story!
Ten Candles: A horror tragedy game set in a world gone dark. You play by the light of ten candles, which are used to burn bits of your sheet and whose light represents the amount of time your characters have left. Very atmospheric.
BLOOM: One of my all-time favourite games! A solo TTRPG about surviving an island which has become overcome and mutated with plants. Full of botanical horror, fucked up creatures, and some textual queerness! (We always love it).
Psychhound Games: The creator who got me into tabletop gaming and game design in the first place, through his D&D homebrews. A bunch of Luka’s games and homebrew seem really cool, and I can’t wait to play them all.
Tangential Thoughts
I may or may not have time to submit anything to either of these (which, when we’re talking about me, means I probably won’t) so I thought I’d use my tangential thoughts to share two cool, conceptual TTRPG jams that y’all should check out on itch.io!
First up: The Danger TTRPG Jam is a jam all about games that you shouldn’t play. Like, no, this isn’t even a lyric game, you will genuinely injure yourself if you attempt to play the games with the written rules. And that’s a fun premise! Particularly when it’s inspired by a Prokopetz post, because you know it’s going to be chaos.
And secondly: The TTRPGs TEACH Jam is an extremely cool collection of games that can be used for teaching in a classroom setting! This is one I’d absolutely love to contribute to, but I absolutely do not have the intellect to write a game that provides educational value. I would just end up making kids stupider somehow…
Thanks for Reading!
I’ve written enough of these to get straight to the good bits: Thank you for reading my newsletter today, and please consider sharing it with any TTRPG fans in your life!