itch.io

I need to get a twitter handle. I have to commission a social media avatar before launching. 

As soon as I have that, I'll ping you back with a handle you can share me at.

I was recently able to cover your game for my actual play blog. It was fun, but the dice robbed me of a complete story. Still, my journey into, and out of, the forest was a memorable one. 

The branching paths determined by die rolls instead of CYOA or coin flip was nice, both for the intro into each challenge and the solution to each one. There's plenty of replay value... if your dice land properly on the curve to give you a good chance at each fork. I knew from my initial rolls that I was destined for a "bad" ending before I began. (Again, not your fault. I'm just going to curse my dice. Forever.)

Thanks for the opportunity to go out and touch grass without, you know, having to touch actual grass. I appreciated it. Truly.

If you want to have a read, here's a link to both parts.

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/06/14/sapling-soul-1-of-2/
https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/06/16/sapling-soul-2-of-2/

I'm a huge fan of Blades, so any kind of FITD game gets at least a read from me.

The setting and set-up alone was enough to get me to play it and post it up for my blog through one cycle of play to show it off to my (admittedly small) audience. This was a lot harder without a whole crew to accomplish, and I admit to missing them greatly. But it's a solo game, and I confess that it solos very well. 

One of my favorite parts was that the dungeon crawl didn't require me to lay out a whole dungeon deck on the table. Some solo games do that, and it works, but having just a "next card is all that's on the table" mechanic feels really true to the spirit of Blades' elegance and simplicity. 

Thanks for a really fun attempt at supporting the Revolution.

If you'd like to read it, here's a link: 

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/a-torch-in-the-dark-one-shot/

I finished off a three-part playthrough of your game for my blog, after picking it up in the "Solo But Not Alone 2" bundle. By word count, it's the longest playthrough I've done outside of the narrative-centric Ironsworn.

While I enjoyed it, and especially enjoyed the random settings to draw from as a launching point, I have to admit I really struggled with some of the prompts. I'm still really new to solo gaming, so maybe it's a "me" thing, but I had trouble with the prompts generating any kind of forward narrative motion. That required some extensive oracle use and creativity on my part. I really did love the Lead mechanic and how it offers a chance to manipulate the immediate narrative you're building.

If you could give me any tips on how, in solo, I can take the prompts your game offers and really work the three-act structure you were pitching, I'd appreciate it. Again, I'm new to solo gaming, and I'm still learning these tips and tricks to make my experiences better. 

Make no mistake, though. This was a good game. I had fun with it. Enough to generate almost 15,000 words. You put a lot of time and effort into this, and it shows, and I know the "Follow the Leads" model can only get better from here.

If you want to read it, here's what your game helped me create:

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/04/05/after-the-accident-1-of-3/

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/04/07/after-the-accident-2-of-3/

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/04/12/after-the-accident-3-of-3/

100%. It's out there for the world to see, so feel free to link it up.

This was a really neat experience. Thank you. I haven't found many western games (weird or wild) out there so far on itch. It was a nice surprise to stumble upon. The gameplay was simple and clean, and I like that the push mechanic can push you into failure if you're too desperate in picking up that second die. 

There are thoughts I have about your layout and design choices for both the print-friendly and the full-color pdf you put together, but since that wasn't the focus of my experience, and not my first area of expertise, I'll withhold them from here. If you're ever interested, I could shoot you an email instead to cover those thoughts.

Since I got through it and enjoyed it enough, I've shared my gameplay experience to my blog, if you want to see what the system you've put to paper has inspired creatively, and check if I gave your idea any justice: https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/03/31/and-the-gunslinger-followed-on...

I really appreciated the experience, and I shared a leg of that journey to my blog in two parts. It was part of highlighting to Malaysian flood relief bundle with a few other games, so people could see what you contributed, both to the relief and to gaming in general.

The simplicity of taking beautiful art and turning it into a map still blows me away. It's right there, and it never even occurred to me, but it helped ground the experience and made it that much richer. Do ping me if you ever do an expansion and put together more maps and tables.

If you want to read the short journey I shared with my audience, here's the two parts: 

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/08/stories-to-astonish-the-world-...

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/10/stories-to-astonish-the-world-...

Thank you very much for the experience. I took it and ran, doing one day's worth of play for my blog in a three-part series, as I tried to show it off to my (admittedly small) audience, because I thought all of you who supported the flood relief deserved a wider platform to see your games shared and played.

If you're interested in my thoughts and my gameplay, feel free to click through and see what you inspired me to put on the stove.

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/01/25/what-should-we-have-tomorrow-0...

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/01/what-should-we-have-tomorrow-02-malaysian-flood-relief/

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/what-should-we-have-tomorrow-03-malaysian-flood-relief/

I took your game any played a round of it on my blog, to introduce it to anyone who'd read it and want to support what you guys did for Malaysian flood relief. In two parts, I commented on your mechanics and then I wove my adventure to share. 

Please take a read, if you like, to see the scene you helped inspire.


https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/uncover-your-story-01-malaysia...

https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/01/20/uncover-your-story-02-malaysian-floor-relief/

Not at all. Link away.

Thank you very much for the experience. I was genuinely fond of having Fear and Hope as a mechanical device, because it set the experience apart from journal-style games where you'd have to construct that narration on your own. It gave me guideposts and a tone to listen for when progressing through the game. 

You've met and exceeded your goals of "making the move be the game" in doing that. And the prompts' escalation when you work down the tables brought home the sense of at least trying to come to terms with your fate. You crossed that finish line, too, and then some.

If you'd like to see someone's experience with your system, here's a link to my actual play blog: https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/adrift-one-shot/

Final call drops tonight in my last LH1983 post. Hope I did your game justice and that you enjoyed it.

Thank you for the experience. It was an awesome ride. 

Let me know how you feel about it.

And, as someone who wrote it and is now reading it... do you think you'd have preferred to see the game play and the cards, or, as the author, you think just the transcripts is the best way to share the Long Haul experience with others?

I have a voice suited for silent movies, so I'm having to settle for text. I am doing "transcripts" for the calls, though, for anyone in the LH1983 fandom to read, too.

Here's the first one, and the fourth drops in like 4-5 hours: https://themaddestsailor.wordpress.com/2022/02/15/long-haul-1983-the-first-call/

Point crawls were a new concept to me when I first opened your game, despite having familiarity with hex crawls. To that end, the first thing I felt when flipping through was, "This is going to feel like a Tokaido RPG."

Did the existence of the board game at all influence or inspire your creation of this, given that it also is (essentially) a point crawl overlaid on gorgeous art?

What were your inspirations for coming up with this game? 

I have a friend States-side who wondered if some of the inspiration for this came from a game, he said, where Malaysian kids play at cooking. He said it's called masak-masak, and I thought I needed to pass the question to you, since I personally know nothing about Malaysian kids games. 

After pulling the top 10 cards off the deck to establish your occupation, etc., do you recycle those 10 cards back into the deck to help make the pyramid? Or are those 10 cards removed from the game?