Bringing The Wretched back into print.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Good morning! We're now at £5000, which means t-shirts are happening!
I've added a new reward tier for the zine + t-shirt bundle, so if you want a shirt you can simply change your pledge level to the new one. If you wanted multiple copies of the zine and had added extra to your pledge to do that, just do the same thing again.
I can't edit tiers that have already been chosen by backers, but if you backed the £75 or £150 tiers you've already got a shirt included in your reward.
The final stretch goal is the one I'm most excited about. If we hit £6500 I'm going to write even more music. This is going to expand on the Kickstarter exclusive track I'm writing for the first stretch goal. This additional soundtrack will be exclusive to Kickstarter and will be pressed on 10" vinyl. You will only be able to get it through this campaign (aside from any overprint copies of the vinyl that I have left over after fulfilment, obviously).
Pressing vinyl is a life-long dream of mine, so I'm really excited to get closer to this goal. LEt's see what happens, and in the mean time go grab yourself a t-shirt!
Welcome to day 4 of the campaign!
Yesterday I asked you to let me know what you'd like to see in updates, and the thing I heard the most was that you'd like to see what's changed between the old edition and the new one. So let's talk about that!
There are three main areas where I'm making improvements over the original release of the game:
1) Content has been updated with a section on player safety (see the discussion here for more information about that) and some quality-of-life changes like clearer wording in the instructions and cleaning up some of the prompts so that they're punchier.
2) The physical zine itself will be better quality. The Wretched was the first game book I printed, and since then I've released multiple projects and learned a lot about paper choices, lamination options, and all the stuff that goes into making a really nice, professional quality product. I can't really show this off in an update but I promise you're going to love how these things feel (and I say that with full confidence even though I haven't actually touched them yet).
3) The layout! It's so much better, and that's the meat of this update. Let's talk about it.
The layout of the original game was functional. I'm happy with how bits of it looked, but I was never really pleased with the Operations Manual pages at all. I laid it out on my slowly-dying laptop at my desk at work during the height of COVID, and it's just not my best work. The text is too small, it's really cramped, and trying to fit everything on one page just...didn't really work. The Structures page is the worst offender:
With the new layout I've expanded the page count so that each suit takes up a two page spread, giving everything a little more room to breathe. I've also made everything a little more visually interesting, using the logo Liz designed to inform the design of the rest of the layout. Check it out:
Structures is still the longest section of the Operations Manual and therefore the most crowded spread, but I'm really happy with how this looks and I know it's going to look great in print.
The other new thing I'm going to be doing - which has only been decided in the past couple of days, and therefore isn't mentioned in the campaign yet - is having The Wretched produced as an audio book. I'm going to try and do this myself initially, and if it's not up to my standards then I'll pay someone to record it for me. This isn't going to be tied to stretch goals and it isn't going to cost anybody anything extra - all backers will receive a copy of the audio book as well as the updated PDF and anything else included in your reward tier.
At the time of writing this we're well on track to hit the second stretch goal and get the logo on t-shirts, so please keep spreading the word about the campaign and see if we can get us there! I'm really happy with how this is going, and I hope you're as excited as I am about the new version of the game.
Thanks,
Chris
I deliberately held off on posting this update until this morning simply because I want to pace myself a little bit. I honestly didn't expect to be announcing the second stretch goal already!
Yesterday I showed you Liz's amazing logo for The Wretched. Today I'm here to let you know that if we hit £5000 in funding, you'll be able to get it on a t-shirt!
I'll be using Monster Press in the UK for printing, the same company who print all of my band's merch. I'm used to dealing with them and know that they deliver excellent quality with a speedy turnaround. Shirts will be printed on Gildan Heavy, and if we hit the goal I'll be setting up new reward tiers so you can snag one. I'm really excited about this one, frankly, and I hope you are too!
In coming updates I want to talk a little bit about the project itself rather than constantly talking about new stretch goals, so if there's anything in particular you'd like to know or hear from me about please let me know!
Thanks,
-Chris
Good morning!
We're around 18 hours into the campaign and I think it's safe to say things are going well! As I write this we're around £200 away from hitting the first stretch goal and unlocking more music for the game. I'm really excited to get to work on that and if we hit it this week I'll try and get started on the writing ASAP so I can bring you a preview of it.
In the meantime I wanted to share something fun that I arranged in advance of the campaign going live. All the art in the original printing of the game was stock, and that's remained largely unchanged. That said, I really wanted to do something a bit special for this second run.
It's no secret that The Wretched is heavily inspired by the Alien films. All the iconic ships from that series - the Nostromo, the Sulaco, Prometheus, and the rest - have iconic logos of their name, and I wanted one for The Wretched. I commissioned my good friend Liz Gist to create something for me, and I'm delighted with the end result. Here's the logo they made!
They also made a really cool distressed version of the logo, too:
I'm in love with these and they also played a large part in inspiring the re-designed layout. I'll be sharing some previews of that in a future update, so keep an eye out!
That's all for now. If you want to check out Liz's work you can follow them on Twitter at @crit_liz or look at the rest of their work on Artstation.
Cheers,
Chris