In development – project updates

The last few years have seen a lot of changes in my life, to put things lightly, but one of those has been the return to game design. To that, I owe Max FitzGerald and his fantastic game Turnip 28 a lot, as it opened my eyes to the indie wargaming scene. Since then I’ve been quite active on Instagram and, with the rise of modern 3d printing, even dusted off my old 3d modelling skills to develop a range of miniatures.

So, to summarise the state of things for myself and Shrike Studio right now, we’re taking a chill and consistent approach to indie game development (no more big stressful kickstarters) and currently have the following projects underway:

Blight Seas Fleet

  • Dark fantasy skirmish wargame and the game that got my back into game development
  • Currently the ruleset is feature complete, but needs more refining and testing (something you can help out with as the pdf is freely available)
  • Expect a full version 1 release later this year

Zone 28

  • Stalker inspired rules-light survival RPG
  • Again, the rules are virtually complete at this point (and freely available to test)
  • Expect a full version 1 release with a POD 7″x10″ hardback soon

Oz

  • Cyberpunk skirmish game with narrative elements and the ability to play solo or co-operatively
  • This one is a bit of an experimental passion project for me at this point, a lot of the core rules design is done but there’s a long way to go
  • It’ll be done when it’s done

Plague Legion Remnants by @princess_kushana

  • Fan supplement for a popular stinky army from a popular sci-fi wargame
  • Not my project, but I’m helping out with some model designs (you’ll be able to find free stls for this project on my MMF page)
  • Development of the rules supplement has been pushed back a bit due to updates to the core game, but my models will trickle out as and when they’re ready

…and various other small projects that might blossom into something worth talking about in the near future.

Digital release!

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The rulebook is rolling out!

We’re happy to say that Emissary was approved for digital release this week on DriveThru and is now available to purchase for a price of $14.99.

The digital release differs slightly from the version that was released earlier to backers, including some minor fixes, updated backer list and bookmarks for easier navigation. Backers and other existing owners can download the release version through the library function of DriveThru.

We’re continuing to support and update Emissary post release, so feel free to contact us regarding any questions or feedback you might have!

Due to requests for a forum to discuss the game, we’ll be launching a subreddit dedicated to Emissary later this week.

Keep your eye out for r/emissaryrpg. (Update: It’s live!)

Media roundup

Hello everyone,

our Kickstarter for Emissary was a great success, finishing at £9,324! We’ve been spending the past few months working towards the release. At this stage it seems like we’ll be able to hit our August release date.

We’ve been putting up updates on Kickstarter about our progress, and you can read those here. Especially worth reading are our mechanics updates that (hopefully!) help explain our design decisions about the system behind Emissary.

The better half of our operation was also recently interviewed about Emissary and our little studio. The transcript for that is available online. Go check it out!

Kickstarter: EMISSARY – a science fantasy roleplaying game

*Edit* The Kickstarter was a success and we’re fully funded!

We are happy to announce that we’ve just launched a Kickstarter campaign for our first game!

You can read more about Emissary, our science fantasy setting, both here on the website, and of course at the Kickstarter page itself. All the money from the campaign will be used for improving the presentation of the rulebook as the vast majority of the actual content has already been completed. Our intention is to have the final product available as both a digital PDF and a colour hardback sold through DriveThruRPG. The current project is approximately 260 pages in length, but will grow with the addition of covers, additional artwork, contents, index and appendices. We estimate that the completed book will likely fall somewhere between 280 and 300 pages in length.

The game will use our own Shrike Roleplaying System.

The Kickstarter is live now. It’ll run for a month. We’re aiming for £5,000.