This technology to help us laymen track what's happening in the fencing championship is really cool. Especially since we will be launching our 18-card fencing game, Ripsote!, on BackerKit in just a few weeks.
youtu.be/D6DTYeLW3C0?...
While we analyze what went wrong with the Mirror Agents campaign, we move forward with Backerkit's Pocketopia event and our campaigns for Cellblock 18 and Riposte! launching May 7th.
www.backerkit.com/call_to_acti...
We also didn't do as good a job as we'd thought marketing the game and making sure people understood what made it fun. While we can't fix the economy, we can go back to work making sure people have a good idea what makes Mirror Agents a great game and why they should back it next time.
We've spent the last week collecting data from backers, and non-backers on our mailing list to work out what went wrong with Mirror Agents campaign. As expected, the biggest issue for many was the economy. The game price was okay, but folks are saving their money for other things.
Regretfully, we decided to cancel the Mirror Agent Kickstarter campaign this morning. Some may question why we canceled so quickly, but the campaign completely failed to connect with backers. We are collecting and reviewing data, and we will regroup, revise, and eventually relaunch.
The excellent Grant Lyon took a look at Mirror Agents for us and posted this video.
youtube.com/shorts/9khMY...
I'm just old enough that I still find myself putting two spaces after a period when I type things on my PC. I love my oxford comma, but I never really use em or em dashes.
Have we mentioned recently that we have a Kickstarter coming up next week. Just 5 more days until we launch Mirror Agents. Mark your calendar for April 7th, or follow the link to have Kickstarter notify you when we launch.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/941...
Image of the Safehouse background from Mirror Agents. Image depicts a disused warehouse full of crates and trash.
And here is the final image, since the GIF posted before cycles a little faster than expected.
We are a week from launching the Mirror Agents Kickstarter. Thought we'd share this little gif showing how the Safehouse art went from sketch to the beautiful final digital painting.
It's part of the inane human need to label everything, so art becomes a spectrum between pop commercial and serious fine art. And that lens gets plastered over movies, music, games, and every other type of art. And people use to try to gatekeep and mark themselves as superior.
Will got interviewed at TokenCon by the Oak & Onion Podcast. A local podcast at our local Con.
We've posted up the teaser video for Mirror Agents on our Youtube. We are so excited to launch this one, its happening in just under two weeks, on April 7th.
youtu.be/4zhj8EP1CWg?...
Photo of a game of Riposte! From Absurdist Productions mid play. Cards feature fencers in the middle of a duel, with players choosing their next moves very carefully.
Getting a playtest of our upcoming 18-card game Riposte! This will be on Backerkit in May as part of Pocketopia 2026.
Yes, you can polish all sorts of things, but if the core isn't fun, all the polish in the world won't save it. You gotta test early to find that fun.
Photo selfie of David Thomas in front of the Absurdist Productions booth at TokenCon.
Photo of Mirror Agents prototype set up at the Absurdist Productions booth at TokenCon.
Setup at TokenCon in Oklahoma City.
As a really small publisher, we try very hard to make sure we pay our freelance artists on time, and we stipulate that in our contracts. Have heard enough horror stories from friends who freelance that we want to try to be better at it.
Right now, I'm just focusing on the fact that this weekend is my local board game convention, and I get to spend the week running both my booth and the Playtesting/Demo zone for all the other local designers. Which essentially means I get to spend my weekend with many of my favorite people.
I don't know about powerful, but big currant is certainly tasty.
I believe its a fungus that actually moves back and forth between the pine and the currant during its life cycle, it only seems to harm the pine trees. Killing off the currants killed off the fungus.
A photo of the box of the board game Winter Rabbit from Absurdist Productions. It is overlaid with an image of the Origins Award Finalist badge.
We posted about this two weeks ago when it was announced, but we are still so excited that we wanted to post about it again. Winter Rabbit is an Origins Award finalist in the light strategy category. We are up against some pretty prestigious competition. So super proud to be nominated.
Winter Rabbit got named checked on the recent BGG Podcast by our friend @robertataylor.bsky.social. Just in general, it's a great episode about Canadian designers, and it also touches on indigenous-designed games, including a mention of Will and Winter Rabbit.
boardgamegeek.com/blog/12153/b...
Our best sellers right now are a pair of Solo journaling RPGs. Which tells me people are both reading and writing.
Love seeing how this game is flourishing for you.
It's a balancing act. The further you drift from reality the less the reader has to relate to. Which in some cases is what you want. But it can also reduce their engagement with the story. You have to pick and choose your grounding points.
Had a few friends in the Board Game design space who have already left the US or are trying to figure out how to do so because of all this. It's sad and terrifying.
Just took that AI vs Human writing quiz we see posted all over the place. Only picked one AI, and it was a more modern author. I'm not sure if that makes me a better judge of writing, or if it points to modern writing just becoming more homogenius and thus naturally more like AI outputs.
If you don't know what you want, then you need to at least work out what you don't want, and eventually it might spark the inspiration to get where you really want to be. Do it a lot in boardgame design. The hard part is sometimes you realize what you want doesn't work with the rest of what you had.
Dame Judi Dench is amazing in that show. Such wonderful awkwardness.
