1001 Odysseys

Summer Update: Books Laid Out, Many Pagess
10 months ago – Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 12:46:39 PM

Hello friends and galactic associates! I am here to share updates on our progress, as is tradition. This update will be on the shorter side, because most of what we're working on is technical rather than flashy/exciting to show.

Quick version: The books are laid out and test-exported in PDF form! We're copyediting the Almanac/Rulebook right now, and applying the last few edits in the storybooks. Final playtesting and then Production remain. 

Layouts and Page Counts

Exports from the database of all story content to InDesign are complete. Books 1 and 2 comprise over 700 pages. That is a bit more than we planned, but it turns out we had a lot of awesome stories to tell you (and that I made a modest miscalculation on header padding when I did earlier page estimates in updates past). 

Copyediting on the stories is complete, and is proceeding on the rulebook and the Almanac. Things there are moving along smoothly, it's much easier to edit a list of terms than it is a non-linear story! 

A handful of small artwork tasks (a couple stickers and achievements) are outstanding, plus any artwork tweaks we need to make based on production/box size.

Playtesting

We'll be doing a few live playtests with new players with the finished rulebook once it's ready - with the goal being that they will learn it from the rulebook themselves, so we can make sure things are clear and proper!

Factory and Production

With the page count increases, we're discussing with the factory how to safely and securely package things in a box for your shelves. We've got some good options, just need to nail down what's going to work best. Production will be the focus of our next update, with copyediting and file changes drawing it a close.

Thank you all again for your patience, and we hope you are having a good Summer! 

A Storybook Layout
12 months ago – Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 09:47:47 AM

Hello crew,

First, it was cold Spring. Then, it was hot Spring, then it was warm Spring again and now it's instant Summer! As the wise Plumplim meteorologist Blosso Flooproot once said: "The only one surprised by the weather is the one paying attention to it." Wise words, indeed. Despite all the wacky weather, we've been working lots!

Writing and Editing Update

Story writing is complete! A handful of Almanac entries are still being written, and we've continued to make tweaks as needed based on things that the copy editor brings to our attention. There are only two chapters left still being copyedited, and that work will rap up in the next couple weeks. Once that's complete, we'll do copyediting on the Almanac, Rulebook, and individual cards - a process that is much simpler than copyediting prose. It's mostly looking for typos.

The many writers on the project have done wonderful work throughout the course of the project, and we're thankful to all of them. They wrote a lot, and in fact - they wrote a little more than we'd calculated during our last page estimate. 

Our original estimate for this game was 4 books of smaller chapters, totaling around 400 pages (100 per book). As we've mentioned, we realized that the stories we wanted to tell needed more depth per chapter, which we estimated at 2x200. But as we've gotten into actual layout, we've realized our estimation calculations were off and it's going to be more than that. (Long story short, Chris made a math error!) Depending on some final layout decisions and the last bits of copyediting, we will be delivering you someplace between 600 and 700 pages of content. 

We love every word of it, and we think you will too :) 

Layout Update

Yes, that's right. We're doing layout! We've beenbringing the stories from our database into inDesign files to get them ready for printing. This will finally give us the actual page counts for each of the Storybooks. Here's a glimpse of a few chapters in Book 1:

Each chapter has its own color scheme for headers and cross-section of the map art for the page footer. This makes flipping through the books easier, because you can tell quickly if you've gone too far.

With all the story-writing in place, the other task to take care of is running all of the cards through inDesign using the DataMerge feature. This feature lets us convert the tables that include all the text for our Location Cards and Feature cards and into actual card layouts that include all of the correct graphics in the correct locations. Thankfully, this is a mostly automatic process! It just needs to be done last in case there had been any changes to location titles.  

We're also wrapping up the final box design. In addition to the beautiful watercolor piece we've shared before, it also features sections from the Map illustrations on the sides, and some different options we're testing for display on store shelves. 

Rulebook Update

In the background, we've been working on the Rulebook. The "Odyssey Operations Manual" is written and laid out in inDesign, and we'll be testing it shortly on some new players. Assuming that goes well, we'll do a copyediting pass on it, make any changes, and lock it in! 

What's Next

With writing done, copyediting almost done, and component layout proceeding, we turn to the world of Factory. With finalized page, card, and component counts (and things like the height of the box, which depended on these things) we'll be able to lock down final quotes and get production underway. 

We are continuing to monitor the tariff situations and figuring out how best to navigate - it's been a wild ride this year and we really hope stability is going to be the norm for the rest of the year.

The Elephant in the Cargo Bay
about 1 year ago – Thu, Apr 10, 2025 at 09:29:56 AM

Editing Update

Sarah here, bringing you an update on the editing status. Since last time, we've continued our work going through Chapter by Chapter and reviewing/copyediting all the written text for the entire game. So far, we have completed Book 1 and are halfway through Book 2.

Continuity

Checking the continuity from blurb to blurb has turned out to be the most tricky part of this process. As you may remember, the story that you will read when you play 1001 Odysseys is made up of many Blurbs that you combine as you make choices. It's very easy to make sure that each Blurb is consistent within itself because the entire blurb appears on the screen at the same time. It's very easy to check that the game components will get you to the end of the Chapter, we have a tool for that. For the full continuity check, I'm also checking the content of each blurb against other Blurbs that come before and/or after it. This means diving back into the Chapter flowcharts to answer questions like, "has the crew already met this character?" or "have they ever been here before?" or even "is this thing what they should be holding?".

We have addressed most of the continuity questions like these during the writing part of this process, but unfortunately I've still found a few things that merit adjustments on this final pass. They were functional before, and they would get you to the end of the Chapter, but there were some edge cases where things didn't make sense. A few of these needed adjustments to the game elements, and some other cases have needed rewriting of text within Blurbs. Each of these take time to fix, either writing brand-new text or re-building part of the narrative tree and re-checking the game elements. There aren't a lot of these changes, but they do take longer than reading a blurb and finding that it's ready to go. A couple of the early Book 2 Chapters had more of these issues than were present in Book 1, so it took some extra time to get through. The narrative tree in the later Book 2 Chapters is in much better shape.

Copy Editing

After the continuity check is complete for a Chapter, the copy editor checks for things like grammar and style consistency, making sure that what we're saying is what we mean to say. 

Almanac

We're also reviewing the Almanac entries, and making sure that we have entries for all of the places, items, and people who need them. Each entry is also getting its pronunciation guide (if it doesn't have one already).

Playtesting Update

Internal playtesting has continued on the Chapters that have not yet gone through to the final continuity check. This playtesting looks at one pathway through the Chapter at a time, checking to make sure that it's fun and/or interesting and calling out any issues that will need more focused attention. As mentioned above, the remaining chapters look to be in good shape! 

What's Next

There are 5.5 Chapters (Plus 2 short interludes) left to get through this final review process. What we've learned so far is that it's hard to tell how long a Chapter is going to take to review until we actually do the continuity check, but I am going as quickly as I can without sacrificing quality. Revisions and additional writing for the rulebook will happen when we do the review for the half-length Chapter. 

As mentioned above, review of the Almanac is also ongoing.

Overall, editing has taken longer than anticipated because we hit a couple of rough spots where writing work was necessary, but we're on track to be print ready later this Spring.

We are also faced with the dilemma of finding a way to continue working without disturbing Ivy, who is very comfortable:

Finally, Elephants in Cargo Bays

From Chris:

The backdrop for all of this, of course, is Tariff nonsense. Right now there're a lot of people in our government making some decisions that we find quite questionable and disagree with, and it's impacting everyone. The situation is fluid and changing daily, and we're keeping focused on wrapping up the editing process rather then entering panic mode. When editing's done and we are print ready we'll figure out the best logistical way to get games to you all. Trying to plan in advance for a system that produces chaos daily is a bit of a fool's errand, but we have a lot of options and good partners both domestic and international. 

My sincere hope for the sake of everyone in a LOT of industries is that this situation comes to a close sooner rather than later. I'm sorry to any of you who are directly affected. The best way through this mess is kindness to each other - love always wins, somehow, some way. 
 

New Year Update
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 11:08:19 AM

[From Chris: Sorry for the delay in posting this update! It was ready a couple weeks back but I was sick and/or the world was...doing world things, and haven't gotten to editing it until now.] 

Hello friends. 

Thank you to everyone who visited us at PAX Unplugged! We had excerpts of the final Almanac with us this time, and it was good to see Information Officers put the Location and People sections to use as they helped their crews travel around Insula.

For those of you who weren't at the show, we wanted to share a little mock-up of one of the pages from the 'People of Insula' section of the Almanac. 

Writing Update

The writers are working on final narrative and continuity revisions in Storybook 2. We've been reading through each blurb in the context of the entire story and making small adjustments where we find any confusing bits. Hurray for testing! While doing this, we've also been making sure that we have Almanac entries where we need them. Those chapters are being passed off to copyediting as soon as writing revisions are done. 

In the Almanac, we have moved on to working on the alphabetical entries that explain the bits and pieces of Insula. We're polishing the entries we've already written and adding new ones as needed.

Editing Update

Our copy editors have gone through Storybook 1, and we've been applying the suggested changes. We're in the process of final checking of each blurb and then locking it in for print. Storybook 2 copy editing is underway, and as mentioned above, is fueled by completion of playtest edits to chapters. We're pretty much done with playtesting (aside from final checks)!

Gameplay Update

The gameplay is not changing, but based on feedback we are revising the wording of some of the commands listed in the Updates section following each blurb, to make each one a little easier to follow. This is just a database change, and won't have any impact on writing.

What's Next?

After the Almanac is written, the next step for writing is to do a final revision on the Rulebook and the Introduction/Tutorial Chapter in Storybook 1. We've already done some playtesting with it, but we want to make sure that it still works well to lead you into Chapter 1. We want your first time at the table to be fun and not mired in rulebook reading, and we've put a lot of thought + work into making that happen.

Once that is edited and locked, all of the writing will be ready to pull into the final layouts. We'll also run our fancy dataMerge processes to generate all of our Focus and Location Cards for print.

With the holidays, the world, and PAX, copyediting in December/early January was a little slower than anticipated, but things have been at full speed since. We're crusing toward print readiness and getting games to you all! 

Almanac Pics! Wrapping up/Copyediting! Warm Weather?
over 1 year ago – Fri, Nov 01, 2024 at 09:32:30 AM

It's a surprise secret second-summer here in New England. What a place to be! We were witness to one bazillion kiddos trick or treating in 70+ degree weather, and it was adorable times. Do Plumplim trick-or-treat? Maybe they will after learning about this fun Human custom! 

Almanac: Graphics Update

We're excited to share the look of the Almanac, now with shiny graphical polish. We're doing our best to present this trove of information in a way that is both easy to use and delightful to behold. Part of this is to break the Almanac up into sections, with a handy navigation bar on the right side of each spread. There will be an Odyssey Operations Manual (the Rulebook) followed by a section with a spread for each Map, and then illustrated introductions to each of the Federation sentient species that we will encounter. 

All of the Map spreads are written and laid out, but we're only showing you one here. This is Brumigum. Mild spoiler warning: the Almanac does not reveal any important plot information, but it does show all of the Location Features that we use on Focus cards on Brumigum for Storybooks 1 and 2. 

Playtesting Update

While our fancy computer and database tests that every pathway through the game is structurally valid, human beings are an important part of the process. What we've been working on during the summer and early fall is going through all of the major branching pathways, including replay options. This includes the important step of independently reviewing smaller pathways and blurbs. We know that all of the blurbs connect to each other in the way that we want, we're just making sure that the words we've put into each blurb make sense when we string them all together.

It's gone quite well! Humans playtesting have been amused and entertained by the writing, and cats adjacent to playtesting have been aloof and fluffy. These are both the desired results. 

Editing Update

With playtesting wrapping up, we've used the insights and notes to revise the writing in Storybook 1 for improved clarity and fun. We're working on final checks on Storybook 2, and that should wrap in the next couple weeks.

The final step before putting them into print layout is copyediting, which is where we check for spelling/grammar/typo things. We'll be doing Storybook 1 and then 2 once the final checks on it are complete. 

Writing Update

We're continuing to write the last entries for the back portion of the Almanac. We want your Information Officer to be able to answer questions with confidence, and to show off some neat things you'll encounter as you explore Insula. 

These, thankfully, need less serious testing and will be copyedited right after Storybook 2.

What's Next?

After editing and checking is complete, we'll pull all of the remaining text and art assets into layouts for the Storybooks and cards. We're using .xml files for the text, and DataMerge for the cards to hopefully minimize potential errors. We'll also finalize the Rulebook (the Odyssey Operation Manual) at this time so we can use final graphics in the relevant images. 

And then, the factory will accept all of these files and press them on to "paper", a strange object from the 21st century. It has been a long journey and we thank you all for your support and patience as we wrap up work on this thing we have loved to make. We will be at PAX Unplugged in December, doing demos and selling a very silly quantity of pins. People like pins, it turns out! 

A quick note on AI

We are not using generative AI tools for any reason, on any part of this game. Our artists, writers, and other contributors are all wonderfully skilled in their fields, and we're happy that we have this chance to share their work with you all!