Behold: The Story Skeleton
over 3 years ago – Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 11:28:07 PM

Hi folks!

  Just checking in with you to let you know that we continue to be alive (knock on wood) and work on this sprawling universe we love so much. In fact, this week we’ve been working with a refreshed vigor. It feels like it actually is 2021, at last. 

Writing Status:

  Book Outlines (a flowchart that shows Chapter to Chapter flow, Passport Items and Contacts discovery and usage, Maps that will be used, and key story beats) are 99% complete! The last thing that remains is to lock in a few Passport Items.

  Chapter Mission Outlines are 97% complete. Behold:

  Peer into the minds of our writing team who have been tirelessly patching together this science fiction Frankenstein of sticky notes on Miro, a flowchart-creating tool. Each of these graphs represents the narrative structure of a single Chapter in the game, our Chapter Mission Outlines.

  Each week, we get on a group call and say thoughts at each other until we build a story. This is the structure of that narrative: blood (Trin had a bad paper-cut one time), sweat (Sarah had to deal with regularly scheduled explosions out her window for a while), and tears (all of us have cried a bit at this point) went into each of these sticky-note-looking squares. We’ve floated getting matching tattoos of the Miro board (it was shot down immediately).

  We’ve been spending a lot of time with a deeply neurotic character who's been away from society for a while and looking for his purpose in the universe. We’ve taken to calling him our anxious, horrible son. Looking for a place for yourself, finding your calling, discovering your purpose in life -- We’ve all been there, right? We see a little bit of ourselves in him, and maybe you will, too.

Art Status:

  We have pencil sketches for the Bassilas Map and the Araveen Map. Both are looking like places that you'll want to visit and explore, and we'll share our artists' work in a future update once things are a bit further along.

  We have also seen a few delightful new sketches for Storybook illustrations. These will provide  great opportunities for you to see our characters and details of the story up close.

Looking Ahead:

  Everything in our narrative already fits together: we’ve populated our universe with vibrant worlds to explore, whimsical characters, and everything that happens on those planets and to those people. The time has come to add meat onto the adamantium-bolstered skeleton of our story! We do this by translating all of these flowcharts into the engaging text that you will read as you play through the game. It is through these storybooks that you'll be traversing Insula and high-fiving its denizens.

Canvases, Plushies, and Pins Update:

  For folks who already backed for or ordered a Canvas, we'll be shipping those out on February 1st. You can still order them on BackerKit (and in the future from Plumplim.com) if you'd like a beautiful Insula world adorning your walls. We're prepping a plan to ship out all of the Plushies and Pins in a wave, and our estimated ship date for that is March 15th (We're waiting on some more pins from the factory, turns out we had less than we thought!). Many huggable Plumplim are ready to take a seat on your desk, shelf, or couch!

Serving up some StarBurgers
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 01:34:12 AM

Hello, friends! We have been working steadily, and we are excited to share with you a brief update.

Almanac Entries

We’ve been adding more entries to our almanac of places, people, and things throughout Insula to give players a clearer picture of the galactic sector. As we mentioned in our last update, the almanac is written in the voice of a knowledgeable and adventurous Elemens character that we’ve come to really enjoy.

Here are a few of our favorite recent entries:

StarBurger:
    StarBurger is a sector-wide chain of fast food restaurants that serves fries, shakes, burgers, and several different burger-shaped foods. For example, the ZibBurger is a burger-shaped, tightly packed pint of greasy topsoil intended for Zibzab consumption. The TimtillaBurger is an angry beetle in a cheap burger costume, which Timtillawinks delight in defeating and then consuming. For the Plumplim, there is the Burgergum, which is a plush toy shaped like a burger, since the Plumplim photosynthesize and therefore do not need to eat.

    My personal favorite on the StarBurger menu is the Burger, which is just a burger. I love to see truth in advertising!

Flimwaiter:

     Flimwaiters are the newest addition to the Federation. They are a marine-dwelling and space-faring species, which is quite frankly a fascinating combination! They manage their mastery of both worlds through the use of echolocation and telekinetic abilities in their home ocean, and through SWET suits in the open air. Marvelous!

  If you take nothing else from this entry, please know that the Flimwaiters are simply hilarious. Certainly, not everyone takes too kindly to the jovial if ribald nature of the Flimwaiters, which is understandable. But personally, I find them to be a laugh riot. Sure, their pranks may sometimes be “dangerous” or “deemed illegal on most populated worlds,” but how fun it can be to get into mischievous scrapes with a pod of giggling Cetaceans!

Hungry Nebula:
  The Hungry Nebula is the somewhat terrifying cloud of dust and gas that surrounds Insula. Long ago, it threatened to swallow our fair sector of space! Fortunately for us, the combined efforts of the peoples of Insula pushed the nebula back and contained it. So now, instead of threatening to devour us, the Hungry Nebula merely contains us on all sides and eternally looms above us in the night's sky. Everything's fine here!
 

Writing Status

92% of Chapter Mission Outlines are now done! We're continuing work in Storybook 3, weaving together several different plot lines and developing a wide variety of adventures for you to experience.

Map Status

The schematic underlay for Bassilas has gone off to the artist. Preliminary sketches are looking good, with lots of fun little vignettes waiting to be discovered.

Our final Map for this box will be Cullicut. The rough schematic is shaping-up, and once we're confident that all of the locations we need will fit, we'll be passing that underlay along to the artist as well.

Looking Ahead

In the new year, we'll keep going with these four Storybooks, moving into the fine details and writing the blurbs that players will read.

Writing blurbs is one of our favorite tasks—we get to see our plot and story come to life, and give voice to the characters we love so much. We’re so happy with the narrative “roadmap” we created for ourselves, and we foresee this being a grand adventure in storytelling together.

News: Canvases, Plushes!

We're going to take the opportunity in January to start shipping out goodies. With the four large maps complete, we can now print canvases to send out to backers who've ordered them. We also have many cute huggable Plumplim Plushies in our possession, ready to sit adorably on your desk, shelf, or next to your cat. (Plumplim love rolling around with cats!). 

If you'd like to be part of the first wave of canvases or plushes and haven't already ordered one, please adjust your BackerKit pledge by January 1. We'll be locking down addresses for those orders right after the new year, and will be emailing backers individually with shipping info once they're on the way.

Get out the Maps
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 11:06:42 PM

Hello friends and explorers! In today's update, we're going to tell you a bit about what we've been working on. We're also going to share some new artwork!

Artwork

We're very happy to present to you fully painted illustrations of both Urvellion and Flimwait. Please enjoy.

Map Status

Schematic Underlays for Betelgeuse (the misty homeworld of the Mindweavers) and Araveen (the arid homeworld of the Felisi) are complete. We use these simple underlays to determine where the Location Cards will fit in the background. They're very abstract in this phase so that we can move locations around until they all fit on the page without overlapping. Once this is done, we pass them on to the Artists who turn them into the beautiful illustrations we all love to explore. We've already started the underlays for Bassilas and Cullicut, our last two locations for this release, so the end of this process is on the radar.

Writing Status

The Chapter Mission Outlines are now at 84% complete overall. We've been expanding Storybook 3 and developing the sentient species we'll be spending a lot of time with in its 10 Chapters.

We're also developing some entries for our Almanac, the guide that will help you understand all the fantastic new sentients, places, and things you'll encounter on your voyage through Insula. We're writing them from the point of view of a friendly and well-traveled Elemens who has made a career out of sharing her knowledge with others. Thinking about what she would tell visitors to new worlds about it helps us get a better understanding of what we should be sure to share with our players.  As an example, here's part of the Araveen entry.

Production and Schedule Update, from Chris

Hello spacefriends! As we continue through November, the 36th month of the year 2020, I am here to talk to you about our overall schedule and production plans. When all of this *motions to entire world* started this spring, it felt like we'd be more or less back to normal by the end of the year, with conventions, factories, distribution, stores, and game nights working the way they should. Obviously given the state of things right now, that's not happening. Asmadi Games as a whole is pushing all of our 2020 releases (One Deck Galaxy, Good Puppers, 1001 Odysseys, Aegean Sea) to 2021. The downside of course is that we all have to wait longer to play the cool games we want to be playing. The upside is that we've had much more time to work on these games and make them better! For Odysseys, this has meant more time creating beautiful maps and architecting the story scaffolding that will make playing and replaying satisfying. For the other games, well, let's just say that LOTS of dice have been rolled for One Deck Galaxy.

It's frustrating for you all as backers to have to wait, and I apologize that we didn't make our original estimate. We encountered the exciting double-whammy of "Uh oh - this will take longer than we thought" and also "Oh no, the world is exploding." For things like Aegean, Galaxy and Puppers we could just say "Eh, we're done. Print it!" because the only things changing there are the game's mechanics and balance. The mechanics for Odysseys are done! We're working now on all the things that support those mechanics (Stories, art, etc). Sorry for being late, sorry for all the apologies, and sorry that this update doesn't contain a picture of a cat yet.

There! Fixed!

Have a safe Thanksgiving, all, and if anyone's doing the virtual BGGCon this weekend and wants to chat, come say hello! I'll be in the Asmadi Games text room all weekend :)

AwSHUX Livestream this Saturday at 2PM Eastern, and some BackerKit FAQs
about 4 years ago – Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 08:28:46 PM

Hello friends! A quick administrative update for a couple things going on this week.

AwSHUX Livestream

We're sponsoring and participating in the AwSHUX digital convention this weekend, and as part of that, we'll be on the Main Stage on Saturday, playing the 1001 Odysseys demo with Matt from SD&SU. The stream will be on their channel, https://www.twitch.tv/shutupandsitdown at 2PM Eastern. Julia, Sarah, and our friend Maggi will be joining the fun as we play through our demo mission, the Admiral's Request. 

At the end of the stream, we'll be showing off mostly-finished versions of Urvellion and Flimwait's maps :)

We'll also be demoing Good Puppers and One Deck Galaxy, or just around on the Discord. Feel free to come and say hi if you're attending! 

BackerKit FAQ

I wanted to address a couple questions we've gotten a few times on the BackerKit, with regard to when credit cards will be charged. Basically, we won't be charging any cards on BackerKit until it's shipping time. If you specifically request us to charge your card early (in an email or message), we can do that, if it's more convenient for you. 

If you request a refund/cancellation, and you had items in your BackerKit cart, they're simply removed since they were never charged. 

Happy October everyone! We'll have a normal update (spoooooky October action? Pumpkins? Plumplims dressed as pumpkins??) later this month, as usual.

A Little Bit of Color
about 4 years ago – Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 09:18:55 PM

Hello friends and adventurous explorers! Today, we're here with a brief missive to let you know what is going on in your favorite whimsical corner of the galaxy.

Writing Status

Since the last update, we've put in a good amount of work on the Chapter Mission Outlines, the bits where we determine just exactly what our intrepid crews will be doing in each Chapter of the Story Book. 71% of them are now complete!

Storyboarding for Book 2 has been completed! This Book will take you down into the depths of the Flimwaiter ocean, where you'll visit the Flimwaiter dolphins' sparkling underwater cities and befriend all kinds of undersea creatures

We've also done a lot of work on settings and cultures for two more small locations. They'll be ready for a schematic design soon.  We'll get into the last two locations shortly as part of our focus on Story Book 3, including Cullicut, the homeworld of the intrepid Timtillawinks.

Cullicut: A place where danger lurks around every corner, because we specifically placed dangers in every corner. Megafauna with mega-fangs, plants with personal vendettas, a complete lack of regard for seatbelts, cities built level by level, you name it. The Timtillawinks can shrug off a venomous bite or a shattered limb (just hack it off and replace it!), but what can you Humans do to protect yourselves? Poor squishy dears.

Artwork Status

Our artists are in the process of bringing the previously inked maps into the beautiful world of color. We're sharing sneak peeks today of little bits of these maps so you can see how things are going.

Looking Ahead

As the season changes here from summer to fall, we are looking at a spookier tone with Story Book 3. What will you encounter on an abandoned asteroid? Something long forgotten lies in wait…