TTRPGkids Dev Log #6: Release Day Plans, EDU Games, Campaign Polls, and more!
Check out the latest on the TTRPGkids works in progress to stay up to date on upcoming releases! This Dev Log will mostly cover work on A Construct’s Nature since it likely releasing TOMORROW (June 5), and it will also cover general status on other projects like StoryGuider and Greeting Games!
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A Construct’s Nature
I’ve mostly been working on fulfilling A Construct’s Nature (and associated stretch goals and add-ons), and my plan is to release tomorrow (June 5) barring any major issues within the next 24 hours!
If you are not part of the Backerkit campaign but want to get notified on release, you can follow the TTRPGkids Backerkit account or follow TTRPGkids on itchio! Both will get notices when things are live.
Release day plans
As soon as it clears through DriveThruRPG, I’ll be distributing digital copies to backers and ordering the POD backer rewards (now that all but a few straggler card charges are cleared).
There’s still a few relatively manageable things to get done for today, and… the combination of excitement and relief in getting this out is pretty huge. Especially doing the final read and slides timing (which requires a lot of re-listening to check the pacing), I’m realizing how much of myself I put into this, both in terms of time and my personal experience. The characters, the story… it’s going out there to people, and it feels a bit surreal. But… enough of me pondering! Here are the bullet points for how the next couple days should go down!!
Since last week’s update, the following are DONE!
- Add sound files to slideshow (all complete)
- Tweak timing on slideshow so animations and audio line up (ch 0 – 7 complete)
- Charge all cards on Backerkit
Next steps before tomorrow’s planned release:
- Tweak timing on slideshow so animations and audio line up (ch 8-10)
- Finalize DriveThruRPG, itchio, and TTRPGkids pages for the game
- CLICK THE RELEASE BUTTON ON ALL THE PLATFORMS!
Within 48 hours of release, I’ll be doing the following:
- Distributing digital copies to backers
- Ordering POD backer rewards
- Notifying any backers who still have issues (i.e. didn’t fill out survey in time, card didn’t charge, etc)
EDU games (ACN stretch goals)
If you’ve been following the Dev Logs, you may notice that the stretch goal EDU games are not included in tomorrow’s release. Life hit at a few different angles, and I just wasn’t able to get them done by the start of June, but I didn’t want to delay the core game release for the two stretch goals, since they will end up being free digital downloads anyway (so no need to group shipping).
The two EDU game stretch goals are next, after ACN’s core fulfillment is complete, and my plan is to still have them release in June, just in a couple weeks. My goal for these is to complete them in time to release just before the Game Based EDU & Therapy Conference being held at Origins Game Fair this year.
Greeting Games
The Greeting Games campaign is still on the back burner for now, but as soon as ACN is fulfilled, this is the next priority for work, and I’ll be kicking off artists in June.
In the meantime though, voting is taking place to choose which idea from the Redwyrmling will make it to the printed card!
The FINAL SHOWDOWN between the winners of the three previous polls is currently live and will go until June 11! You can find the poll on the Greeting Games community page here, and, if you missed the campaign but want to get notified for making late orders, follow the TTRPGkids Backerkit account and/or the TTRPGkids newsletter to stay updated on release timing and pre-order story details.
StoryGuider
My late summer project is StoryGuider, which is a collection of 36 choose-your-path style adventures for little kids! Right now, this one is solidly in pre-launch, so follow along on Backerkit to get ready for when we make the game… and you can find the pre-funding campaign here on itchio to get a nice bundle of TTRPGkids games on sale and support the project ahead of time.
The bundle, as of right now, is getting pretty close to unlocking an early release of one of the games! As these goals are met before launch, I can kick off artists early and then use the Backekit campaign to instead focus on unlocking more stretch goals versus getting the basic minimum funding for art.
As a note, if you’re only interested in the digital version of StoryGuider, this is your best bet cost-wise. You’ll have the download key for the digital version of StoryGuider, which will get all updated content from the crowdfunding campaign, provided funding is reached.
While it is in pre-launch though…. I have been setting up the foundation for it and doing a lot of prep work. We currently have someone lined up to help with translation into French if we hit the stretch goal for that, and I have a team of artists that I am REALLY excited to hire for the full book set! I’m also working on setting up another stretch goal for having a Spanish translation.
Other TTRPGkids Projects
Aside from this, I am working on maintaining the pacing with reviews, interviews, and etc on the TTRPGkids site AND am working on getting a whole bunch of panels and talks sorted between Origins and GenCon – a good chunk of these are run by other folks, but there’s still a lot of prep work involved in communication, setting up presentations, and just planning out timing or going to meetings. That said, I am REALLY looking forward to seeing my convention friends again AND amy very excited to be chatting with people at the talks. The work is totally worth it, and it is pretty awesome getting to geek out with other presenters and the crowd about all this on a regular basis.
Until next time…
Thank you for checking out this update, and I hope this overview of my work is either a good resource for your own project planning or that it’s a nice “keep-up-to-date” spot for what’s going on with TTRPGkids! And, if you have any feedback about how the dev log is set up, please let me know – I’m new to doing this, so I know it’s going to be a bit of a learning process to fine tune it to what I want to share and what people are looking for, and I appreciate the advice.
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