Hi everyone!
So I have news, a couple of days ago I posted a game on the website itch.io that I wrote. It’s not the first time that I have written a game but it is the first time that I have published one. I am terrified that people are going to hate it. And yet I am also really proud of it?
I am in that mix of desperately wanting everyone to look at my work and also wanting to hide that I think is typical of writers. I want people to see it, but only if they promise to love it.
The version I have put up at the moment is going to get changed a bit once people have played it a few times and looked it over. I was in a bit of a rush to get it posted before the end of a game jam on itch.io that I thought it would work for, so it is probably not as good as I could have made it. But, I was starting to get into that circular editing mood where you’re changing things to change things rather than because you think it will make it better. So I wanted to get it done. Plus, like I said, there were like two hours until the deadline so it needed to be finished.
But as tense as it has made me feel over the last few days I am really proud of myself for doing it. I have a lot of anxiety issues tied up around showing people my work, especially when it is something new to me. And writing a game and showing it off to people is very new!
But my brain and the way that it ties itself in knots is probably less interesting for you than finding out about the game, so I’ll skip to that bit now.
The game is called, The Flying Pig: Spies in Space, and it is a LARP or TTRPG that is designed to take about fifteen minutes. The game is set on a spaceship, the crew work for a revolutionary group who are trying to bring down an empire, they’ve managed to get their hands on some top secret information that could destroy the empire, so they are trying to smuggle it back to their group. Unfortunately, the only way they can do that is by going through a region of space where no one is allowed to go. And while they are travelling through that region an imperial ship is seen! So they shut down everything apart from the life support systems and try to stay as inconspicuous as possible.
Only, there’s a spy for the empire on board. Or at least, statistically there should be, the players roll dice to figure out their character motivations and backgrounds at the beginning of the game, and a bunch of the backgrounds make the players spies. There are also options for people to be mercenaries only out for the money, or completely dedicated to the revolutionary cause, too.
I had a lot of fun writing all the backgrounds and motivations for the characters to roll for. As well as writing up a description of the setting and the world building it was the bit I really enjoyed doing. Of course, that is most of what ended up going into the game, but I swear there is more than that in the game! I’ve set out ways for players to fight one another, or to try and take over the ship, and I think I managed to balance that out in a way that makes sense but will still be fun for people. I just need to get people to play it so that I can see if it works now. Hint. Hint.
I wrote this game for a few reasons, one of course was because I had an idea that I thought sounded fun and interesting. But also I wanted to see if I could do it, I love playing games and I would have spent a lot of time this year LARPing if it weren’t for it being 2020, so I wanted to see if I could have a go at it myself. I know it will need work, but I think it’s something I will still be proud of even once I have gotten better at the techniques I used. It’s the first thing I’ve done like this, so the achievement is doing it at all.
But yeah, if you would like to have a look at the game you can check it out here! It is on the website itch.io and it’s just a few pages in a text document so you won’t need anything too exciting to run the game. All you should need is a bunch of friends and some dice, d20s and maybe d10s if you have them.
To bring this terrifying post to a close, because this year has made me completely forget how to talk to people, I’ll just say good bye, stay safe out there, and maybe take a look at the game and tell me what you think?
K