The Thief, The Witch, The Toad and the Mushroom is now live!

My videogame is now finally live, and it's free!

It's a charming but mysterious visual novel inspired by my love of folk tales and old choose-your-own-adventure books. I've been working on it for a bit over 3 years now so I couldn't be more excited to see it launched. You can play it on Steam, or Itch.io:

Give it a try, and I'd love to hear any feedback or a review if you play it!

My game is launching March 23rd!

 

The Thief, the Witch, the Toad and the Mushroom is a cosy but mysterious visual novel inspired by my love of folk tales and old choose-your-own-adventure books. It's been a long time coming so I'm thrilled to say that it's launching March 23rd! You can wishlist it on steam here:

I can't wait for it to actually be a thing that exists in the world. See you on the other side.

This Haunted Land - Version 0.1

The Boy and the Heron, Studio Ghibli

Here is the playtest version of my game about where you play tiny imps, goblins, bugaboos, pixies, and sprites who venture out to wreak chaos upon mankind. Click on the image below to get the rules and character sheet.

You can read this post to get an idea of what this game is about. Basically, the game is focused on your inventory, like Mausritter or Knave. Your character is defined by the items they carry - if you want to be a thief, you would carry thieves tools. A wizard would carry spells, a fighter carries weapons and shields, etc. 

The twist is that your "Items" can be intangible objects like Fears, Dreams, Stolen Youth, Lost Beauty, or The Howl of a Wolf. You are fae creatures, so you can reach right into someone's head and steal their strength, their courage, their memories. Instead of carrying thieves tools, you might steal the memories of a Master Thief or a patch of the night sky to hide yourself with.

These items define what your character can do. And each one is a little sentient: They have their own goals and needs, and they can rebel and riot against you if they are mistreated. The game is about managing this chaotic hoard while having fae adventures as a little gremlin creature.

Ulla Thynell (Finnish, b. 1982) Untitled, 2021 Watercolor and alcohol ink on paper

This version is very much a work in progress, and after playtesting it there's a lot of things I want to change and update. Here's some of the improvements I'm planning for future versions:

• Mortal forms: At the moment, you only get the basic Sprite Form. In future versions, each character will get a mortal form by default as well. This can be an animal, a small child, a plant, etc - but something that lets them blend in with mortal society and mess with humans.
• Improved starting items: The current starting items are quite simple and D&Dish - you'll notice that everyone gets a weapon. I want to improve this and make your starting items much more baroque and fae-like. You might start with a deceptively deep puddle. A cat's curiosity. A shadow. A bag of bones. I also want to integrate this better so that there's less tables to roll on at the start.
• Boosted Sentience: The intent is that all your items are alive. They have their own desires that they try to work through you. Even if you just have a mundane item like a sewing needle, it's a living sewing needle that can fly around and sew people's shoes together. I want to push this more and make it clearer in the text.
• Strings attached: I'm planning to overhaul and improve the guidelines for how you steal things from other people. How you reach in and steal a soldier's courage, a mother's love, a sage's wisdom, etc. 
• More stuff. This is a basic version of the rules, so you only have a basic list of items and one form. The full version would have a huge range of different factions, forms and items. You're all shapeshifters, so one of the core methods of advancement would be to find different forms and learning to take the shape of a vampire, a skeleton, a ghost, etc, each with different abilities and powers. You'd go out into the world and earn forms and items by doing quests for different factions, or stealing them from those factions.

David Wyatt

I'd love any feedback or thoughts you have on the rules so far! Let me know in the comments.

ENTITY 10: INFLUENCERS

 

Photo by Ronny Young

Word of mouth is one of the most effective marketing techniques available today. In these difficult times, with consumers losing confidence in the world around them, traditional advertising has become less and less effective. The most powerful and effective messages come from relatable people who speak from a position of trust. That's why any marketing division worth its salt maintains a stable of Influencers. 

Influencers are lab-grown parasitic organisms which excrete eggs that are impossible to detect, except under a microscope. The domestic Coke™ supply [1] is laced with these tiny eggs. Each time you drink from the Coke™ supply, roll a d10. If it comes up as a 1, you have ingested an Influencer.