History

You got this. 😅

We’re talking about making an actual card deck in the future, but couldn’t make it work from the Zine Quest budget.

It’s like it *wants* to humiliate us.

Pass my thanks on to Zhenya please!

I was watching Japanese jazz vinyl DJ sets and YouTube decided this was the right thing to hit me with.

The full title is, I am not making this up:

“Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and don’t come back!”

(Sorry, this is obviously a thing I have a lot of thoughts about. 😅)

Still, I'm not certain that these kinds of games have an abnormal ratio to genre mashups. I think their success rate may also be about the same …

And I'm wondering if the mashups are just the other end of a market spectrum where concepts are trying to differentiate from the big middle.

We kinda did this with Butter Princess. It's just a game where you wander a pretty normal state fair, in pursuit of an unusual but low-stakes crime.

I leaned hard into the unique themes and motifs of Brian's Coen-esque caper like the Coens leaned into the 'Sota of ordinary detective thriller Fargo.

Another thing I'm thinking about – since our brains are both wired to it – is how graphic design choices might help these projects.

(And/or copy. 😆)

How do you highlight what's special about the ordinary?

It might be cool during Zine Month to do a round-up of projects specifically in this space. (They're always out there!)

The Derby Dramas, Warmer in Winters, Tail-End Charlies, Caught in the Rains, etc.

(The last one was a big success!)

That initial friction can make a creator feel like they've failed (or the market doesn't exist), so you don't do as much long-tail promo, like submitting to awards/etc.

And the media environment is also naturally looking for signs of eyeballs on a thing to ensure some floor of earned views.

Storybrewers has done really well in this space, but my sense is that most creators doing these kinds of games may have trouble gaining initial attention.

(I'm reading you as meaning realist games more than established genres, since the bulk of releases are generic fantasy, grim sci-fi, etc.)