The Full 2021 Recap & Behind the Scenes Moments

We thought it would be fun to record all of our figures from this year and see how next year stacks up. Below is the snapshot of our year, excluding any metrics relating to Court of Blades or its peripherals or stretch goals, because we began work on that beast last year, and it is difficult to even begin to qualify the amount of work that went into a project of that scale. I digress, without further ado!

Game Releases: Six.

HEDGE, Spirited Café, DISASTER/PEACE, Skyworthy, Dead Belt, First Dig 2 Graves

Supplement and Pamphlet Game Releases: Four.

HEARTH (The first HEDGE Expansion), The Widow of Roses Villainous Volume, Run Familiar!, The Velvet Pamphlet (Down We Go Stretch Goal)

Fandom Releases: Three.

The Hour of Chains (10 Scores for Blades in the Dark), The Hour of Silk (10 More Scores for Blades in the Dark), Roofballers (Playbook for Blades in the Dark)

Pages Written: 444

Words Written: +/- 104,500

Podcast Appearances: 3

• Third Floor Wars, Insider Insights

• Hacked in the Dark, talking about Factions and Intrigue

• Don’t Forget Your Towel, Actual Play for Court of Blades

Stream Appearances: 4

• Spencer Campbell, Coffee Break

• The Actual Play, Actual Play for Court of Blades

• Hacked in the Dark, Actual play of Vergence

• Plus One Exp, Actual Play for Down We Go

Community Copies Given Out: 1,073

Project Page Views: 29,973

Project Downloads: 7,156

Reviews Received: 193

Fun Facts:

• Our most popular One-Page Score for Blades in the Dark was The Gallowman’s Daughter which still makes Shawn sing the shanty for the remainder of the day anytime he sees someone download it.

• The Widow of Roses is our biggest disappointment of the year. We love BBEGs, and the opportunity to make compelling villains, all prepackaged with quest hooks and plans and stuff…mmph. But they’re fairly Trad, and they didn’t resonate with our audience. Maybe we’ll try again.

• Dead Belt was the hardest of the games to write this year. From the pitch, Navi wasn’t fully on board. When it was playtestable, she started to grok and then it came together. But those prompts and those mechanics were brutal. Just one. word. after. another.

• “The Velvet” pamphlet adventure for Down We Go was the easiest project to write this year. It came out in a single manic fever dream session which took about a day’s work. Also, the College of Satire from Court of Blades is now canonically included in Infinopolis.

• DISASTER/PEACE was the only game that Navi had to sell Shawn on. He didn’t know enough about the Magical Girl genre to feel comfortable writing for it. We ended up watching a lot of Sailor Moon. All of it, I think?

• Closing out the year, the Drakes’ “Dev Notes of Doom” doc is currently 17 pages long, comprising 12 games in various stages of outlining and development. Also notes on other exciting avenues of content delivery for 2022 and beyond!