The Tower is a system agnostic fantasy dungeon crawl. An adventure zine of riddles and puzzle rooms, creatures of the tower and items to covet. Funded with all stretch goals on kickstarter. Creating a beautiful 30 page zine, written by Lola Johnson and Art by Nala J Wu Check out the kickstarter here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnsonofair/the-tower-a-puzzle-dungeon-crawl
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Hi Everyone,
I hope you've had a good month, I've been working away on the writing and am happily on target, with everything except the stretch goal writing ready for editing. We're getting our timelines behind the scenes finalised within our goal for having your Rewards go out as promised.
The Looted Sword Keyring has now been redesigned in line with the extra stretch upgrade, with the front and back of the design sorted and the skeletal hands separated into extra charms. This is ready to go to print/cut, however to make sure everything is kept together. This will go to print after numbers are finalised in the BackerKit.
BackerKit!
Apologies for the delay on the Backerkit, there have been a few issues setting things up which has meant surveys and extra pre-orders are delayed. I will attempt to get these sorted this month, so that your addresses can be captured and any other pre-orders for those that missed out can happen before we got to print.
In the meantime, all Backers that purchased the Add-On games should now have received their games via email with an option to claim the games via Itch.io, so that you can receive any updates to the games as they are uploaded.
We're all done with funding and we managed to sneak in that last Over Stretch, Stretch Goal!
I'm so grateful to all of you and we'll be hard at work over the next few months bringing everything together; Writing, Editing, Making it look really damn snazzy.
Surveys will go out soon via Backerkit, so that everyone who backed the Digital Add-ons can grab their games to play while they wait on The Tower. In celebration of funding so well, a couple of those games are getting a makeover. Starting with Run Away To Mars!
Fabian Lelay of RocketsandPens has done a masterful re-design of the graphics and layout and it's so much more readable and Showy ;P.
He's also the artist behind my profile picture with commissions open at the moment, so if you're looking, check out his work!
There's not much more to say other than Thank you so much! Next update will be letting you know when the Survey's have gone out.
Whew! it's been a wild ride and there are less than 48 hours left to go! So if you haven't already please do shout about The Tower and maybe we can clinch that last Over Stretch, Stretch Goal with a community puzzle!
That being said we've hit the £2000 mark which means those Looted Sword keyrings are being UPGRADED! they will now be 3" keyring charms and the skeletal hand will now be it's own charm attached to the keyring, allowing for a bit more focus on the sword and a fancier keyring overall!
Also I've wanted to upgrade the keyring all along as friends of mine will tell you, and I'm so happy to be able to justify how much cooler these are going to be now. So if you were interested in The Looted Sword before but 2" wasn't quite speaking to you sword seekers, Sanguine Promise is now going to be a whole inch bigger in keyring form. There's time to grab one for yourself by upgrading your pledge, only a limited amount will be printed, based on the number of pledges and the multiples we can print in so there may only be one or two extra after the KS ends.
I hope you're as excited as I am to see where we get to at the finish line, I'm honoured that so many of you are interested in this project and it's added a boost to my writing. I'm really looking forward to bringing you this project!
I'm planning on doing reasonably regular updates for the project, including sharing more of the content in the zine as backer only updates after the campaign closes. There will be more opportunities to help name items and creatures, and you will have your name included in those digital credits.
I'd also love to know what you would like to hear about and see from me regarding The Tower. I'm tempted to do a Q&A update, so if you have questions about my process, puzzles and more, please comment them below and I will do a full update answering them.
I started writing an update earlier today to let you all know we'd gone past our previous stretch goal for art for all rooms, and that there were just 10 days left to get the last stretch goal and reveal some extra cool things if we funded past our stretch.
Now with a little funding boost from Creative Scotland, I just get to announce all our stretch goals are met and this Zine is going to be extra cool, with great art for all 10 rooms AND creature and item art from Nala J. Wu. With these additions it's going to be clocking in closer to 30 pager. I'm really excited to get this zine into your hands and I'm so happy that our whole vision for it gets to be achieved!
So I mentioned some extra cool things, well i've some ideas!
These are not directly related to the zine as beyond this point this iteration of the Tower is complete! I can't promise not to come up with more puzzle rooms for it at a much later date, but if I do those will be free to backers on my Johnson-Ofair.itch.io
Focusing on the physical rewards.
Thank you so much to the backers that got involved in helping name The Looted Sword, there were some great ideas and it was hard to choose! So it felt more appropriate to combine them!
Sanguine Promise, is the name. A contract sealed in blood, a sword that promises to bathe itself in the lifeforce of your enemies. A compact and understanding signed by the pricking of a hand and the filling of a blood red gem.
Now we've a murder bird to name. As it seems a tad unfair to call it a murder bird, after all it only gets that way when its hungry!
A stout bodied birdlike creature with short wings and a cruel hooked beak. Its feathered body extends past its clawed legs to the height of an average person and into a point, with the feathers giving way to scales along its tail.
The creature secretes a paralytic agent that with prolonged contact causes the body to go into a state of suspended animation with outward calcification.
When hungry It will attack, in an attempt to supplement its diet.
Its tail can be used to lash out or grab and move people. Shorter physical contact with the creature can cause people to slow down.
It will use its beak to attack creatures up close.
It can be placated with a mixture of raw food and treats, just make sure that the delicacy in front of it isn't you!
Let me know in the comments what we should name this creature, which was lovingly inspired by the Blue Capped Ifrit and a Cockatrice/Basilisk. Lola (Me) hasn't done any art for this creature because now we get cooler art from Nala!
Everyone contributing to naming things will get credit for their contribution in the digital file on the credits page, and if there is space in the print, the same.
As I've been working on yarn related things this week, I haven't done as much looking at other projects to share them with you. However there are so many great projects out there or this ZineQuest/ Zine Month so check out https://zinemonth.spread.name/ to see the projects taking part in the multiplatform community initiative to bring you awesome Zines.
Wheels and Roses is no Zine but it is a very cool project, wanting to bring us a magical roller derby coming of age story in animated form! So go check it out there are 8 days left to help bring this sailor moon meets roller derby story to life!
Home - Mech x Kaiju is a zine that I had to instantly back because I'm a massive Pacific Rim, Big Mech vs Big Monster fan, also who doesn't love a mapmaking game!
Talk of the Table another not Zine but a great podcast from Many Sided Media that you should check out, and you might even be able to find the interview I did for this project! You should also check out the other Many Sided Media podcasts including My First Dungeon.