For Small Creatures Such As We -- Sneak Peek

Its no secret that I absolutely adore Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, especially the first book The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet and its sequel A Closed and Common Orbit so when the thought struck me that I should try and capture that feeling of interpersonal discovery and empathy that makes her books so great, a big long title was only fitting. Hence, the mouthful of a Carl Sagan quote:

For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.

What's The Goal?

At the start of your playthrough, you choose or randomly determine your Mission which will see your ship and crew travelling across the galaxy, stopping in at friendly planets and overcoming great odds to ensure that you succeed. Your mission could be to ensure a diplomat makes it to an important political summit or to deliver cargo to a frontier planet or even to recover a failing deep space satellite so it can be repaire.

But the goal of the game from a player's standpoint is to create alien species that are unique and interesting and aren't the usual colourful skinned bipeds that popular science fiction has lumped us with. Then, as you play, you'll have the opportunity to learn about the unique individuals that join your crew over the course of the game as events bring you closer and allow you to generate their thoughts and opinions while prompting you to write about their cultures, technology, and biology.

And biology is an important part of the game. As captain, you'll be in charge of ensuring that your ship is fit for the various crew members that join you by buying and installing various Systems on your ship. Have an amphibious crewmember? Buy a Watertight Module or install a Gravity Controlled Pool for them to wet their skin in. And if you have any aquaphiles, you might even notice their Mood improving as they get to splash around as well. 

How Do You Play?

Like the majority of my games so far, For Small Creatures is playable with a standard deck of playing cards and something to journal in. There will be a couple of sheets that can be downloaded and printed from blackwellwriter.com or blackwellwriter.itch.io once the game is released but it will be playable without these as well.

I'm keeping the event system from Apothecaria as I find it really enjoyable to write for and I feel that it gives each explorable planet a lot of character and potential for unexpected narrative.

At the moment, the game is quite high concept and while I'm beating it into shape, it has quite a way to go before I can say much about how it plays. Suffice to say, at this stage I know it will have:

* Alien creation

* Crew members that you can interact with (usually prompted by events in the travel events below)

* Travel Events (drawn from a deck of cards or maybe combined to give a ridiculous number of prompts? Again, unclear so far)

* Explorable Planets (Looks to be around 5 so far with more included as a crowdfunding stretch goal)

* Ship Blueprints and Ship Systems 

Like all my solo journalling games, For Small Creatures Such As We has a lot of gameplay in amongst the journalling and while it is cosy sci-fi, space is still a dangerous place and failing to take care of your ship and your crew can end in disaster.

Sounds Good, How Do I Help?

If you like the sound of this, I will be making a formal announcement next Friday and having your help to signal boost that would be greatly appreciated.

Likewise, when I get the Kickstarter pre-launch page up and running, signing up and sharing with your friends will really help with the loss of exposure that Zinequest's rescheduling has caused. Hopefully ZineMonth is a success regardless of Kickstarter's crappiness.

And finally, letting me me know you're excited or things you want to see in the game is so unbelievably appreciated because nothing sucks more than designing in a vacuum.

That Was A Lot Of Reading, Reward?

I promised a sneak peek and here it is, the first mockup of the first planet ;)

Names and such are definitely going to change though Corncob City is the kind of silly alliteration that grows on me.