The HYPT Weekly News 2/15/22
HYPT New 2/15/22
Jeremy Gage: Hello everyone! Welcome to this week's HYPT News. this being now the second one!
Adam Bell: Yeah buddy. It's time. If we do it twice, we can do it forever.
JG: This will be the general format of the Game News moving forward. As a small key for new peeps:
Last Week will cover a small snippet of what you may have missed from the last week on the site.
This Week covers our plan for Works In Progresses (WIPs) from Adam and I and how they are going or what's been challenging.
What's happening is everything we've noticed in the HYPT community and the greater internet biome, as well as, who is covering the topics we haven't been able to research in detail.
Optional fourth: sometimes we might be inspired to add something a little extra like some educational or insight thoughts Adam or I may be having about anything from game mechanics or facilitation of play and much more.
We hope you have been enjoying the website so far and without further ado let's get into the News.
Last Week for the Weasels
AB: Last week was the first week of the site! So the biggest thing that happened is the site came into being. I released a cool new video, as well, and a new episode of DYD hit your podcast feeds.
Draw Your Dice: A new Dev Log episode for Umbral Dive design came out on Saturday, going over the current state of battle design for the game plus some character design stuff to go in as well.
Adam's Video: Games I've Read and Want to Play Ep. 1 was released last Wednesday, and I'm pretty happy with it! Listen to me excitedly talk about 14 different indie games that you should definitely check out.
Tabletop Call-In Show: Yesterday was the call in show and we talked to Randy Lubin, Adira Slattery, and Aaron Lim about a few things, notably the board game Root
This Week for the Weasels
Adam Projects
This Week's Video will be coming to the site tomorrow! It's the start of another series - designing a tabletop RPG S2. Anyone who's watched my youtube videos before HYPT will know what this is about.
adamebell.games is now live and not just a redirect to my itch page. It's currently stocked with my "flagship" games. I haven't done a big announcement about this yet because I'm still recovering from...
Legend Has It, my card game that was on Kickstarter, just finished with its crowdfunding campaign. I'm pretty pleased with just about everything related to this game.
Jeremy's Projects
Umbral Dive: I just plugged away in the trenches on this one, I've made some cool thoughts about game production (can you say class deckboxes?) as well as some really cool inspiration from fighting games to alter the Momentum Party System for the game. if you don't know what momentum is go listen to the above Draw Your Dice episode about the current state of battle design.
Draw Your Dice
Welp, I've got three interviews this week, if you want to hear these episodes early sign up to the DYD Patreon:
- The amazing Jeeyon Shim is coming on to chat about her chess inspired game The Snow Queen.
- The beautiful Will Jobst of Good Luck Press and I are just gonna get into games, full speed ahead.
- The passionate Nevyn Holmes is grabbing me to get into their newest project, Justicar
Whats happening in the Forest?
AB: The Forest? Oh, I get it. Because of the weasels thing. Do weasels live in forests? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
One project announcement that caught my eye was this tweet by Colin Cummings for Seven Rings. I'm a sucker for Forged in the Dark games and this sounds like it'll be a super interesting one. The itch page says it should be coming out Q3 this year with a few pieces of it released sooner, so look out for that for sure.
Another thing I'm excited about is a cool new podcast called RTFM put on by Aaron King & Maxwell Lander. I'm a big fan of both of their games so I'm excited to listen to them both read old RPG books and figure out what the heck is going on with them.
Zine Month
AB: It's still February, so that means Zine Month is still ongoing. Many of the games are still being collected Zine Month website. Check out this thread by Cezar Capacle for a list of games specifically funding on itch, as well.
For those interested in the nitty-gritty business details of the industry, I saw this interesting Twitter thread from Kyle T. with some stats about the initiative as well as some links to a few games that are funding.
Now let's take a look at a couple of games and get out of your hair.
Adam's Picks for the week
Transmission for Them by Eryk Sawicki
This is a solo journaling game about lovers lost in space, and it looks really neat. I recently picked up a voice recorder to make my HYPT video work easier, and I can't wait to pretend it's a spaceship walkie talkie that I'm morosely speaking into as I wander through space searching for my lover in this game.
Ocean Tides is a game based on Mobile Frame 0: Firebrands where, instead of taking on the role of mech pilots at war, you play as mermaids, pirates, and naval officers at sea. I've loved just about every Firebrands hack I've seen, and absolutely love the nautical theme at play here.
Jeremy's Picks for the Week
XD6 SRD by Luck Of Legends - Michael Low
The XD6 SRD is a CC 4.0 rules system for RPGs made to power games about epic, cinematic stories of larger-than-life figures. Giant mecha, kaiju, superheroes, gods & demons - this is for flashy, edge-of-your-seat action and immense, planet-shaking FX.
Sherwood | A Game of Outlaws by R. Rook Studio
-
Sherwood is a stand-alone fantasy game of a continuing struggle against unjust rulers, predatory aristocrats, and parasitic royal officials. Set in a magical, medieval England that never was, Sherwood uses the same system as R. Rook's fantasy space game Enoch's Wake.