Greetings Horizoners,
Your usual editor has been, shall we say, indisposed, for the last few months, so this very late missive has been compiled by other members of the CoOp: the inimitable dan quidam and Carly A-F. Many thanks to them, and your boos and hisses to Marx Shepherd.
I was lost in the labyrinth…
This is the reason you received no Missive on March. But CoOp is great: lost members gathered to escape together the labyrinth. While other members were exploring and doodling in books! I hope their goal was to help us find the exit of this hellish dark labyrinth and come home... Right? Please tell me it was their goal!
All this to say that the Co-op is back from far horizons, with two new games under the hood! A game in which you -lost- have to find your way out... Plus a game in which you draw a map together!
i was a lone, so i set a fire is a 2-4 player, collaborative, prompt-based dungeon crawler where players find themselves lost in an ever-shifting shifting labyrinth filled with danger and mystery. Players draw from a standard deck of playing cards to reveal rooms in the labyrinth, face challenges, find one another, and hopefully escape.
Also emerging from tangled hallways is The Boundless Library, a a competitive map-drawing game for 2-5 players set in an ancient, endless library. Race to explore infinite rooms full of lava rifts and pockets of knotted time to find books for its eldritch patrons, earning favors to become a Boundless being yourself! Bring a pen & paper, a compass, and a good pair of hiking boots.
Explore and draw together, but beware – only one can ascend. Eternity awaits!
The Boundless Library's art and layout takes inspiration from its themes of old books, cartography and ancient libraries – and most of all; the awesome marginalia mechanic! The mysterious creatures and strange doodles from manuscripts past inspired our own, and you'll find bizarre beasts, unusual locations and wondrous treasures scattered throughout the pages, just waiting for you to discover them. So pick up a pen, get exploring, and fill your own map margins with whatever your heart desires!
Both of these games are available right now:
i was alone so i set a fire on DriveThruRPG and on itch.io
The Boundless Library on DriveThruRPG and on itch.io
Other updates
New members!
We welcomed two new members into the CoOp this month: Taylor, a game designer, educator, and magazine editor; and J.D. Harlock, a sci-fi and speculative fiction writer, and also a magazine editor. We hope they’ll both find their place in our little design group!
And we’ve finally nailed our new member procedure, so we’re ready to welcome other new members! We are always interested in creators of any kind, but we’re particularly interested in working with new illustrators at this time. If you think you’d be interested in contributing to CoOp projects, please get in touch.
Project updates
Two new zines from A Thousand Burning Stars are scheduled for release in the next month or so: Kobolds: Work Until You Die by Kevin C Bryan, and Outliers by ENNIE-nominated Sam Leigh.
As with all A Thousand Burning Stars projects, the digital releases are followed up by softcover zines a few weeks later. They’re always going to be available from Knave of Cups in the US, as well as Beyond Cataclysm in the UK, Ratti Incantati in Canada, and from Indie Press Revolution for anywhere. Check out those pages for what stock is currently available!
Kobolds: Work Until You Die
Work is your home now
Employers demand, but what happens when the worker has nothing left to give? The last sacrifice a worker can give to their workplace is their very sense of self, that bit that makes them a human instead of a cog. Kobolds are those who have burnt out to the point of blending in, becoming workers only spoken of in whispers, or strange circumstances and conventions of the workplace thought mystical. Kobolds: Work Until You Die expands upon the lore of historical working kobolds and brings them into the modern day for use with any modern supernatural or capitalist horror RPG.
This features amazing art by dan quidam, as well as editing by Pam Punzalan, and layout by coop veteran Facu Kaper. It’ll be out in May or early June.
Outliers
You didn’t think anything of the job listing at the time. Sure, it was odd that a research assistant position would list “baking shortbread” and “humming in D minor” as desired skills. You couldn’t have known, though: this is the first place you applied to after graduation. Maybe all research assistant jobs are like this.
They’re not.
Outliers is a single-player journaling game in which you play a research assistant trying to do their job in an absurd environment. You may be fresh out of college, but one look at your syrup-leaking laptop shows you this is no ordinary lab, despite what the disembodied voice of the PI tells you. It’s a Wretched & Alone game and, let me tell you, it’s really quite something.
The staff on Outliers are J. Boone Dryden & Marx Shepherd as editors, Carly A-F as illustrator, and James Hanna on layout. It’ll be out sometime in June.
That’s all for this missive. Until next time – make cool games. wage class war.
Best Wishes,
— dan quidam, Carly, and Marx // F.H.C.