Never Going Home Gets Going

It has been a very busy month here in “the museum”. The campaign for Never Going Home concluded on 3 December after a very successful run. This is by far the largest Kickstarter we have ever run and the results are actually a little scary. When we had under 200 backers for Liberating Strife back in April, I felt gently encouraged. With NGH getting over 800 backers I feel like we’ve suddenly catapulted to a new level of notoriety. I feel pressure to do everything right like I’ve never felt it before. Before it was just self-imposed perfectionism. Now, I have to impress a lot of strangers, many of whom have more experience with games and with Kickstarter than I do. This project isn’t on “easy mode” anymore. Not that I’m complaining. Everything I’m talking about is a good problem to have. I spent the next week after getting everything ready to actually run Never Going Home at a local nerd-centric event called Nerdlouvia. It’s put on my Nerd Louisville and this was probably the biggest of the three years I’ve been going. The photo below captures me down in the lower right corner waiting for my game to start.

When it did start, Never Going Home works as expected! Since it was was the first time all the pieces of the game were tested at once, there were a few hiccoughs, but for the most part it’s a working game. There are some improvements to make, which became obvious as soon as I had players asking questions and wanting to do things. Those ideas will have to be worked in and some other things tried. I’ll have to test it all out before too long. This book is slated to be done – at least with the writing – by the end of February. Wet Ink is in the middle of getting contracts with all our writers and planning who is writing what and what art we need. It’s going to be a big job. Our biggest yet. When will it feel like we’ve “arrived” as a company? I have no idea.