Issue #3

Tiny Books and The Museum of Everything!

Hello newsletter friends!

Let's get the big news out of the way - since I really like talking about my creative process and that's going to get increasingly difficult if I don't at least share the vague premise of the game I'm working on BEHOLD, A SURPRISE GAME TEASER TRAILER!

I was cackling when the heist at the Louvre this month was big news, because for the past few months I've been planning out an art heist... in spaaaaaaace!

To set expectations, it's really early days. Just about everything in this trailer might end up changing, and video games are born slowly, especially when you're working on them part time. But who knows, maybe in a few years...

I expect to make a much bigger announcement much further down the line in more public channels, but for now you're all in on the secret a bit early.

I also created a vlog about the process of beginning a new story. I quite enjoy documenting my creative processes, even though I don't tend to do it in a way which tickles the YouTube algorithm, so you're probably going to see more of these in the future!

The Beekeeper's Picnic makes it big in the press

A few weeks ago my game The Beekeeper's Picnic got printed press coverage in a major UK newspaper - The Financial Times. Which I have to admit would not be very high up on my list of press outlets I thought would ever cover the game - for those not in the know, its general milieu is economic and business news. Turns out they have a weekend lifestyle supplement, and in an issue on the theme of 'play' they took the rare step to venture into the world of video games!

It was enormous fun to seek out a copy in the wild and pin it up on my wall. It is physically such a huge newspaper. Intellectually I knew that broadsheets are enormous, but it was a shocker to get hands-on with one.

Here is a cathartic video of my cat eviscerating an advert in it for buy-to-let housing:

The game also got a lovely piece in the Oxford Student, which is a bit of a dream come true. Huge thanks to Ines Buetow for a really fun interview and thoughtful write-up! I didn't think I would ever do anything that anyone at my alma mater would think was remotely significant.

Making Teeny Tiny Christmas Books

Ok: that's enough about games, let's talk about CRAFTS. Last year a mini book calendar went viral online, and the internet was awash with cheap knock-offs of the original $100+ set. Even as someone who doesn't use TikTok I kept running into the creepy robot voice lady telling me I wanted it.

And... I did, the robot voice lady was right, I did want it.

The official tiny book advent calendar, possibly. There are a lot of knock-offs.

But I was filled with the crafter's curse of thinking "... I bet I could do my own version of that". And it would use up some of my bookbinding scraps!

It'll be a long time before I work myself up to 24 of the things, but here is my first crop! I'm making two of each, partially so that if anything goes wrong I'll always have a spare, and partially because I might end up gifting a set to family.

These are quite difficult and time consuming as I make them the exact same way I make full-size books - they are sewn together in the usual way, and the covers are painted in acrylic using a teeny brush and stencils.

And just to know if you're reading this through a link from social media and you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing! This is a neat way to get news directly from me without having to worry about algorithms deciding for you want you want to see.

Farewell, see you in November!

Jabbage