Cool Stuff My Friends Have Done Recently
I have a lot of awesome friends doing awesome things. Lately there’s been a few in a row, and I want to tell you about them. I hope you don’t mind. If you do mind, you can stop reading now. Sorry to have bothered you!
Small Tales and Fairy Fails - Paul Duffield
Paul’s one of those people who just makes amazing thing after amazing thing, and his latest Kickstarter is for yet another amazing thing: a collection of five of his recent comics spanning from futuristic science fiction to a medieval knights-n-magic-‘em-up. It’s less a Kickstarter and more of a pre-order (Plus it’s already funded), it’s got 48 hours left at time of writing, and it looks great. Look at it.
The Unicorn and the Woodsman - Kate Brown
Kate also does comics - you might recognise her work in Young Avengers and Nelson. This lovely little book arrived on my doorstep the other day and, crime of crimes, I haven’t had time to read it, but it’s gorgeous. If you don’t believe me, just look at the sample pages on the store.
Sunless Sea - Failbetter Games
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably stumbled upon Fallen London at some point. I’ve never been one for web-based games, so I haven’t played it, but people tell me it’s ace, and it’s pretty clear that I’m an idiot for avoiding it all these years - Failbetter is obviously an awesome company (just read this blog post) and the story is right up my street.
Anyway, that’s not what I’m on about. Failbetter made that, and now they’ve made this: Sunless Sea. If you read any gaming press you’ve probably read about it, and the reason you’ve read about it is my friend Hannah Flynn, who is now their marketing manager. Sunless Sea takes the Fallen London world, with all that writing and delicious backstory, and puts it into a game about sailing and going mad that I’m far more up for playing. Nice one, Han! It’s great to see really story-heavy games like this and 80 Days becoming so popular.
The Bearded Man - Must Kill Chris
My recently-acquired brother-in-law makes music, and it’s always been good, but his latest album is something special. The production is good enough that I thought it was a full studio release when I got home to find it playing in my kitchen, and it’s even got a song about Bruce Campbell on it. Check it out! He’s also been putting together some pretty fantastic videos which show off his stunning beard.