Consentacle: A Card Game of Human-Alien Intimacy

Our third livestream, a new bulk-order reward level, and playmat possibilities!
over 6 years ago – Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 04:34:26 AM

Hi everyone,

Lots to announce as we enter the last two weeks of the Consentacle Kickstarter!

First, our third livestream is coming up tomorrow night, right here on Kickstarter. This time we've invited two long-time coworkers, John Sharp and Colleen Macklin of Parsons: the New School for Design, where they're an instrumental part of the Design & Technology program. The two of them are also two-thirds of Local No. 12, so they create games together as well, including The Metagame (have you seen their latest expansion Kickstarter with Shut Up & Sit Down?) Although the two of them are "work spouses" (despite having other non-work-spouses) and have played Consentacle before, we're going to put them to the ultimate test by having them play AGENTS OF CONSENT, the most difficult level of psychic communication in Consentacle. Is it possible? Will it be an uncoordinated disaster? We'll find out. We'll also be demoing some of our advanced cards for those of you who are curious about how the new advanced systems work. Subscribe or just jump in tomorrow night, right here!

SPECIAL BONUS: After we finish playing Consentacle we'll be jumping right into a back-to-back livestream of the new Metagame expansion, with Mattie Brice and me (Naomi Clark) rotating in as the guest-star players!

Second, we've added a new reward level that will be of interest to some of you who wanted EVEN MORE CONSENTACLE. We've reached the point where we can offer a bulk rate for orders of five or more copies. Hey, collective action can be powerful even under capitalism: we couldn't have made it possible to get even more copies of this game out there without everyone's support, so thank you. We're still planning only one print run, so if you'd like to see Consentacle at your local game shop, definitely tell them that this reward level is the best way to get some.

Third, we've heard from all of you who are interested in playing Consentacle with a playmat like the one shown in the photo above. We'd love to do a playmat, although a nicer one than what you see above, which is a piece of laminated 11"x17" printer paper (no, really) with fairly minimal graphic design. There are a lot of different directions we could go for this, some of which involve more work on our part or more expense on your part if you want to purchase an additional add-on that's too large to ship with the game! As I alluded to above, costs change if more people are interested, so I've created a survey that you should fill out if you're interested in a playmat! There are a number of different options described in that survey, feel free to check / rate the ones that you like. Although we know not everyone can take the time to fill out and submit a survey, we're going to try and gauge interest in these options (ranging from print & play to neoprene mats to custom orders and even a game-board version) to see what's possible and practical.

Thanks everyone! And please keep spreading the word as we head downhill into the last half of our campaign, having recently passed the $100K mark and 300% funding! We're less than $30k away from our next stretch goal: the Consentacle prequel comic!

wriggle wriggle,

Naomi

Next Consentacle livestream: tonight at 7:30 Eastern on Facebook!
over 6 years ago – Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 07:30:02 AM

Hi friends,

A quick note to let you know that if you're interested in watching some more Live Consentacle, we'll be playing tonight at 7:30 PM Eastern time, this time streaming through Facebook on my page: https://www.facebook.com/metasynthie

You'll need to log in to Facebook to see this one (or at least, I can't figure out how to make it 100% public) but I hope you'll join us and ask any questions you might have! This time around, we're trying Consentacle between two complete strangers: Toni Pizza (developer of Sunburn and coordinator of many amazing game events and learning programs) and Jessie Lee (a tech tinkerer of the Palante Tech cooperative with a background in art history and researchscience).

You can learn along with Toni and Jessie... and maybe we'll address some long-standing questions like "...but who will I play Consentacle with?" Over the last few years I've seen and heard this question posed quite a bit, especially from people who love the idea of the game but are a little scared to ask friends and associates to play. Across the same period of time, I've shown Consentacle at quite a few public events and watched many people play with each other in public -- friends, partners, and complete strangers as well! It may seem counter-intuitive that a game about human-alien intimacy could be an icebreaker... but is it really? The real answer to "who will I play Consentacle with?" turns out to be... whoever's willing and enthusiastic about playing! And that's often more folks than you might imagine, especially since we tuned the artwork to be suggestive, but not explicit enough that you might feel nervous about playing in public.

Thanks for your continued support as well -- we're humming along in the quiet middle phase of a Kickstarter campaign at the moment, chugging steadily towards our next stretch goal (the Consentacle prequel comic!) We're being helped by some mentions in places like BoardGameGeek News, the Rhino Roundup of boardgame campaigns, the Secret Cabal podcast, the amazing Em Short's link roundup, the new collection of physical games about socio-political issues at Hearts and Clubs, and we've now got our own entry in the LGBTQ Game Archive as well! Plus, if you know any Italian speakers who might enjoy the Consentacle, one of our backers (Francesco) has written an article about Consentacle in Italian on geek.pizza. Every mention helps spread the word, especially since it's not your everyday card game. How about you? Got any suggestions for gaming media, podcasts, blogs, or streams we should reach out to?

Naomi

New Consentacle stretch goal up ahead: 12-page prequel comic!
over 6 years ago – Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 04:12:01 AM

Hey friends! First things first: if you missed our livestream of Frank Lantz and Eric Zimmerman playing Consentacle, it's worth a watch -- we explain the game and watch these two veteran game designers communicate through salacious leers and telepathic strategy, and on top of that managed to have some insightful thoughts about the game and game design in general. Check out the replay! And if you're interested in more livestreams, our next one is on Tuesday, September 19 on Twitch... stay tuned for details!

At the end of the livestream (and in some comments afterwards) we announced our next stretch goal. If this campaign reaches $135,000, we plan to create a 12-page digital comic that tells a short story of how the two characters in the game encountered each other. In other words, it leads up to the events of the game. Every backer will get a link to download the comic. On top of that, we thought it would be nice to give everyone a little more printed artwork, so if we get enough backers to do this comic we'll also put the first two pages in the back of the printed manual, inside each copy of Consentacle. (Why two pages? Comics are a lot of work -- each page more than twice as much work as a card -- so we didn't want to delay the printing of the game by having everything else wait on a comic!)

Unless you were in the crowd at Different Games 2014 when I announced Consentacle, or had a chance to play in the last few years and read the fine print on a couple of cards, you might not know that Consentacle actually takes place in a specific fictional universe where humans are tangling with alien visitors. That world exists in our notes for the game, in ideas for cards, but we're excited to push it a little further and add detail. Just like the cards, the 12-page comic would have art by James Harvey--and like the cards, I'll be helping out with background and concept notes, plus dialogue where necessary. We both have some experience writing comics (in my case mostly inside of game cutscenes and interludes) but James is the more well-known professional. Here are some samples of his work in independent comics as well as for major publishers like DC Comics:

Hopefully all this art has you excited as us? We're still getting the word out about Consentacle, and we're optimistic that we can reach this stretch goal with some help from you! 

Look at where we're at -- already halfway from the last stretch goal to this next one! There's a big gap in between, in part because we had to figure out what kinds of stretch goals were feasible, wanted, and improved the game, but that makes this coming stretch feel well within reach... provided we can keep the momentum going!

 Here's how you can help:

• Tell your friends! This is the obvious one, of course, but let your friends know that this is their chance to get a copy in what will likely be Consentacle's only printing! Plus, spread the word if you know people who might enjoy it outside the US and UK (the areas where most people are getting copies now). Did you know that Consentacle ships anywhere in the world at no extra charge? It's globally-friendly shipping, thanks to our fulfillment partners. (At the moment, we don't have any way to translate the rules, but that could change if we link up with some translation helpers! Let us know which languages other players you know might be interested in.) 
• Suggest it to boardgame sites, streams and podcasts. We got some love last week from amazing podcasts like Shut Up & Sit Down a long with a couple others. If you know of sites, forums, blogs, streamers or podcasts that you think would raise an eyebrow and want to mention (or play) Consentacle, definitely suggest it to them! Starting next week we'll be able to send out more preview copies as well (although not an unlimited quantity, so smaller blogs may have to wait.)
• If you've played the game, give it a rating and/or review on BoardGameGeek! BGG is a long-running and well-trusted site with a solid rating system. We've heard from a couple users there that it would help if people who've played the exhibition prototype could stop by and rate the game, even write a review if you like. We've got three ratings right now (not enough for BGG to calculate a score) and I'm not even clear if the people rating the game had ever played it, especially since two are from Europe and I haven't shown it there!

What's next if we fund the comic? What about other stretch goals that have been discussed? I'll talk more about that in comments for those who are interested.

Thanks for your continued support!

Naomi

Acrylic tokens reached! High quality Consentacle!
over 6 years ago – Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 11:25:33 AM

Whoa! I passed out last night and got some badly needed sleep, and by the time I woke up we had passed our second stretch goal: stuffing pointy, neon acrylic in every one of your many boxes! Tokens, that is. I'm so happy to say that everyone who ordered a copy will be getting something much closer to the gallery-exhibition version of Consentacle, shown here:

 I kept hearing from people that they loved the tokens and how the translucent acrylic made them feel like gummy candies. [DO NOT EAT CONSENTACLE TOKENS. THEY ARE NOT EDIBLE AND WILL SHRED YOUR INSIDES.] So it was a tough choice to try and fund a chipboard version first, but I figured it was better than only shooting for the most expensive option. Now all those worries are a thing of the past: we did it together, you guys! We grew to a big enough group that plastic tokens are affordable!

There will still be a few differences from the photo you see above. First of all, those are big piles of red and blue tokens in that tray, more than are needed for a game. In our plans at the moment, the boxed version of Consentacle comes with 30 tokens of each color, and you're only likely to need all 30 if you're getting into some seriously wild, power-kinky, mentally-gymnastic advanced cardplay. To fit everything in the box, our plans currently call for the tokens to get about 15% smaller than shown here, next to some Pandemic tokens:

They won't be as small as the Pandemic tokens -- the purple Pandemic token is 1.75 cm in diameter, while the Consentacle one here is 3 cm, and the final one will be 2.5 cm. You might notice some other differences -- the Pandemic tokens are twice as thick and not translucent. We're planning to stay translucent and flat (even though it does make the tokens slightly harder to pick up). Finally, it's worth noting that the Pandemic tokens are injection molded; the Consentacle tokens are laser-cut from sheets. Here's what I was doing the other weekend (it's a fairly slow process, and you have to peel off the paper backing from each one too!)

Injection molding may result in the tokens looking slightly different (the purple satisfaction tokens won't have a burnt quality around the edges, for one thing) and we'll probably make them slightly less sharp? Having worked at LEGO for many years, I know that injection molding tolerances allow for very precise, sharp corners but that those corners are cursed everywhere by parents who step on bricks.

That's it for this manufacturing-nerdiness update! Stay tuned for more information about another stretch goal! We're a small project that reached our quality stretch goals much more quickly than we'd dreamed (thank you) so we've got to think carefully about how and whether the project can be stretched further without stuffing in pointless goodies just for hype's sake, or affecting the quality of the game system. However, if you have thoughts about what kind of further stretch goals you'd like to see, please feel free to comment in this update. I'm not going to guarantee any requests, of course -- some might be way out of reach economically, for one thing! But I am a professor of game design, so I'll tell you this: if you explain why you think a stretch goal is a good idea and how it'll make for a better experience for everyone, I'm more likely to give you a passing mark. ;)

Naomi

Watch Consentacle on Kickstarter Live, Thursday 7:30 PM EST!
over 6 years ago – Sat, Sep 16, 2017 at 05:03:33 AM

Hey, everyone! We're just a tiny bit over a week into this Kickstarter campaign, and we passed 200% funding yesterday -- thank you all so much for your support. We've already hit both of our stretch goals, so what are we going to do for the next few weeks? For me, the point of Kickstarting Consentacle was always to make sure that everyone who wants a copy can get one. With that in mind, we're going to try and keep spreading the word, especially since we're still not planning to do further print runs. How are we going to get the word out? I'm glad you asked...

Tomorrow night, on Thursday at 7:30 PM Eastern time, we're going to be hosting the first of our livestreams of Consentacle. If you'd like a little more info about how the game plays, or want to ask questions to our team live, this is your chance!

We're going to do several of these. Part of what makes Consentacle interesting is how different it is depending on who's playing. Our first two players are long-time partners in game design and teaching... but have they ever played such an intimate game together before? Frank Lantz (director of the NYU Game Center, known for the fiendish mobile game Drop7) and Eric Zimmerman (who tabletop fans may know from Quantum and The Metagame) will be facing off to demonstrate, in part, that any two pals can play Consentacle and enjoy tentacles together. Or so we hope. You never know. Please join us at 7:30 PM Eastern tomorrow -- Mattie and Naomi will be on hand for questions as well.

Stretch Goals! Some of you have been waiting patiently to find out what we might be planning next for Consentacle's campaign. (And some of you have already waited three years for this game, so you must be getting very patient indeed!) We've been figuring out what's feasible and how to do stretch goals in a smart way -- we don't want to stretch just for the sake of stretch, or cram extra unneeded stuff into the box that might even dilute your play experience. So we're trying to focus on increasing quality and depth without scraping in all the cutting-room floor leftovers of the design process... and we will be announcing another stretch goal tomorrow night. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions and told us what they were interested in, it's extremely helpful and hopefully we'll be able to satisfy more than one of you. So ambitious... but tentacles are useful for that!