It’s been a busy year so far for Last Redoubt Games!

After the end of 2020 saw me finally releasing a handful of long-simmering games, 2021 has featured a successful Kickstarter, a new game release, a supplement, and a minor solo game release.

So, let’s start at the beginning: Weirdwood

Weirdwood

The Weirdwood Kickstarter launched on February 1 as part of ZineQuest 3 and went on to raise about $2000, which easily exceeded the funding goal of $600. At this point, most of the physical copies have been mailed out to backers and the stretch goal soundtrack by Morana’s Breath has been delivered as well. Aside from a frantic moment where I had to redo some of the game’s layout to add bleed margins, the printing and shipment process seems to have gone off without a hitch.

If you missed the Weirdwood Kickstarter, you can still order the game on itch.io and DriveThruRPG. I do have several physical copies remaining, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. At some point, I’d like to set up an online store, but I want to be able to offer more than just one game, so this may have to wait until there are more LRG releases available in print (more on that in a moment).

Fascination

I had a bit of an unexpected release in January with the solo RPG Fascination. Designed in a single morning in response to a game jam on itch.io for music album-themed games, Fascination is based on the song “Fascination Street” by The Cure. It’s kind of an oddball, to be honest, and I don’t know that it delivers on the concept, but it does look good, which is something I’m beginning to take a lot of pride in.

Like the rest of the LRG catalog, Fascination is available on itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

Augmented

Sometime in February, I started tinkering with an idea for a cyberpunk game, which remains one of my favorite genres. The result of all this tinkering was a rules-lite game called Augmented, in which players take the role of cybernetically enhanced forced to carry out dangerous tasks for a nameless corporation.

In its original conception, the game was built upon the rules of John Harper’s Ghost/Echo, which I’ve raved about many times in the past. After some investigation, however, I wasn’t able to determine the exact licensing status of that particular game, so I decided to redesign the core mechanics using a variation of the narrative-heavy system in Revenant.

I decided to promote Augmented as an itch.io release for about a month ahead of the release date rather than running a Kickstarter for it. While this was partly because I wasn’t sure if I could launch another Kickstarter before fulfilling Weirdwood, I also wanted to see how much buzz I could generate for a release on another platform.

The answer, unfortunately, was not much!

While I managed to sell a few preorder copies, even the offer of a lower presale price didn’t do much to drive sales. In fact, I’ve sold more copies to date on DriveThruRPG, where the game actually sells for a few dollars more to offset the higher percentage that DriveThru takes on each sale.

Augmented released with a campaign supplement that provides a ready made setting for the game. I decided to offer it separately because many the game was really designed to be setting agnostic, even though I had my own personal “head canon” for it during the writing process. Both games are available on itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

Now that the game is out, I’m gearing up to do a new Kickstarter to hopefully fund a print run. The special print edition of Augmented will combine the core rulebook with the setting guide (which will feature all new art layout). My original plan was to launch the campaign on June 1, but since everything is ready to go, I may decide to move that date up a bit. More updates to follow!

Looking Ahead!

There are a few other projects in the works or at various stages of development that I don’t want to talk about too much at this point. I’ve burned myself in the past by saying things are right around the corner before deciding to retrench a bit. One thing I can say for sure is that I’m going to be redoing the layouts for Revenant and Hounds of the Tsar to prepare them for a possible print run. I’m not sure what the feasibility of that is at the moment, so we’ll see what happens with the Augmented Kickstarter first.

If you want to stay in the loop on upcoming projects, be sure to sign up for the Last Redoubt Games newsletter! In addition to getting updates on new releases and product development, you’ll get a free no-art copy of Revenant and Hounds of the Tsar just for signing up.