To all those who once stood beside us during the trials of Hercules and the 12 Labors… we come one final time to extend an invitation to join us on the Jason and the Argonaut voyage before it ends.
The Jason and the Argonauts campaign now enters its final days upon the seas.
First and foremost, thank you. Without your support during Hercules and the 12 Labors, none of this would have been possible. Your belief in these mythological adventures helped pave the way for everything Jason and the Argonauts has become.
And truly… this campaign has surpassed even our wildest expectations.
Funded in just 10 minutes, Over 2,600 Adventurers aboard the Argo. More than $190,000 raised, Countless stretch goals conquered, Exclusive upgrades, bonus content, and rewards unlocked throughout the campaign.
DO NOT MISS OUT on the massive amount of FREE bonus content unlocked throughout this legendary voyage. We are talking about 14+ bonus cards, component upgrades, exclusive stickers, and more, all added to Jason and the Argonauts absolutely FREE for eligible backers who join before the campaign comes to an end.
Every eligible Adventurer aboard the Argo will receive an enormous collection of bonus content unlocked throughout the campaign, and we dont want you to miss out on it.
If you loved Hercules and the 12 Labors, we truly believe you will feel right at home within Jason and the Argonauts. Built upon the same core system, yet expanded with new mechanics, legacy systems, journey cards, discoveries, lore, and strategic decisions, this is the next great mythological adventure forged from everything we learned creating Hercules and the 12 Labors.
This is your final chance to board the Argo before the voyage ends.
Your support has helped turn these mythological worlds into reality, and we cannot wait for you to experience the next chapter of the legend beside us.
Your legend did not end with Hercules and the 12 Labors. A new epic journey is upon you.
Today, we set sail into myth once more with Jason and the Argonauts, a brand new solo adventure where you’ll gather your crew, face perilous trials, and pursue the legendary Golden Fleece.
And for those ready to answer that call early, we have something special… Pledge within the first 48 hours and receive a FREE Golden Fleece Enamel Pin, a symbol of your place among the first to embark on this voyage.
Once these 48 hours pass, this freebie offer is gone.
Your early support helps chart the course of this campaign, building momentum, unlocking stretch goals, and bringing this journey to life in a big way.
If you’re ready to return to the world of myth and carve out your next legend…
I received my game and I have just played it and I want to say great job. Game is super fun to play. Informative because I didn’t really know anything about Hercules and the 12 Labors. Artwork is fantastic. You did a great job running this campaign also and keeping everyone informed on what was happening. Again great game and I couldn’t be happier.
We’ve just revealed our next epic chapter, Jason and the Argonauts, and we’re calling all adventurers to join us on this voyage! If we rally 600 adventurers before the end of 2025, we’ll add a free exclusive sticker to every copy of the game!
Goal: 600 reached! — We did it! This project reached this goal!
Hi everyone. i just wanted to let you know i got my copy in Poland. The components are great. Aesthetically the game is superb. Very happy with the final result. Thank you!!!
I am happy to let you all know that the Greeting Games rewards are in the mail!
They are just getting processed today, so US orders should be arriving to folks within the next 1-2 weeks. For UK and CAN orders, I am not 100% sure how long they will be in customs, but the average range for other campaigns I've run has been 1-3 weeks.
Special stamps!
For US orders that I could use forever stamps on, I was able to get enough limited edition D&D stamps to put one stamp on each envelope! If you want an extra little collectable, make sure to check your envelope before throwing it away. I wasn't able to do these for large packages or international orders, but for the orders that I could, I'm hoping it's a nice bonus.
Digital rewards coming soon
Because of the shipping time involved, I prioritized getting the physical rewards out before the digital rewards, so my next step is digital. It is just me doing all this, and there are some life things going on in the next couple days, so I will say that digital rewards should be going out sometime between today and next Tuesday, dependant on how those life elements go.
For digital rewards, you'll recieve an email with a code for itchio where you can claim your rewards, so keep an eye on your inbox!
Bonus trilogy unlock + StoryGuider
Right at the end of the campaign, we unlocked a bonus reward, a digital download and set of POD keys for a trilogy of adventures featuring the cat character from the Library Hero postcard! This will be available in 2026 alongside the StoryGuider campaign, which is currently in process of funding the rest of the series. I'll keep you updated as this set of stories completes and through the bi-weekly dev log posts (today's is here), and I hope to have this bonus to you early next year!
AND if you're interested in the other 33 adventures that will be part of the StoryGuider series, please check out the campaign here! I'm hoping this can fund some upgrades to the overall series, in addition to the base art.
Thank you all, and I hope you enjoy your games! Steph
I'm very happy to report that physical fulfillment for Blood In The Margins is now complete! With the exception of the small handful of people who still haven't filled out surveys yet, all orders have now been processed and are on their way.
It's been a few years since I've handled a fulfillment of this size and I'd forgotten how much work it can be on your own. I'd also forgotten how unintuitive I find Backerkit's pledge manager behind the scenes. There's a reason I've handled the majority of my crowdfunding fulfillment through Loot The Room in the past rather than using a pledge manager, and I think next time I'll be going back to doing it that way. (I also think that had I done it through Loot The Room we would have been finished several weeks ago, because we wouldn't have had to wait for everyone to fill out surveys and for Backerkit to charge cards, but that's a lesson learned.)
Speaking of next time...
It's coming up on five years since The Wretched was on Kickstarter, and as well as spending that time figuring out how to improve on the Wretched & Alone system I've also done a lot of thinking about how to write a sequel to that game. I've been quietly working on it in the background for the past few months, and I'm happy to announce that I'll be bringing The Haunting Of The Wretched to Backerkit in late September/early October.
This isn't another Wretched & Alone game - it's something new, and I'm very excited about it. I'll be sharing more details over on the campaign as I get closer to launch, but today I wanted to simply let you know that it exists and also share the cover art for the game!
A digital mockup of an A5 zine. The cover shows a lone cosmonaut standing amongst the wreckage of a space ship.
If you want to follow that campaign then you can find the pre-launch page here. I'd love to see some familiar faces over there!
With fulfillment complete, this will be the last update I write here. If you'd like to stay in touch, I've love it if you considered signing up for my newsletter. At most I send one email a month, but it's often less frequent than that, and they always include cat pictures. You can check out the most recent one here if you want to see the sort of things I send! (That's a Substack link, but as of this month I no longer use Substack for my newsletters.)
Thanks again for all your support on this campaign. I'm really proud of Blood In The Margins and I hope you enjoy it once you have it in your hands!
We’re excited to share that every single reward from this campaign has now been packed and shipped out to backers around the world! 🎉
If you haven’t yet received your tracking link or your package, don’t worry, just send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll personally guide you through the next steps. Whether it’s a missing tracking number, a delivery delay, or a problem in your package, I’m here to help make sure your order finds its way to you.
Your patience and support have meant the world to me throughout this process. Thank you for being part of this project and for making it possible to bring these rewards to life.
After a lot of hard work we're finally ready to release the final* version of Despair Dilemma on itch!! I'll go into the details on how you can download your copy in a bit - but before I do, I just wanted to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone here once again for all of the incredible support you've given us. There's still a bit to go with getting everything printed and sent out, but now we can say that most of the legwork is done!
Despair Dilemma Release Update
Most of the changes made to the book where focused on finalizing and cleaning up the book. Iris gave the whole thing a proper set of edits to make sure there were no errors, and we cleaned up the image quality to make sure everything looked good in the PDF. With that said, there are a couple new things of note:
L’ombra del Coniglio has been added as a new Death Game Sheet by Little Lab Design. This sheet focuses on making it difficult to find the culprit of wrongdoings by having every character turn into identical rabbits each night.
Because a few of our Friends of Usashi backers were unable to complete their surveys, we've added two new Characters at the end of the Special Victims List. We'll replace these when we get the chance if the backers complete their surveys - but for now feel free to use Double Summon and Usashi when rolling on the Special Victims List.
How to Download Your Copy of Despair Dilemma
We want to make sure you get your digital copy of Despair Dilemma no matter your experience and preferences, so we've set up three ways you can get access to your copy:
Use Our Backer Access Link: If you follow this link here ( https://noorasphere.itch.io/despair-dilemma/backer-access ), you'll be sent to a special Itch.io page where you can tie a copy of the game to your account and download it there. Please note that the email address associated with your itch account WILL need to match the email address associated with your backerkit account, including all character case. If your itch account doesn't match, be sure to add the matching address in the "Additional Emails" section of your settings.
Download it From BackerKit: You should receive an email sometime today with a direct download of the final copy of the book. This will be done in the same way as the prototype PDFs, so if you're uncomfortable setting up an Itch.io account, this is the best way for you to get your book.
Wait For Your Itch Access Email: Sometime in the next couple weeks you'll receive an email with a direct link to download Despair Dilemma from Itch.io itself. This takes some time as itch needs to confirm we aren't sending spam - but once you receive the email you'll be able to assign the book to any itch account and download it from there.
We do encourage you to use one of the methods that assign your game to an itch account, since that way you'll be able to download any future updates if we make them in the near or distant future.
If you have any other issues, please contact me at [email protected] or get in touch with BackerKit support. It's very possible that there are some technical issues, so please let us know if so.
Bleeding Heart Community Drive
Thanks to the efforts of everyone who supported us in the crowdfunding campaign and included it as add-ons in the pledge manager, I'm happy to say we earned an incredible 245 Community Copies of Despair Dilemma ready to be given to people in need!! There isn't much more to say other than that this is absolutely incredible, and we really hope people enjoy the game.
What's Coming Next (Printing the Books)
Now that we've finished with the digital version of Despair Dilemma, the next step is to get printing started on both it and its add-ons. If you saw the last update, then you'll know that we've changed printing plans to keep costs down amid increased volatility and will be printing and shipping everything out locally from Australia. This will increase the time it takes to be delivered, but also make it possible for us to keep costs down for the majority of our backers.
As is, we're now able to open up Final Shipping Costs in the Pledge Manager. We won't be charging cards or finalizing addresses for some time still (around when we make the orders for the books), but you can go through and confirm your address and shipping whenever you like. You should receive an email about this from BackerKit some time in the next week with all of the details.
For us, the next step is ordering test copies of the physical book and add-ons from our manufacturers. Once we have those on hand, we'll give everything a final check and make sure there are no errors in the printing files that effect the final product. We don't yet know how long this will take - but we'll be sure to keep you all updated as everything happens.
If we make any changes to the book itself when we go through this update, we'll update the Itch version to match.
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Thank you all so much for your time and happy death gaming! Nora Jean Haynes
Exciting news! The card games have officially arrived and they look fantastic. We’re so thrilled to finally have them in hand and we can’t wait to get them to you.
To ensure smooth delivery, we’ll be locking shipping addresses in 48 hours. Please take a moment to review and confirm your address through BackerKit before the deadline.
If you’ve recently moved or expect to move soon, make sure your address is up to date so your rewards reach you safely.
Thank you once again for your amazing support and patience. Fulfillment is almost here and we can’t wait for you to enjoy the game.
