Gal Pal Games has a blast at Breakout Con this past week. We met lots of wonderful people, and pitched Don't Torture Puppies to many potential players with great success.
It's been a decade of game-making, but we sure do have a lot of them now!
As always, we've been hard at work. We're preparing to do our second shipping round this week, which will mean almost everyone's games will be on the way. Some of you may already have gotten yours from the first round of shipping and if you have, we'd love to hear what you think (and what definitely-not-torturing-puppies business practices you've gotten up to). Through a quirk of the shipment company we're working with, if you paid for tracked shipping, you will be receiving your zine in a shoebox-sized zine-- so enjoy the fun Allison had assembling those.
We also just did our first round of digital distribution. If you have filled out your survey, you should now have received an itch.io code for your game PDF!
Finally: we're continuing to work on finding more not-for-profits, labour orgs, and educators to donate copies to! Through the generosity of our backers, we were able to print 50 physical copies to distribute, which is amazing (and beyond our wildest dreams). That said, we will end up with some extra copies and would love to find them homes with groups who would use them. If you know of a Canadian Org that you think would benefit from a copy or two, feel free to email: [email protected] and see if we have any left that we can send!
First, Allison and Dora will be offline next weekend because we'll be at Breakout Con (come say hi, we'll have a booth in Provincial North).
This means we might be slower to respond here, but it's actually good news for you, because we wanted to make sure we got something to you all before we left. With that in mind, we have packed our first shipment to mail. Anyone who had their survey completed by midday today (GMT -5!) will be shipping tomorrow. We'll do follow-up shipments, and distribute digital files next week after returning from the con.
One other item of business: there was a small problem with the shipping setup that had some people mistakenly bumped to the next highest shipping if they added a sticker to their order. The amount for the majority of people was under 5$, and the issue has been fixed and refunds issued to everyone impacted. It might take 5-10 days for the refund to show up. If you think you’ve been impacted and don’t see your refund but the end of the month, please reach out; if you didn't add a sticker, you should be good. Sorry for the inconvenience.
One more thing; thank you to everyone who's filled out your survey; as a reward, below you'll find a new piece of Carolyn's original art. And to everyone who didn't fill out your survey? Make sure you do, or something terrible might happen to this puppy...
NO just kidding, nothing bad will happen to this puppy no matter what!
It has been a busy last couple of weeks here at Don't Torture Puppies headquarters. Having wrapped up playtesting, we dove headfirst into polishing and editing the writing and art. Carolyn created three unique pieces for the game (including the beautiful cover I'm about to share) and I can say that each one brought me so much delight. Ater all the stock Corporate Memphis art we've been using, feast your eyes upon the custom Corporate Memphis art that Carolyn has created.
The game was sent to a local worker owned cooperative printshop on Wednesday and it's already done and ready to be picked up today! I can't say this enough, but support your local worker coops, they are the best!
Also after rigorous and ruthless editing we simplified some systems in the game, leading the zine being a few spreads shorter than we anticipated. This left me wiggle room in the budget to do something fun. Of course this means a sticker for all physical backers! Don't worry if you have already gotten a "ceritifed puppy-torture free" sticker-- this new sticker design with one of Carolyn's puppies as the star and will be in addition to your already purchased stickers.
We've sent out a smoke test survey tonight, and will be sending out the full survey tomorrow. We'll start fulfilling rewards early next week-- so keep an eye on your inbox.
Thank you everyone for your support! Allison (on behalf of the Don't Torture Puppies team)
We're so close to the end of this campaign, and the team is delighted with how many people seem to be so passionate about not torturing puppies! Thank you, everyone for your support.
On top of reaching our funding goal, the Don't Torture Puppies community has funded thirty-five print copies of the game being donated to local zine libraries, educational institutions, and labour movements! We'll be sure to keep you up to date on their distribution.
As a final treat before the campaign ends, we wanted to share this article that a playtester of Don't Torture Puppies sent us. We promise we're not prophetic; capitalism is just predictable.
It has been exciting to watch the campaign as it continues to gain support. On top of running the campaign, we here at Gal Pal Games have been pushing forward with game development to make sure we keep things on schedule!
We've started roughing out the layout
Look at all the Corporate Memphis Goodness
We've been playtesting Our last play test had players forming a business that created both taxidermy rats and cute little outfits for them to wear.
The Values and executive titles of the company
The company ended up with the values:
Don't Torture Puppies
Resonsibly reuse fabric
Honor the sacrifice of the lab rats
Local jobs for local Canadians
It was a joy to watch players justify that they weren't violating their core values by pointing out that technically dogs weren't puppies, argue vehemently over what it meant to "honour a sacrifice", and exclude a lot of people from their definition of a "local Canadian".
Developing a dedicated consent and safety tool Don't Torture Puppies is a unique game in that a subject that is often a hard line for players (torturing animals-- specifically cute puppies) is at the core of the main mechanics. In her past game, Drink My Sweat, Dora developed a safety tool for players to calibrate not just the subject of what is happening, but also the level of detail to which it is described. She is working on developing this tool to specifically fit Don't Torture Puppies.
Thank you for joining us on this journey! Gal Pal Games
