Wow, at the time of this writing we are at 13k raised with 265 of you pledging your support! Truly amazing!
With another update, comes another deep dive into a depth sector that you voted for, but first a brief look at what has happened since the last update, and our Illustrator shares how he designed the expedition's exosuit!
Dicebreaker covered Substratum Protocol, our first major press coverage since we started Pandion Games in 2021, and it's all thanks to you! This was a huge, wonderful surprise for us.
We coined the term 'deep delving mystery genre' while working on Substratum to describe the games we were inspired by, and people are starting to use the term! So that's cool.
Rene Plays Games released a bonus podcast episode to play Substratum Protocol solo, and it's great!
Leaderboard Reviews took a look at the free preview PDF, and wrote up a review. We appreciate them catching our humor throughout the book!
We also made significant progress this week on the final section of the book that needs work: The Field Notes bestiary. All the creatures are in place, and we are adding the unknown-scientist's writings across the pages now. Originally, we only commissioned 5 creature illustrations, but we loved Galen's illustrations of our bizarre creatures so much that we now have 11 illustrations in the bestiary!
Designing the DSPRT MK I Exosuit
Galen Pejeau, the illustrator on the project, shares his inspiration for the iconic exosuit for Substratum Protocol. We were adamant that the suit be science-oriented in both aesthetics and features, and Galen knocked it out of the park.
Final Art Spread of the DSPRT MK I Exosuit from SubSystems LLC. Credit Galen Pejeau
Hey folks, with Substratum Protocol out on Backerkit, I wanted to show off the art piece from it that I'm most proud of, the DSPRT suit! I have to draw a lot of different spaceguys for games, and the brief was to produce a science-oriented exosuit in four colors only!
Original Sketch, showing details of the suit. Credit Galen Pejeau
The layout had a lovely retro tone to it, so my mind immediately ran to the Usborne Book of the Future, a reference I love to go back to. So much of the art in there is built out of a limited, very 60's/70's color palette. Combine that sort of aesthetic with the goofiest of the early NASA prototypes for exoplanetary exploration, and wham, cool suit that draws itself. The 3D printers were a must. The Earth is... big, and it would take a few meals and resources to walk to the center of it.
Inspirations used for designing the DSPRT Exosuit. Usborne Book of the Future and LIFE Magazine.
The Alpha Particle Grove
It was a close race between The Alpha Particle Grove and Barrier Event Horizon. Make sure to vote in the next poll for which sector you want to hear about next!
This close to the portal, our understanding of the laws of the universe breaks down. GM's, if you haven't introduced the strange and cosmic yet, this is the sector to really crank it up!
Anyone familiar with our other games knows that we love imagining alien ecology, and at 3,822 kilometers below the surface, the Alpha Particle Grove is a flourishing alien environment. The flora and fauna here use the intense alpha radiation much like we use oxygen, and it's not just biological creatures here, either.
While the sector is full of life, the air sizzles with radiation deadly to Terran biology. The scientists will find themselves in a lush paradise while their suit's radioactivity alarms scream and flash red in the background. Getting caught with a suit breach or blown airlock in your inflatable habitat will incur extreme radiation poisoning.
Strange tree analogs shift and move in response to the expedition team, are they just curious? Hungry? Telepathic fungus may seed connections to their exosuits through spores and mycelium weaving into their systems to speak through or control it, and joyous crystalline creatures dance about manipulating time for their entertainment, while transparent ghostwolves exist just outside their periphery. And that's the normal stuff.
The creatures adapted to living here can take all of this in stride, but the expedition is unfamiliar with the ebb and flow of this nature. When the radiation thickens and aligns, rifts in reality can start time loops, give views to other dimensions, manifest fears to reality, and much more.
Is all this a product of the portal? A side effect or its purpose? Perhaps this radioactive ecology has grown to coexist with the portal's energies and always grows alongside it. Maybe it is artificial in nature, terraformed by a sentient alien species? We don't have enough data to know yet. All we do know, is the alpha particle radiation that allows all this life to happen is emanating from further below. ---
Thank you all again for the amazing support! We are blown away. Make sure to vote in the poll for the next sector we'll talk about!
