Happy Day 3 everyone!

I work with school districts here in the US in hopes to make their systems better. I say this because we are close to the beginning of the school year, and I have been meeting with districts all week. It was so lovely to see a small bump today after meetings all day long. So thanks to you!

As mentioned, most of my campaigns only last a week, meaning this will wrap up on Tuesday, the 28th. Unlike many other campaigns, I don't want to extend the process too much.

Here are some thoughts for today:

I might be giving away too many industry secrets here, but the first thing I come up with in my games is the title. I find that titles drive the theme, the timbre of the game, and how things shape up. When I think of older games like Humans. or this world is not yours, the seed of an idea is always embedded in the title. This one is no different. Metal Scraps Covered in Moss (to me) elicits old world, conjures an idea of something lost or forgotten. It makes me consider what it might look like finding these spaces and what it might even mean.

When I think of media portrayals (and ultimately inspirations for this), I think of titles like Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky when they make it to Laputa, or running around Hyrule in Legend of Zelda's Breath of the Wild with the decayed Guardians buried. Unsurprisingly, I was so meaningfully altered by Becky Chambers' A Psalm for the Wild Built in a severe way. I had never read a book that had wrapped me up so completely and perfectly. I return to it every couple of years, along with the sequel A Prayer for the Crown-shy. Possibly opposite of all these titles, I find myself listening and reflecting a lot to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a band I have loved for more than two decades now. While fraught and perilous, loud and not, there are moments of joy and hope in their music, and that's what I hope you find here.

One of my favorite things is for games to blur the lines between real life and game. While not in a big way, Metal Scraps does this to an extent. In it, you are a Reclamator—someone who wanders around the Old Growth to find and record artifacts of the What Once Was. In Metal Scraps, this means you are junk journaling, taking random bits and bobs from the real world (yes, your real world), and recording them into your Artifacts Log. There are no prompts here like in a card-driven or table/dice-driven solo journaling game. Instead, there are some metrics for you to fill out (size, shape, color, location found, etc.).

You can see below there is space for you to adhere your artifact (with glue, tape, whatever). Note that there is space to put in a couple of artifacts if you'd like! But also there is a space to describe the artifact. There is a map of the Old Growth along with names and brief descriptions of each location in the Old Growth, but it only tells you so much, dropping ideas and hints. That's where your imagination comes in.

I have an example in the Artifacts Log, where you showcase your artifact, that's a bit of a throwback to another game of mine. I'm excited for you to see it.

Thanks all! I'll send a progress update Saturday to talk more about things.
TDH