Over £269,000/$360,000 raised in a month. Our biggest project to date, and it isn't close.
Obviously the amount of people and funds raised are amazing but for me personally, the best thing has been seeing our little community grow even bigger. I used to be able to pop into the Discord every day and have a sense of everything that was going on. That's not possible now, and I mean that as the best kind of problem to have.
Being a community led game company has always been our goal. Your feedback, your suggestions, your questions, your arguments in the server about which School is best, all of that is going to be a core part of how this game gets made. The playtesting journey starts with you and we intend to lean into that hard.
What Happens Next
We're going to go a little quiet for the next four to six weeks. There's a lot to plan: the pledge manager needs setting up, the next year needs mapping out, and the team needs a breath before we go heads down into production. We've earned it. So have you, frankly. Our commitment for all our projects is at least one update every month so look forward to them!
That said, the Discord will stay active throughout. If you're not in there yet, come and join us. That's where we'll be.
Thank you to everyone who backed, shared, commented, posted, and dragged a friend in by the collar. Thank you to everyone who asked questions in the Q&A, voted in the polls, and told us what you wanted to see. Thank you to Matt Colville and the MCDM team. Thank you to Tonton Revolver. Thank you to Dushan and the OMM team. Thank you to Grant and Raya. Thank you to Dave Thaumavore. Thank you to everyone who showed up at UKGE and said hello.
Here's to what comes next!
"As long as the Earth, Sun, and Moon exist, everything will be alright."
£250,000. Solo Rules are confirmed and going to be developed for the game. Thank you, genuinely, for the absolutely relentless pace of this final stretch.
New Stretch Goal: Foundry Support at £300K
We heard you all campaign on Foundry and we're putting it on the board. £300K unlocks full Foundry VTT support for Night Shift: Devil Division.
Yes, we have five hours left on the clock. Yes, we also have Overtime. We're not ruling anything out. You've surprised us at every single milestone of this campaign so let's see what you've got for the finale. Share the page, upgrade your pledge, make some noise, and let's go out with a bang.
Overtime — Live Now / Starting Soon
We're live streaming the Overtime Period from 10am PST / 6pm BST. Come hang out, ask questions, watch the counter move, and help us push toward £300K in real time. Watch either on the BackerKit page or over on our YouTube channel.
NEW ART: Shibuya Scramble
Check out this new art from our environment artist, Hachio! Shibuya Scramble and it's UT-Zone counterpart.
Apologies for the slight delay on these. I wanted to iron out a few minor issues and dot some i's before putting them in front of you. I've almost certainly not caught everything, so if you spot any mistakes or have questions, come find us in the Discordand we'll sort it out.
These are a work in progress and deliberately slimmed down. They are not feature complete and they're not a full picture of what the two main books will contain. That said, there's still 100 pages of content in here and more than enough to get a real feel for how the game plays. Dig in and enjoy.
The final stretch of this campaign has been something else. We cruised past the custom music stretch goal which means battle tunes and original music in the style of the trailer are coming. Speaking of the trailer, it's just crossed one million views. One million. That's fucking ridiculous and we're still processing it.
Solo Rules are the next goal and they are within reach if we can keep the pace up through these final hours. It was one of the most requested additions we saw throughout the campaign and we'd love to be able to confirm it.
Share the page, send it to one more person, and let's see if we can get there
On Foundry: we saw the requests and we hear you. It's not a current stretch goal but it's something we will endeavour to support down the line. We wanted to acknowledge it rather than leave it unanswered.
OVERTIME — Tomorrow, We Go Live
Just like in the World Cup, when the clock runs out we're going to extra time. Tomorrow we'll be live streaming the Overtime Period right through until the backer train pulls into the station. It could be ten minutes, it could be longer. Either way we'll make those ten minutes count.
Come by, ask questions, chat with us, and let's close this thing out together. The stream link should be live on the page and will go live at 10am PST/6pm BST.
Games We Love: Nine Tails
While we were at UKGE I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely couple from Japan who run a board game shop in Shinjuku. They have a new board game launching on Kickstarter soon called Nine Tails and it looks brilliant.
You are an ancient yokai spirit, friend and mentor to the forest foxes. Help your foxes improve their skills, use tricks upon rival foxes and villagers, and earn the nine tails they need to ascend to heaven.
They're a small outfit and they'd genuinely appreciate the support. We'll be backing it ourselves. If that sounds like your kind of thing, give them a follow and keep an eye out for the launch.
First, an apology. I fully intended to post an update from UKGE and it just didn't happen. We were flat out the entire weekend and by the end of each day there was nothing left in the tank. So, sorry for the silence.
That said, UKGE was brilliant. It was genuinely great to meet so many of you and talk Ronin, Berserkr, and Devil Division across the weekend. We also had some exciting meetings that we're hopeful will turn into something real down the line. More on that when there's more to say!
Anyway. You're not here for the UKGE debrief. You're here because we hit £200,000... which is a bonkers thing for us to write, haha!
The Starter Rules Will Be Out Before Thursday
We've been working on getting these into a shareable state and they're nearly ready! We wanted to get them out today but I'm being a picky bastard and fixing some last bits before we let you download them. So blame me (Sacha/Slightly).
A quick note on them: the Starter Rules are a condensed version of the rules that will feature across both main books. They're a work in progress and they're intentionally streamlined, designed to give you a functional sense of how the game plays. Think of them as a taster.
The £200K Stretch Goal: A Devil Division Manga
I wanted to post this in anticipation of hitting the milestone and instead I get to post it as a confirmation!
The £200K stretch goal is the first volume of a manga set in theDevil Division world. I'll be handling the writing and collaborating with a manga artist to build something that extends the lore and gives people a real sense of what Operations and Engagements look like from the inside. What it actually feels like to be a Red Crow. What the UT-Zone looks like when you're exploring it.
It's early days. This will come after the game itself is finished and in your hands, and we'll share more details as they develop. What we can tell you now is that it's included for all backers at £115 and above, and will also be available as an add-on in the pledge manager for everyone else.
OMM VTT Support — Unlocked. And We Met Dushan
One More Multiverse support is confirmed and unlocked. On top of that, I got to chat with Dushan from the OMM team at UKGE this weekend and it was a genuinely great conversation. Talking through ideas in person made us even more excited about what we can build there. More to come on that front.
Reminder: backers at £115 and above will get their choice of a free VTT code, Codex or OMM. You pick whichever platform suits your table.
Crystal Maggie Dice — Production Samples
We finally got images back from production and they are looking very slick. See for yourselves below.
A Genuine Thank You To Matt Colville and the MCDM Team
A lot of you recent Operatives found your way here through Matt's video and we want to acknowledge that properly. Without the MCDM team's support, and without Draw Steel as the foundation we're building on, this campaign doesn't look the way it does. So thank you to Matt and the whole team. It means a lot and we don't take it for granted.
Three Days Left. What Do You Want To See?
The campaign has blown past every expectation we had going into it. With three days left we think there's a real chance of clearing at least one more stretch goal, maybe two. Before we decide anything internally we wanted to ask you directly: is there anything you'd like to see us explore?
We can't make guarantees and we'll be talking it through as a team, but your input genuinely feeds into those conversations. Drop your thoughts in the comments below. You made this campaign what it is, so it feels right to ask.
We're fast closing in on the Starter Set upgrade at £170K and with just over a week left in the campaign we're making a push for £190K and One More Multiversesupport too. The back half of a crowdfunding campaign is always the grind, and every share still genuinely matters. If you haven't yet, point someone at the campaign page.
Poll Result: The Old Feud and The Sundering
Another close one. The Old Feud and The Sundering edged out the competition by just a few votes. You asked for it, so here it is.
INCOMING MESSAGE:
UKGE — We'll Be There All Weekend
We're heading to UK Games Expo this week. Come and find us at Stand 3A-731. We'll have Rōnin and Berserkr goodies on the table and I'll be there all weekend to answer any Night Shift: Devil Division questions you have. Nothing is off the table. Shoot away.
Fair warning: with a chunk of the SRG team away at the show we may be a little slower in the Discord and on support through the weekend. Jack and Mill will still be on hand if you need anything urgent, and everything will be back to normal come Monday.
If you're going, come and say hello. We'd love to meet you.
Keep sharing. Let's see what the last week holds!
// Operative Slightly and the SRG Ware Peddlers, out.
(text version)
Before the Division existed, before the Accord, before any of the institutional machinery that currently keeps Tokyo's Devils managed and its secrets buried, there were two traditions. They did not get along.
The Endogenic schools, known collectively as the Composition tradition, held that Kegare was a problem of accumulation. Cities generated spiritual residue because people generated spiritual residue, and the correct response was to burn it away through concentrated breath work applied at scale. Clean the vessel. Maintain the pressure. Do not let the city's grief grow heavier than the city can carry. They were disciplined, hierarchical, and absolutely certain they were right.
The Exokinetic schools, known collectively as the Manipulation tradition, held that Kegare was not something to be destroyed but something to be understood and contained. Projection. Binding. Seal construction. The residue of human experience could be given shape, held at distance, negotiated with. They were precise, methodical, and equally certain the Composition schools were going to kill someone.
They argued about this for generations. The argument calcified into institutional doctrine and the institutional doctrine calcified into something that looked, by the middle of the nineteenth century, indistinguishable from hatred.
Both traditions knew that Edo was approaching a breaking point. The city had been growing faster than its infrastructure could absorb, a population compressed into a rigid social order that demanded enormous amounts of human feeling be swallowed, managed, and never expressed. The accumulated Kegare had been building for decades and was growing faster than either tradition could contain. Both sides had different prescriptions for what to do about it. Both believed, with the specific confidence of institutions that had been right about everything else, that their approach would be sufficient.
On the same night in the 1850s, both traditions acted. The Composition coalition launched a coordinated strike across seven schools, targeting Projection infrastructure throughout Edo. The Manipulation schools, with partial intelligence on what was coming, moved first by hours, raising a city-scale barrier intended to compress Composition technique into inoperability. Both workings were operating on the same accumulated Kegare. Both were incompatible in ways neither tradition had the vocabulary to fully anticipate.
The two workings collided and what they produced had no name in either tradition's vocabulary. The practitioners at the centre described it the same way in testimonies taken years apart, without contact with each other: like silk, very close to the ear, tearing along a long straight line.
Edo's shadow peeled away and sank. Under-Tokyo was created. The cracks had opened, and the first Devils came through it within weeks.
The two traditions, standing in the wreckage of the thing they had done to the city together, eventually signed the Accord and became the framework that the Division was later built around. Some schools signed. Some did not. The ones that didn't became the Iron Compass and the Pale Office, the two factions who still operate outside the Division's authority, still holding the old grudge in one hand and their own interpretation of what happened that night in the other.
The Division's official position is that the Sundering was caused by both traditions operating without coordination and that the Accord exists to ensure it cannot happen again. This position is accurate as far as it goes. It does not go very far.
