Hello, lovelies! Broken is back after a brief hiatus and I am back from an extended hiatus. This is a major update on myself, the game, and more. I want to thank everyone who supported our campaign last summer, and thank you even more for your patience as finalizing and delivering on the game has been significantly delayed. Thank you endlessly for your understanding.

Before I get into the actual updates, I want to say two things up front:

1) Happy Valentine's Day!! We're giving you something today as a Valentine's Day surprise. You can find attached to this document four of our upcoming Scenarios in plain text format, but completely ready to play. The four Scenarios available now are written by the incredible Emily Buza, Samantha Leigh, Gabrielle Rabinowitz, and Melissa Wallis (my own personal Valentine!). What better way to celebrate the day of branded, corporate love than to break a couple up and smash some objects?

2) More Valentine's Day fun! To celebrate coming back from hiatus and the greeting card holiday everyone feels obliged to adhere to, we're having a sale!! For one day only, you'll be able to purchase Broken for 75% off!!! That's right...75% off!!! Pick up the game for only $5 for one day only. If you already own the game, please consider spreading the word and getting the game out there to more players. Buy one for your friend(s)!

Now for those updates.

Broken and APON Games

During the campaign for Broken I made a major decision to leave my partnership with the All Ports Open Network and APON Games. For the months that followed, Broken continued to be published by APON Games and the All Ports Open Network LLC until very recently. I want to thank my APON co-founder Joshua Wise for hosting the game until now. The decision to leave the All Ports Open Network was very personal and an extremely difficult decision about my time, focus, and energy. During the campaign for Broken I was burning myself out hard.  So, in addition to leaving my partnership, I decided to take a hiatus from the TTRPG community for my own mental health.

From now on, Broken will be published directly by me, Ben Wallis aka ThatGamerPriest. I created a new itch seller name and will publish as ThatGamerPriest. We migrated the ownership and control of the page for the game from the APON Games account to this new account. This is the first time I've ever been involved in moving a game page from one itch account to another, so I'm not even entirely sure how this will work. I'm not even sure if those that backed the game and purchased it from APON Games will even receive this update. My fingers are crossed that this test will work and you all will receive this.

Scenario Stretch Goal Progress

The next update is about the progress on our Scenarios stretch goal. We promised the Scenarios by October, and now that it is Valentine's Day 2023, well, it is not even the same year. The Scenarios hit several production snags beyond even simply my hiatus mentioned above. My partner Melissa joined my work on Broken to help bring these Scenarios to completion as editor of the Scenarios project. We're still waiting on the text of two more Scenarios. Once those are received and edited, we'll begin working the layout. We also would like to commission some art work! We're so excited about Emily Buza's scenario "Heroic Heartbreak" that we want to commission a piece of art for it to serve as a title page for the Scenarios. This wasn't part of the original project, and my hope is that running our Valentine's Day sale will help fund that commission.

Other Fulfillment

The only other fulfillment is needing to play games with those that backed at the level of playing with the creator...me! If you backed at this level and you haven't heard from me yet but you're waiting to play, please reach out to me. Right now, I can't see the list of everyone who backed at that level and while I know some, I don't know all. So, please send me a message and let me know your availability and we'll begin to schedule those games as soon as possible.

The Future of Broken and ThatGamerPriest

Right now, I'm starting to get my feet wet again in the indie TTRPG space, but I'm not ready to jump back into the deep end. I'm continuing my Holy Happy Hour Batman hiatus, though if you haven't watched all of those episodes, there are some great interviews with awesome guests from the scene worth checking out. I'm continuing to produce and work on the next story arc for Delinquent Comics. I'm slowly continuing to work on other game design.

My continued plan is to eventually bring Broken to a print edition. Once we finish this campaign's obligations, I'll be in a much better place to consider how to go about doing that. If we do decide ultimately to do another crowdfunding campaign on another platform, we'll be sure to be fully equipped and use everything we learned this time around to do that in a completely healthy and transparent way that will bring it to fulfillment in a timely manner. If you are someone who is interested in a print edition of the game, please let us know! We have no idea what the interest level is for the game in print and would love to get an idea who might be willing to continue to support the game. Since most of the work is paid for, a print campaign would mostly exist to actually print the books. Plus, it would give us an opportunity to create a beautiful, handcrafted gift box set for backers much like our friends over at Gal Pal Games did for Alchemistresses. I was so inspired by the unboxing that it gave me the longing to do something similar for Broken and I have some ideas for that. One step at a time.

I'm also really excited because I've been working for many months on another game: Bizlandia. Bizlandia is designed with the Questlandia SRD by Turtlebun, and is a comedy game of corporate chaos and tragedy. It's frankly a hilarious game where you create an awful corporation and then play employees struggling to work for it. My hope is that we'll be able to get Bizlandia to a place to be able to release a playtest version for you to check out for free! The actual Questlandia SRD isn't available yet, but I've been talking to the amazing folks at Turtlebun for awhile about the game, and my hope is to be able to continue playtesting it and incorporate as many people as possible into that process.

I really am full of gratitude for everyone who supported the campaign for Broken. Even though I am running a f**k Valentine's Day breakup sale, my heart is full of love for all of you. I appreciate your patience.

Also...play BROKEN for Valentine's Day!! Find some amazing V-day related items to break, and share them online!! If you do, make sure to tag me so I can share.

Whether you celebrate the v-day or not, I hope you have an amazing day full of love and fun. Happy Valentine's Day lovelies, and we'll be updating you again soon.

- Ben aka ThatGamerPriest