Dear people of Soledad,

thank you so much! Another stretch goal has been reached and now the Locations that make up Soledad have increased to 25.

Why not use that same energy to give one last boost to the Drama deck?

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Meanwhile, our character poll from the playable demo says your favorite is Diana Alvarez, the Shunned Fisherwoman. Last time we played, Oscar had a blast with her: her final scene was with her Duende, The Double. It was her twin, a twisted version of all her worst instincts she herself had summoned into being. It sat by her side at the edge of the Laguna de Aguavita, a dark, deep Mountain Lake. It encouraged her to enter the waters where so many had drowned. Together they went under the water... And when someone played the Aftermath Drama card, we saw only one Diana come out-- no longer an old crone, but a young woman. For one final twist, another player added the Fertility Drama card: it is touched by Duende, and it let them describe Diana's sudden, inexplicable pregnancy. Her Act 1 ended with a second chance at life, with the promise of the child she had always wanted. But was it really her or her Double that emerged from the waters?

This is just a brief example of what the combination of seemingly simple prompts can do: raw, unscripted, powerful storytelling. Let's make sure you have as many tools as we can give you to do this.

On a completely different note, we also want to point you towards a project by Côme Martin, a French game designer and friend: A week with Frog and Rabbit.



Aside from being an endless wellspring of ideas and an author whose work we've had the pleasure to translate into Italian, Côme is another person we found ourselves bound to by the bizarre web of Itras By. In more than one conversation with people playing or asking about Soledad, Matthijs found himself commenting that everyone here has either published Itras By or something for Itras By...

The ways of play are endless, but A week with Frog and Rabbit is much closer to home as a concept. Perfect for playing with children, without dice or cards, it will let you follow along on cosy animal adventures in the woods of Poppy Valley!

Dear people of Soledad,

there is another Achievement under our belt: the Drama deck has grown to 68 cards. We're close to the full size we envisioned to guarantee the best variety during gameplay. Matthijs has been carefully fine-tuning this particular mix of prompts for years, and the current balance ensures that everyone at the table will always have an interest twist for the story in their hand, without too many outlandish events overtaking it. The Duende of magical realism remains as background radiation, without overwhelming the humanity of the characters.

But before we complete the Drama deck, we want to expand on the Locations a little more.


The Location deck is a mix of literary and geographical inspirations. As you can glean from the playable demo, it is split in several regions. Grey for the starting Location, the Church; brown for urban areas, whether inside Soledad itself or in the far-off Capital; green for untamed nature, from the lush Jungle to the Mountain Lake that inspired the legend of El Dorado; yellow for the fields, be they overgrown Lost Farms or vast Plantations; blue for the ever-alluring Oceans. And purple for places stranger still, from the beautiful visions of the City of Glass to the forking paths of the Labyrinth.

Will you help us explore more?

Thanks to your enthusiasm and generosity, the borders of Soledad are expanding!

Five new Locations, five new hexagons to fill up our box of wonders. The first thing you will recognize them by will be the custom graphics: Village, Ocean, Forest, City, Fields, or Duende?

But our shared ride through the streets of Soledad goes on, and we must look to the future. There is room for 4 more Drama cards in the box.



Can we unlock these as well? Keeping up interest in this kind of campaign for a prolonged time is not an easy task, but we are lucky to be able to count on all of you. Will you help us with some healthy word-of-mouth?

While we're here, we thought we'd have some fun with the online demo we prepared. Have you played a game there already? Are you planning to? Who do you want to play as?

Dear people of Soledad,

thank you! There are so many new faces that milestones are going past faster than we can account for them-- you've unlocked the first upgrade to the Drama deck, and our next goal is to grow the Location pool along with it.

The Roots of Soledad is a story about people, but those people's lives are grounded in a specific place. We're no strangers to mapmaking games: our Zinetopia entry, Barbabianca, has you drawing to map the memories of a village in the deep Italian countryside. But Soledad takes a different approach, made possible by a set of extra-large hexagonal cards (our nod to hex maps, and to the rooms in Borges's Library of Babel).

A lot of the enchantment in the early pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes from José Arcadio Buendía's futile attempts to chart the land around Macondo. The landscape grows from the heart of the village, expanding with the story. The same goes here: the first Location you play is always the heart of Soledad, Iglesia de Paraiso. When you're the Director for a scene, you decide where to set the action-- in a Location that is already on the table, or in a new place entirely, picked out of four available Location cards. As you place them side by side, a map of Soledad and its surroundings begins to sprout.

Every Location is two-sided, each a different take on the same place. You can flip them randomly or pick, to ensure Soledad is truly your own. And some strange places, those marked by Duende, may do more than just provide a backdrop: they add special Directions to the scene, giving you the perfect chance for a dramatic climax.



 

Dear everyone, 

thank you so much! The announcement that The Roots of Soledad has founded kind of snuck up on everyone in the team, while we enjoyed our respective Sundays out. But what a way to crown this day.

For me, this has been an important milestone event in my work as a game designer. I worked hard to make this game happen, and am very grateful for everyone who contributed along the way; some are named in the rulebook, but I want to add my gratitude to NessunDove for exceptional work in all areas-- it's been a unique experience. 

I love to hear from people who play the game, and I hope to make more games in this family, so contact me online if you want!

We've reached the most important milestone: getting the game made. This includes producing the box, the rulebook, and the core deck of Character, Scene, Drama and Location cards.

But while Character and Scene cards are the backbone on the game, and their quantity was fine-tuned after years of playtesting, the only limits to our imagination for Drama and Location cards is the size of the box. For the basic goal of the campaign, we cut down on their number to ensure we'd be able to produce everything-- the base decks are made up of 60 Drama cards and 15 Location cards. But there is still room for additions, with all the ideas we most regret having to set aside.

So here comes the first stretch goal: adding 4 more Drama cards, up to a total of 64.

Drama cards are a concept both me and other designers have been perfecting for a long time: when you play one, things change both inside and outside the fiction. Some cards give the scene an interesting twist. Others challenge you to tell the story a different way.

You can play one at any time, even when you are not playing a character in the scene. They're a way to stay involved, to add zest to your game-- and to make sure magic keeps haunting your narrative.