Tea & Crumpets: The Core Rulebook

Hello, my fellow Magical Girls and Guardians!

We have a relatively large update that I felt would best be shared here. There's a bit of good news, a bit of bad, and some exciting prospects. So, let's strap in and prepare ourselves for the next journey.

This year has been BUSY. I know it probably doesn't look like it from where you're standing--at least as it relates to my work--but truth is I've been working on a lot of different projects and two are in testing with one close to being feature complete and ready for testing. This does not include all the other projects in various stages of development and preproduction but I understand how having no published games may seem like nothing's happening. One of the projects in testing is a fan game for a well known property that is doing pretty well so far but shouldn't see release until sometime next year at the earliest. The other project in testing is a full scale, 200+ page core rulebook for a fleshed out, expanded, and refined Tea & Crumpets! I know I said it would launch this year but there has been a lot of work put into the game and because of that things were always getting pushed back to ensure it's perfect. This also means that we can't just drop it on itch without making it look pretty.

Trouble is, I--and my co-conspirator on this one--are not artists. We can't draw at all. My now husband--yes, I got married and this will be part of the next section so hold your applause--has a very specific style that doesn't exactly match what we want so we're looking into crowdfunding the project for a hardcover release with art that matches the feel of the game. Yes, crowdfunding. We're hoping we can get enough money to pay an artist to create some beautiful images for the book and hopefully get a nice hardcover printed up. We're spit balling some of our stretch goals like having an additional book made for extra monsters, and maybe one for new Magical Girl teams, and even dice but it's still in the early planning stages while I learn how crowdfunding is supposed to work. But this brings up the first bit of bad news, it means the game is not going to launch this year. We have a test copy floating around and we're still bug fixing but it's not ready for the discerning eyes of our public just yet. But rest assured, when the crowdfunding starts you will be able to gain early access to the document and begin playing it soon after funding--at least that's the idea.

But why did it take all this time? Especially when I churned out so many short form games and self published a zine not to long ago? Well, life got in the way. Times were tough this year and even though I kept working on my games my professional life outside of them was in constant flux due to some health issues. Sure, there is some good news here. I got married! But soon after I also lost my dog to old age and I've been trying to piece my life back together. He kept me going for years and helped me regulate my emotions so without him it's not been that easy. I have my husband and my cats and some friends to help me through but ultimately things have been rocky. And this whole year I had been dealing with the constant, looming threat of his death which brought up a lot of past trauma. So, things didn't get done as fast as they could have and I'm sorry for that. 

Either way, Tea & Crumpets is finally feature complete and I'm hoping that this time around I can deliver something worthy of the praise I've been getting. I'm very proud of it and super excited to get it to you guys. You just have to be a little patient. 

Love you all,

C.A. Matthews