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2022: Balance

mouseholepress.substack.com

2022: Balance

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Jack ~ Mousehole Press
Dec 30, 2022
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Hey everyone! Thanks once again for subscribing to my newsletter.

This month, I'm looking back over the year we've had & thinking ahead to the next.


Mousehole Press—2022 Year in Review

Last year I said I'd like to try and write more than one game in 2022. I didn't do that.

Instead, I feel a lot better about focusing on one big project instead—finding a rhythm and feeling good about it. Ultimately, unless I make some major changes to my life priorities, I’m always going to be scrambling if I push my design work too hard.

a rough sketch with colours, showing a witch overlooking a gathering in the distance. huge trees flank the houses

It helps, of course, that Koriko was a blowout success. I'm really enjoying working through the writing and design at a sustainable pace. Moving towards Ulysses for writing and leaving Adobe behind for Affinity (still 40% off till 25th January!) both also feel like practical changes for my projects going forward.

an animated gif showing lots of envelopes and packages

In a similar vein: while I did a good amount of sales on my physical store this year, I quickly got very bored of packing and shipping. With the limited time I have to work on games stuff, I really don't want to be dealing with envelopes and missing packages. I'll be looking for a new distribution partner in 2023 when my store reopens.

a player sheet for the Notorious game. lots of text fields in a mock-CRT computer terminal

Finally, I did my first bit of ‘proper’ contract work this year, delivering layout for Jason Price’s Notorious. Jason and I hang out every week and have done all kinds of work on each other’s games, but this one definitely moved into a ‘job’ more than a favour. An enjoyable job though—it was fun to be able to focus on the layout alone for a change, instead of it being something I do to procrastinate from tough design decisions 😅

Plus, it was absolutely wonderful to see both of our games (The Slow Knife and Notorious) make Gizmodo’s 20 Best Tabletop Roleplaying Games from 2022. List buds!

~

Oh! Finally finally, I'm currently running a bundle sale where you can get all of my published games for $25. 100% of sales from this bundle will be donated to Magic Breakfast, a charity that provide healthy breakfasts to children and young people in the UK who arrive at school too hungry to learn. It's live for another week or so.


a mushroom and carrot wellington, on a festive table

We're deep in the festive hibernation period right now, but please enjoy this picture of a very tasty mushroom wellington we made for Christmas lunch. HNY!


Thanks for supporting me through another year :)

J

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