Moon Pool was originally created for a game jam on a short time table. It was my first time crafting a trifold and it was an amazing learning experience and I received some incredible feedback. Over the course of the month of June I look to add polish, flesh out some ideas, and create a better visual trifold from the bones of Moon Pool. One month should be enough to hone in the trifold and also give a deadline so I don’t endlessly tinker with it. The plan as of right now is to release the polished version to be free as well and to have both the polished and game jam versions available in case anyone is ever curious how the project formed over time or as a learning experience. I’ll list some of the bigger updates to the trifold I hope to plan and look forward to seeing everyone at the end of the month when it’s released :) 

MOON POOL polished version additions: 

Daily Routine: a more concise version of the mining events, performance review, and a small blurb of end of day activities. I plan to flesh out the mining events chart to add more cohesive and thematic events to better tie the narrative together. Give a better outline of the performance review to help wardens administer them. And a small bit of how to wrap up the end of day to build upon the paranoia with social hangs at the mining station. 

Drill Buddy: a list of obvious mining equipment can be slashed and in its place can be a more developed idea on the auto drill and now it’s your drill buddy. Alyssa will contribute some art for the drill buddy, add a more robust stat sheet for it and more events in which it can help/harm the players for industrial equipment fun. 

Map key: an addition of a small map key to hopefully flesh out the mining station and give it personality. This will also help with strengthening the end of day free time the players can spend. 

Timeline/events: creating a timetable of cascading events to escalate the tension and paranoia to help the warden dial in on the themes. I tend to write my adventures like a sandbox and often find the tense moments as I go. Some feedback from others seem to get lost in the narrative as there’s no push so I plan on adding a slew of events that will occur to maximize the paranoia and horror the players will face. 

There’s bound to be more tweaks and changes that I will add as the finished version comes into shape. I have contemplated making a separate pamphlet just for a whole list of mods. That way I can go more in depth on some of the narrative mods a warden can add plus the idea of a monster that lives inside the Moon Pool has intrigued me. I don’t think the monster quite works with the themes of what I was going for so it would be subject to the mod section and I don’t want a good chunk of the trifold to be mods.

I hope those who have enjoyed the initial version will check out the updated one and for any new comers stick around as I plan to release a new trifold after this one hopefully in August/September. Plus the game jam this was submitted to seems like they will run another before years end and I look forward to working on that. So hopefully that can be three sci-fi analog lo-fi vibes that hit my page by the end of the year! 

- Ethan XYZ