After the wait ...

I started talking about After the Accident in February 2017. 4 years already! Time flies!

I released a beta of the game, and I found out about other people playing it. I collected very positive reviews that boosted me in my creative process.

And then other projects came along, and the game went (on my side) in the background. But there was always that little thing that lingered. That urge to get back to it. To finish this project. To give it a definitive shape.*

Taking inspiration from the best

In the meantime, I earned some experience about publishing a game project. And I've discovered two ways of playing that brought me closer to the experience I wanted to implement with After the Accident.

First, there was For the Queen. And the Descending from the Queen games. Including my own creations. By dint of reading this type of games and analyzing them, I learned to ask these famous "Loaded Questions", which raise a stake just by their formulation. The PBTA games also helped me in this respect, but clearly, For the Queen was a big trigger.

There was also the temptation, still alive very recently, to propose After the Accident in the form of a card game. This has not totally disappeared, but (I'll come back to this later) it has diminished. I have a prototype of a card game inspired by the ergonomics of For The Queen, with a deck of cards with numbered instructions to follow, and all the prompts of the game in the form of cards.

And then, there was also the discovery of the Wretched & Alone galaxy. These solo games are similar to After the Accident, because they are solo games with a focus on narrative and they make use of a series of prompts from a card draw. And what I liked and enjoyed about these games was the breadth of stories and themes.

But none of these games offer printable/cuttable cards. Because it would be tedious to do that for all these games. Because having a deck of cards and a reference sheet at hand is not that complicated. And I also have other ideas for stories and themes that I would like to explore through the After the Accident system. Producing a game in Print N Play is interesting, I won't deny that. My demos of Final Lap prove it. But in the current context (pandemic, virtual meetings) and in the idea of offering different games, it would limit the game audience. So, I'm going back on this idea of cards.

A booklet ... to start

So I started to think about the idea of a booklet, to present this first game. Something I could have proposed to a #ZineQuest, for example. Because I liked this format for the Wretched & Alone games. Because it's easy to use, whether it's a PDF or a print version. Because maybe I could produce a few copies or offer it as a print-on-demand.

I decided to push the booklet thing to the limit. With a "parchment" background, a script-like font, and arrows, annotations, highlights... To avoid ruining your printer, a printer-friendly version is also available. And it's all free!

Now, the booklet structure is also interesting to extend the system. Because some text blocks are about the system, some about the story and the theme. And so, I will be able to propose the same structure by modifying the general presentation (and thus have fun with the layout ^^) and only some blocks, while keeping a general structure for the games.

After the accident ...

Because I want to propose other games. And I want others to take this system, adapt it, torture it to propose other themes, other stories. Wretched & Alone has refined my thinking on this. So I'm going to propose a SRD for hackers and creators. And the system will be open to everyone.

I may also push towards a Creation Jam, here on itch.io. Wait & See.

And I'm not done with After the accident. There might be a print 'n play version, but there will certainly be an extended version, with several ready-to-play game settings. Settings that I've explored, that I imagine will be intriguing to experience, and maybe a few surprises. We'll see.

In the meantime, if you're getting into it, feel free to talk about it here and there, to share your experience or even your story itself!