Hey! No Images? Click here Hi everybody!Hope you don't mind me jumping into your inbox real quick. This is gonna be a short update... but hopefully a good one! As the subject line implies, first order of business is news about the Fullbright shop, so let's get right to it. And then... talks! And games!! Keep reading, friend. Here we go. The Fullbright shop needs a nap!We've been running our own merch shop since before Tacoma launched, and it's been a really fun way to make some cool physical items for y'all (and us, frankly) to enjoy. But now that we're early in dev on our next project and won't have new stuff to share for quite some time.. we're gonna put the Fullbright shop on semi-permanent vacation! We don't know if or when the shop will be coming back, but if and when it does, it won't have our current selection of merch in it-- so if you've had your eye on any of our current Gone Home, Tacoma or Fullbright stuff, now's the time! We're taking the opportunity to put the shop to bed and have one less thing to worry about... and in this case, our one-less-thing-to-worry-about is your gain. Because now through the end of the month (when we shut the shop down on Dec. 3) everything we're selling over there is marked down as low as it's ever gonna go, most stuff more than half-off... and, additionally, one of our exclusive Fullbright mountain logo stickers pictured above is included with every order during the wind-down period! It's been great to be able to make a bunch of cool enamel pins, patches, prints, and other rad stuff for y'all to enjoy... and if you've been holding off picking up something we have in stock, treat yourself to something nice today and get a free limited-edition sticker in the process. We hope you'll enjoy what we have on offer if you decide to go ahead and grab one or two things while they last! On to the games~I mentioned games, right? Specifically, games that Nina helped summon into existence! Nina Freeman, along with being a Designer at Fullbright, continues to make rad personal and commission games outside the company-- and she even organizes her streaming community to join in! It's really cool. And it results in very fun (and funny) small games for you to enjoy~ First up is Grass Stains, which we talked about in our last newsletter-- and which is now available for you to download and play with your friends as part of the Fantastic Arcade 2018 bundle on itch! Grass Stains is a local multiplayer game about kids playing backyard soccer-- and being jerks about it (or not!) It's fun, funny, and kinetic, and is just one of the very cool games that were commissioned for Fantastic Arcade this year that you can get when you grab the Fantastic Arcade 2018 bundle on itch. Nina collaborated with friends, including Aaron from Fullbright, to make Grass Stains, and you should totally grab a friend of your own and check it out. Game on! And pictured at the top of this section is Beach Date, Nina's entry in the Sunset Jam, a game jam she organized with her Twitch streaming community this month! Nina got her start doing jam games, and now she's paying it forward by organizing the occasional jam with her stream community, and participating as well. Beach Date is a vignette game about just that-- a funny, silly date on the beach with her collaborator on the game, Jake Jeffries. It's sweet, simple, and absurdly hilarious... isn't that what love is all about? Well, that and pouring Sun Chips and Wine all over each other. But what about games none of us even worked on??I've been playing a really good game the last night or so-- Fortune-499 by AP Thompson, with art by Jenny Jiao Hsia. It's a fantastically cute and clever game about an office witch just trying to get by in the big city-- until a host of monsters invades her office in an attempt to mine out all the "human resources" in a "hostile takeover" from another dimension. And the core mechanic-- get this-- takes the classic who's-going-to-pay-for-lunch deciding game of rock, paper, scissors and makes it actually interesting by turning it into a probability-based deckbuilding strategy game (!) Also, the art and writing are adorable and hilarious. And one last thing... ✨I n s p i r a t i on ✨As also mentioned in our last newsletter, our Art Director Leighton was the opening keynote speaker at this year's GCAP conference in Melbourne, Australia-- and now even people who weren't anywhere near Australia in October can enjoy her talk... online! The conference theme this year was "The Walls We've Built Ourselves," and Leighton's keynote addresses the theme via the walls of cynicism and postmodern smirk that often limit what games can say-- and advocates for the use of metamodernist principles to approach our players with a new kind of openness and compassion... things we could all use a little more of right now. And now it's time for... Portland Stuff!!This has been a short and to-the-point newsletter, but I can't just leave you without any Portland Stuff, can I?? Today let's talk about our city's mascot: The Portland Oregon Sign!If you visit Portland today, you'll note our iconic Portland Oregon neon sign at the west end of the Burnside Bridge. It's a beautiful piece of civic art in its own right-- and it has quite the history, having gone through many iterations in its 70+ year history. Did you know, this sign has only read "Portland Oregon" since the year 2010? When originally constructed, the sign was an advertisement for White Satin Sugar, the logo appearing inside an outline of the state of Oregon-- and soon after was acquired and changed to advertise White Stag Sportswear, adding the iconic leaping deer to the top of the sign. Decades later, it was changed once again to advertise a different business-- Made in Oregon, a company that sells products and souvenirs made right here in the state of Oregon. Perhaps more than ever, this is when the sign came to feel like a symbol of the city and state itself. Finally, after many years of dispute over the who exactly was responsible for the maintenance (and electric bill) of the sign, the city stepped in and took over stewardship of the sign as a piece of public property-- and updated it to what will likely be its final form, the Portland Oregon sign we know and love today. And, as it has since 1959, every Christmas season a bright red light is lit on the tip of the stag's nose, a little holiday cheer in the form of a nod to Rudolph and his festive, rosy schnoz. Thanks once more, friend, for subscribing to the Fullbright newsletter! We always appreciate you joining us, and we hope you'll drop by the Fullbright shop and grab something before we close it down! We'll be back with more news and updates next time. Til then! |