Knockoff is a solo journaling game where players cut and paste fabric patterns to create a dress. It's about a desperate fast fashion designer named Marcos, who discovers a cursed dress design from an estate sale.
Knockoff is a solo journaling game where players cut and paste fabric patterns to create a dress. It's about a desperate fast fashion designer named Marcos, who discovers a cursed dress design from an estate sale.
It’s 2024. Fashion Week is only a couple of months away in New York City, and your boss is expecting you to come up with a design that will make an impact on the company’s bottom line. You moved to the city thinking you’d be the next Willi Smith or Dapper Dan, but you ended up at this company, where you scour the internet for other people’s designs to put onto T-shirts to make enough money to pay for rent. Hopefully this opportunity from your boss will finally put your name on the map.
Knockoff is a story of a desperate and burnt out fast fashion designer named Marcos, who discovers a cursed dress design from an estate sale. It is a solo tabletop journaling game where the player (you) will be cutting out fabric textures and gluing them over a croquis (a drawing of a fashion model). The fabrics that you choose determine the outcome of the story.
Knockoff is the second book in the Mephistopheles Trilogy, after Forgery.
Interested in checking out the prequel, Forgery? You can find more information on it here.
The player will be inhabiting Marcos’s point of view as you read about his story. It uses two main mechanics:
The player will be asked to journal their character’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions at specific prompts.
There is also a choose-your-own-path style of immersive storytelling using the dress that the player is creating, allowing them to choose the outcome for Marcos.
This story will ask the player to cut out a fabric pattern to glue onto the croquis, so keep a pair of scissors and glue or tape handy. Players do not need to have a background in fashion to create their dress. They just need to follow the directions to create their masterpiece.
The game comes in a ~125-150 page book that has 27 chapters that you will go through in a choose-your-own-path style of play. As you choose from the options provided, you will fill in noted parts of the picture with colors of your choice.
This cover is digitally rendered and does not represent the final product.
If you feel conflicted over some of the options provided, you may roll 1D6 to determine which option you go with.
For example:
As you cut and paste, who or what do you think about?
On a 1-2: How the cashier at the fabric store was rude to you. Cut a piece of woven fabric and glue over the space labeled 1.
On a 3-4: How your best friend has been ignoring your text messages. Cut a piece of knit fabric and glue over the space labeled 1.
On a 5-6: The surge of delight when you prick your finger with your needle. Cut a piece of non-woven fabric and glue over the space labeled 1.
At the end, you'll have an artifact from the game that you had a hand in creating.
The tone of this game is dark comedy with horror elements. Some touchstones for the comedic tones could be Search Party (television series, 2016), Ingrid Goes West (movie, 2017) or Not Okay (movie, 2022), while the horror elements could be reminiscent of Channel Zero (television series, 2016) or Archive 81 (television series, 2022).
Other influences include:
Eyes of Laura Mars (movie, 1978)
Stage Fright (movie, 1978)
Amadeus (movie, 1984)
Helter Skelter (movie, 2012)
Neon Demon (movie, 2016)
Phantom Thread (movie, 2017)
In Fabric (movie, 2018)
Specific fashion influences include:
Dapper Dan
Willi Smith
Scott Barrie
Ann Lowe
Stephen Burrows
Arthur McGee
Lex Blank
Asher Levine
Aun Helden
The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Talley
Anok Yai walking for Thierry Mugler SS24 Collection
Mugler’s Alien Hypersense starring Anok Yai
Alexander Mcqueen’s Dante Fall-Winter collection from 1996
Alexander Mcqueen’s Joan Fall-Winter collection from 1998
Alexander Mcqueen’s Voss Spring-Summer collection from 2001
Not all of these themes will be covered in this crowdfunding campaign (though hints of them might pop up, especially in the video), the game does have the following:
Emotionally abusive parents
Racism
Childhood trauma
Manipulative relationships
Being involved in a crime
Paranormal horror
Alcohol and drug use
Smoking
Suicide
Murder
Gore (there is gory imagery and photography)
Self mutilation
Body horror
Sex
Obsessive thoughts towards your character and other forms of parasocial relationships
This game is not for children and is for an audience that is 18 or older.
We are currently only offering shipping to the United States and Canada, due to the unpredictable circumstances of increasing costs, in an attempt to mitigate as much risk for us as publishers and creatives as possible. We apologize that we're unable to provide everyone access to this game immediately, but we will be working with our global distributor when the game is released.
Some alternatives for backers outside of the United States and Canada are:
Backing at the digital level (Fashionista).
Purchasing the digital version of the game via DriveThruRPG when it's available.
Following us on BackerKit, so we can provide updates on when our distributor has access to the physical games.
All shipping fees will be added on after the campaign is over.
In the meantime, here are the estimated shipping fees in USD:
Influencer
United States: $8
Canada: $15
Maven, Visionary
United States: $12
Canada: $19
House of Fashion, Icon
United States: $18
Canada: $25
These estimated shipping fees are subject to change based on the rising costs of shipping in the future.
Wanna get that $200 Icon pledge level, but you can't pay in full just yet? We have pay over time enabled, so you can have the option of paying in increments.
If you decide to Pay Over Time, please note that:
You will not have access to the pledge manager survey until you have paid in full.
Your rewards will not be shipped to you until you have paid in full.
Partial payments cannot be refunded.
Again, remember that we will not be charging shipping until after the campaign!
Pending any more global disasters, we expect to have all rewards delivered by February 2026.
But on the bright side...
The manuscript: IS DONE!
The editing: IS DONE!
The interior chapter header graphics and front cover: IS DONE!
The layout: Is with the graphic designer! Jon is working hard to get the doc ready for all our backers.
Manufacturing and printing: Once we have the digital proofs and physical proofs signed off from Whatz Games, we'll be getting the full print run sent to us.
Shipping: Obviously, we need the games in our hands first, so this will be our final stage.
Other pledge level items: Forgery already exists, so we'll be shipping that out with Knockoff as soon as it's ready.
The digital PDF version of the book is actually finished! We just need to get it sorted for print, which brings us to...
A majority of our risks lie in the timelines for manufacturing the game and shipping it to us in a timely manner so we can distribute the copies to our backers. Luckily, we’ve partnered with our printer on several projects in the past (such as Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, Battle of the Boybands, Deimos Academy and Forgery). We will also be planning ahead and getting all other components manufactured during the length of the BackerKit to get a head start.
