Just a quick update to let you know that Georgia and I have got the materials we need to start packing and posting your rewards.
This means you will be charged for shipping in the next 48-72hrs. Please make sure all details of your order are correct, as orders and addresses will be locked at the same time.
I'm really excited for these zines (and cassettes) to land safely in your hands, all around the world.
I'm very pleased to let you know that you can now access the digital zine PDF of The Deepest Dark and audiobook via Backerkit. This includes solo mode! You should have an email directing you to the digital download. If you have any issues, as always, please let me know.
We've also revised our test prints of the physical zines and cassettes and put in the main orders, which means we'll be starting to post them over the next 2-3 weeks. A few notes on that. First of all - once shipping fees have been collected, your order will be locked and you won't be able to change it.
We've been waiting to have the final versions of zines and cassettes so we can calculate shipping as accurately as possible. EU-based folks, there might be an additional charge of 3-6 Euros due to some new regulations coming in which affect UK to EU shipping, but you'll be notified of the exact amount as soon as we know.
That's all for now - I'll send the next update once we're ready to start shipping, and hopefully everyone will receive their rewards no later than the end of August.
Thank you again for all your support. I'll leave you with this beautiful additional illustration Georgia did for us!
We hope this email finds you well and enjoying the coming Summer, staying cool, safe and hydrated.
It's been a somewhat difficult time for team Deepest Dark - Ella's Nan passed away, and Ella herself has been in and out of hospital with various severe medical issues.
Luka has also had some trouble hitting our layout deadlines due to issues with his other projects (though do check out his duet ttrpg, Shadow/Giant, coming soon as a print edition through PlusOneExp!)
This means The Deepest Dark digital zine is delayed, but will be with you by the end of June. We're hoping it'll be with you much sooner than that, and we're really grateful for your patience.
However, it's not all bad news! We have a lot of goodies to give you, including:
The Deepest Dark soundtrack album by Amber Devereux*
The Deepest Dark short story, written and in audio, by Georgia Cook
Penny Dragon, my all-ages TTRPG, designed and layed out by Max Degan
We're also very excited to be welcoming the wonderful Fio Trethewey on board. Fio is going to be doing some detailed character sheet layout design for us. The character sheet pack will be sent out as a digital file with the main zine, and thereafter will be available for free through my Itch page (gejwatts.itch.io).
This will take you to Bandcamp, where you can download the album. If you have a Bandcamp account, you can also add it to your collection on Bandcamp.
Please note that your order must be locked in order for you to claim the soundtrack album. If you haven't filled in the survey and locked your order, and your card hasn't been charged, you will not be able to claim the album until you've done these things.
As always, if you have any issues redeeming or finding any of your rewards, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
I'll leave you with this very cool stream - the A side of our soundtrack album is 5 tracks that Amber composed and which you can watch them composing on the TinCanAudio Youtube archive of their Twitch channel. The B side of the album, however, is a live performance that Amber did on stream. It's so cool watching the magic of it come to life, much like it did during our actual play streams which they live scored.
P.S Amber is a stretch goal composer for friends of the team, Macguffin & Co, on their recently launched Kickstarter campaign, The Bad Year. It's 52 inter-connected horror oneshots written by Jonny Sims and it's going to be great. Check it out!
Thank you so much for your patience whilst we set up your backer surveys behind the scenes. For the unfamiliar, these surveys allow us to collect your information - like emails and shipping addresses for distributing rewards, and they also give you an opportunity to add additional items to your pledge.
Our 'Smoke Test' surveys have gone out first to about 5% of backers, and the remaining surveys will follow in the next week. If you haven't received a survey by the end of April please let me know.
A reminder, we'll be charging shipping fees closer to the date that we actually post physical items - likely in late July.
We're aiming to deliver all digital rewards by the end of May this year (2026), and to have posted all physical rewards by the end of August 2026.
In terms of Solo Mode - this will be included as part of the main text of The Deepest Dark digital and physical zines. This means you don't need to add it as a separate item, it'll be included if you've ordered the zine.
If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out!
First and foremost, a huge and heartfelt thank you to all of you for supporting this campaign. It means the world to us and, even better, it means we get to keep making independent art.
Apologies for a slightly delayed update, because we're UK based the campaign ended late Friday evening and we needed the weekend to rest.
What's Next?
Our goal is to have all digital rewards - including Solo Mode and the album - ready to share by the end of May.
Physical rewards will take a bit more time - for both printing and shipping, but at the moment we're planning to have delivered all physical rewards - including cassette tapes - by the end of August.
The game itself has been playtested and the text is 90% locked. Now that we know we can pay him, Luka, our layout designer, wil be getting started on formatting the text so that it looks beautiful in the full zine. Georgia has done the vast majority of our illustrations, but she's going to be available for any additional pieces - as well as illustrating the cassette tape covers.
Meanwhile, now that Ella's happy with the base game, she's going to be reaching out to our cross-collaborator Matthew Ayers to fine tune the solo mode - thank you all for making this happen!
Overall, I'd put our progress to delivery currently at about 60-65%, and I'm very confident we'll hit our targets on time. I really can't wait to share the finished game with you all.
For now, thank you again, and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
