It has been a busy last couple of weeks here at Don't Torture Puppies headquarters. Having wrapped up playtesting, we dove headfirst into polishing and editing the writing and art. Carolyn created three unique pieces for the game (including the beautiful cover I'm about to share) and I can say that each one brought me so much delight. Ater all the stock Corporate Memphis art we've been using, feast your eyes upon the custom Corporate Memphis art that Carolyn has created.
The game was sent to a local worker owned cooperative printshop on Wednesday and it's already done and ready to be picked up today! I can't say this enough, but support your local worker coops, they are the best!
Also after rigorous and ruthless editing we simplified some systems in the game, leading the zine being a few spreads shorter than we anticipated. This left me wiggle room in the budget to do something fun. Of course this means a sticker for all physical backers! Don't worry if you have already gotten a "ceritifed puppy-torture free" sticker-- this new sticker design with one of Carolyn's puppies as the star and will be in addition to your already purchased stickers.
We've sent out a smoke test survey tonight, and will be sending out the full survey tomorrow. We'll start fulfilling rewards early next week-- so keep an eye on your inbox.
Thank you everyone for your support! Allison (on behalf of the Don't Torture Puppies team)
We're so close to the end of this campaign, and the team is delighted with how many people seem to be so passionate about not torturing puppies! Thank you, everyone for your support.
On top of reaching our funding goal, the Don't Torture Puppies community has funded thirty-five print copies of the game being donated to local zine libraries, educational institutions, and labour movements! We'll be sure to keep you up to date on their distribution.
As a final treat before the campaign ends, we wanted to share this article that a playtester of Don't Torture Puppies sent us. We promise we're not prophetic; capitalism is just predictable.
It has been exciting to watch the campaign as it continues to gain support. On top of running the campaign, we here at Gal Pal Games have been pushing forward with game development to make sure we keep things on schedule!
We've started roughing out the layout
Look at all the Corporate Memphis Goodness
We've been playtesting Our last play test had players forming a business that created both taxidermy rats and cute little outfits for them to wear.
The Values and executive titles of the company
The company ended up with the values:
Don't Torture Puppies
Resonsibly reuse fabric
Honor the sacrifice of the lab rats
Local jobs for local Canadians
It was a joy to watch players justify that they weren't violating their core values by pointing out that technically dogs weren't puppies, argue vehemently over what it meant to "honour a sacrifice", and exclude a lot of people from their definition of a "local Canadian".
Developing a dedicated consent and safety tool Don't Torture Puppies is a unique game in that a subject that is often a hard line for players (torturing animals-- specifically cute puppies) is at the core of the main mechanics. In her past game, Drink My Sweat, Dora developed a safety tool for players to calibrate not just the subject of what is happening, but also the level of detail to which it is described. She is working on developing this tool to specifically fit Don't Torture Puppies.
Thank you for joining us on this journey! Gal Pal Games
Thank you so much for your support of this very funny (and also a little sad) game about what it feels like to try to survive under capitalism.
As a celebration of fudning, we wanted to share a story on the origins of this project.
Don’t Torture Puppies is a game inspired by the frustration of struggling with our experiences as workers in and around those “I’m one of the good ones” businesses. It is a game that came into being because of my unwavering belief that any friendship is improved by locking yourselves in a cabin in the middle of the woods and designing a game together. And finally, it is a game designed completely because of a really dorky game design joke.
For those of you who haven’t heard of the concept of “TTP”, it stands for “Time to Penis”. This is a term in (traditionally video game) design that measures how quickly a player will go from having creatively expressive tools to making a penis out of them. Is there any place in the game where they can draw? Arrange stickers? Dig a hole? They will all be done in the shape of a penis. Do they have level design tools? Someone will make a level that looks like a giant phallus, (probably quite quickly). Google it. It’s a real thing.
On a short car ride together, the designers of Don’t Dorture Puppies came up with the concept of TTPT (Time to Puppy Torture)-- which is the amount of time it would take someone, under pressure from capitalism, to torture a puppy while still claiming to be a good person. We have (of course) used puppy torture as an absurd metaphor for things that we see happening everyday in businesses around us, but the concept really resonated, and before it was a structure game it was just a concept we used to make light of extremely taxing situations in extremely challenging work environments.
We enjoyed coming up with concepts like a Chief Morale Officers (a position whose job it is to just make everyone know that no matter what they did, it was the right thing for the world) or Puppy Torture Offset (where you can donate to a shelter to get Puppy-Torture neutral certification if you ever did happen to torture a puppy) and wanted others to be able to vent their frustrations/ analyze their relationship with class struggle through this light-hearted lens.
Thanks to all of you Don’t Torture Puppies is going to be a real game with a print run! I wish I could be a fly on the wall in every single game and hear about all of the wild and wacky ways you definitely don’t torture puppies.
On a final note: Zine Month is a time for independent designers operating outside of these kinds of exploitative spaces to get attention for their own cool projects, and support each other in making that happen. One project we’re excited to support is the Black Tower Hack, which allows you to tell stories in a world reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, where an avenging hero chases a mysterious figure across the desert of a strange, dying world. This project might sound very different from Don’t Torture Puppies, and it is! But we see similarities as well: these are both games that tell stories about people making do in a world that is fractured in weird ways. And also it just looks like fun.
We’re doing a cross-collab with them; since both games have funded if you back both games, you’ll get some free extras: a little Black Tower Hack for your Don’t Torture Puppies, and a little Don’t Torture Puppies for your Black Tower Hack. Give them a look!
–Allison (for Gal Pal Games and whole Don’t Torture Puppies team)
