Hey, nostalgics!

It’s been a little while since our last proper MemoryCore update, which means we’ve accumulated quite a few things to share. Sorry for that, but summer holidays in Italy are sort of religious.

With those gone, we are now back to our punk routine: writing, editing, playtesting, and working on the visual and rules language tying all six games together.

Solid State Machine, in particular, has been keeping us busy and, as the first game moving through the entire development pipeline, it’s helping us refine a lot of things that will make every other MemoryCore game cleaner and faster to develop. 

Meanwhile, pre-production keeps moving forward at the factory, with some new goodies to show you as well! So: new software, updated firmware, and some fresh hardware. Let’s dive in!

Let’s start with the big one: Solid State Machine is in very good shape. A chained Claudio completed the first draft of the full campaign and it was extremely solid (pun intended); Cob went through it with a complete content-editing pass, and everything then went back into Claudio’s hands for revisions and a full campaign playtest. And the good news is: it went really well. Cue photo dump:

Kudos to Cappuccino, who stayed with us through the whole playthrough and gave us some great feedback on patting, snack-giving, and, most importantly, some truly excellent tail waggings!

There’s still some fine-tuning to do, but we’re getting close to sharing the campaign with you in Beta, so those of you eager to get Solid State Machine onto your tables can play it and send us your feedback.

A note before you start polishing your sneaking suit: Beware of the spoilers! Playing the Beta obviously means spoiling the entire campaign for yourself. We recommend it mainly to GMs who don’t mind knowing everything in advance, and ideally to those happy to run it at least twice: once in Beta and then again in its final form.

Beta calls, work-in-progress material, development notes, and feedback discussions will happen primarily on the Discord channel. It’s simply a much better place for quick, informal back-and-forth than campaign updates, so check that out: we’ll let you know there as soon as the Beta is ready for infiltration, in about a couple of weeks or so, may be a little more depending if some assets (like the new Exploration Map) will be ready.

Working on Solid State Machine has also pushed forward a lot of work that applies to MemoryCore as a whole. As the first game to go through the full writing → editing → playtesting pipeline, SSM has forced us to answer questions about how information should be organized, how rules should be presented, and which visual conventions should remain consistent across all six games (especially regarding moving through different components, something most RPgs tend to avoid entirely).

In other words: system-wide refactoring. You’ll see plenty of it in the Solid State Machine Beta, but here’s one example already: the revised MemoryCards.

The concepts haven’t changed, but the presentation has. We’ve streamlined the information and cleaned up the hierarchy to make the cards faster and easier to read at the table.

You may also notice the little 1-, 2-, and 3-square indicators beneath the pixel-art illustrations of weapons and gear. Those tiny symbols make every compatible MemoryCard across all six games work with Extinction Protocol’s limited inventory system without cluttering the cards with extra rules text. If you never mix cartridges, you can completely ignore them. It’s a small detail, but it solves an issue Claudio and Cob were facing, trying to make the six games genuinely interconnected without forcing that interconnectedness on anyone.

Look at those cloth bags! And those purple markers! These are still pre-production prototypes, so some details may change before the final version, but we’re very happy with how they’re turning out. And there’s more coming soon. Over the next few updates, we expect to show you additional pre-production samples, including the MemoryCore box, the custom dice (which should arrive this week!) and the lenticular outer sleeve for the Platinum box.

Behind the scenes we're currently putting the finishing touches on our BackerKit Pledge Manager, where you'll be able to review or upgrade your pledge, confirm your details and add any available extras you might want. We're aiming to have it ready very soon (tm), so keep an eye on your inbox for an email from BackerKit with your invitation. We'll post another dedicated update as soon as the Pledge Manager is live.

Sincerely,
The Horrible team