So, I've been calling this project The Liz Hack because I have a massive ego, and I couldn't really think of a fun way to encapsulate what made my elfgame different, especially since the setting wasn't anything to write home about (a fallen empire and some ruins, woop de doo). In my head I called it Delve, but then found out that was taken. So I was stuck, until I found out about diwatamni's Deep Water Jam. And then it hit me: I already had something for this. Let me tell you a story about the first time I tried to make a game: Sunk Cost.
The old logo, made by my friend Ashleigh
Once upon a time I was a fan of a podcast named The Adventure Zone. It's a big actual play podcast, I highly recommend the first season, but we're not talking about those. After a (pretty dire) third season, they promised a return to form (the original DM is running again!) with Ethersea.
I loved submarines as a kid, and was lucky enough to actually visit a (docked) one one time in Oregon. This was my jam. Weird horseshoe crab pets, coral golems, a giant eel, fish people? Sign me the fuck up, sailor!
I made it about ten episodes in before I got bored and quit, largely because it felt like nothing was happening (a problem which plagues modern TAZ to this day). The realities of living in an underwater city were brushed over, as were most things: was the city an anarcho-syndicalist utopia or a hustle culture grindset libertarian nightmare world? Just how sinister and abusive was the church that raised one of our heroes? How deadly was the virus that afflicted the community? WHY IS DEVO THE ONLY PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD WHO SPEAKS WITH A FRENCH ACCENT???
So I did what any sane person would do: I decided to make my own game. The initial project was largely a hack of Scum and Villainy, and was a collaborative process by me, my friend Christine, and Ashleigh who made the logo. At the time we called ourselves Bolder at Boulder games, a reference to one of Christine's character's fake historical romance novels, and it was fun.
We came up with the setting of Cardinal Basin, a fantasy world where order had broken down twice: once when the rains came and drowned the world, and the second time when the provisional government uniting the underwater cities fell apart as various settlements declared independence. Now, individual crews of submariners work to make ends meet, whether that be finding rare artifacts for the pod of orca sorcerers (sorcarers?) ruling Liberty, playing the bliss cartels of Hope off of one another, or venturing into the Great Dreck and braving its metal-chewing sharks for a chance to strike it rich.
Sunk Cost: The Second Version won't be done by the end of the jam, but I do hope to have it released and in a playable state. So y'all have that to look forward to.
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