Notices by Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)

Hey look, it's @tkadathran

It's coming.

To be clear, this is still at least a month away from being released, but it is about 95% functional (one very bad pesky bug that I need to sort out, one not dealbreaker but unfortunate bug, lots of Q/A testing) and about 80% complete (I haven't written all the dialog, there's only one set of cut scene triggers, instead of six, there's no music, I need to do lots of Q/A and design the packaging and labels and ...)

But it is a playable, nearly finished, shockingly beautiful game?

I wrote the core game mechanics and designed the basic structure, and then worked with Elvies (https://elvies.itch.io/) to do the artwork and the bulk of the implementation.

Now I'm working on the dialog, the music, and this daggum teleportation bug.

(and, frankly, these days there's a lot of high water)

But yeah! #JupitersGhost the game will be out this summer!

And then, shortly on the heals of that we should have a JG comic, and possibly a JG cartoon!

And, you know, I'll get my ass in gear and release episode 3 of the podcast, and finish my rebuild of the website so it's easier for collaborators to join and participate.

We're doing shared universe scifi stories come hell or high water.

(More screenshots of the beta build. No descriptions.)

Just look at it! I'm so hype for this game!!

I really have to stop using gmail.

Installed debian on a couple of old pixelbooks (eve board).

I wish it was easier to get the firmware flashed to get the google scare screen out, but otherwise, it's a killer little laptop with a beautiful screen.

I got a set of dragon balls for us to sell at the next toy swap.

They're pretty.

Damn y'all, these toys we're making are getting good.

Soon, we'll start making bigger toys, and we'll start doing jointed figures.

"start"

I did my first injection molded piece in 2022. I also did a big handful of resin cast figures in 22.

I learned a lot about injection molding and 3D printing in 2022. We developed a plastics recycling process, we made a bunch of original figures. I was working with a partner, but his life got complicated and things at my day job picked up and I had to put it all back on the shelf for most of 2023.

I did my first jointed figure nearly 20 years ago, and some of the stuff I was doing in 2019 and 2020 was physically larger than anything I've done in the last 4 years.

But 20 years ago I was working exclusively in sculpyy, and for most of the last five years I've been working almost exclusively in resin.

Sorta.

So in 2023 the only toys we made were resin cast. There were some great new designs. I was really happy with them! And I got some of our old designs back in to production, but again in Resin.

I tried to pick up injection molding, but I kept getting stymied by problems with our resin printers and the fact that I am not much of a digital sculpter, and none of my usual contacts were available.

So, between those issues and all the attention my job was taking, I didn't make many toys at all, and definitely not any new injection molds.

And then in 2024 I ended up completely remodeling our cafe and opening a bookstore, and dealing with the fact that I left my day job, and ...

2024 was a mess.

But towards the end of 2024 Sundog and I picked it back up and again and started 2025 with a new line of injection molded toys! And we revived all our previous injection molded toys!

And now things have accelerated.

So we're getting all our old resin cast figures back in to production as injection molded toys.

We're building gang molds for our keshi style figures so we can make 4 or 5 of them at a time.

We found a plastics manufacturer local to us who helped us create a new plastic compound for toymaking, which is just a wild thing to write down and has the potential to genuinely upset the way toys are made, if we can get a few more details worked out.

We've developed a few new techniques for coloring our plastics, and built ourselves a new, much heavier duty injection molding machine, and Sundog has gotten pretty dang good at modeling up new molds.

And we've got a few new designers who have decided to partner with us, so we'll have even more sculpts very soon.

Anyone here have any experience with NY Toy Fair as an attendee or an exhibitor?

We're considering taking Mountain Town Toys to Toy Fair in 2026, both as a way to get our lines in the hands of retail buyers and customers, but also to get our manufacturing services and design services and new plastics in front of other designers, as a boutique option for smaller runs, as an alternative to PVC toys and overseas factories.

This seems like an ambitious thing to try for, but I can't tell if it's Ambitious like a thing we could reach or "Ambitious" like something we shouldn't actually try to do.

So, any experience with toy fair? Wanna talk about it?