Welcome to the Seven Day Games Newsletter! This is the first issue of a monthly newsletter where we’ll keep you up to date about what we are doing.
We have a big letter to share this time, but right now some introductions are in order!
Seven Day Games is a tabletop game company based in northern Indiana. We came together in 2022 and we plan to create and release a handful of new games each year.
One part of our plan is to continue developing an original role playing game engine called LifeWord, and a game that uses that engine (Dimheaven).
Another part of the plan is to release some amazing tabletop games. One is called FoldWright and the other Eden Dawning. Our main focus (for now) will be print and play games.
Who Are We?
Adam Glass
Adam is Head of Operations for Seven Day Games. He's been in the gaming business for nearly ten years. Some of you may remember him from Lost Age Games. For the past two years he's been simultaneously recuperating and working on a new game project. He moonlights as a game designer for Lowen Games and has done graphic design for a wide range of projects.
Matt Gavenda
Matt is Director of Sales for Seven Day Games. He’s been running his own design agency, Ambit Design, for almost 10 years and has been in the gaming industry for just over three. He plays all manner of games and sports with his four kids and the range of his hobbies are endless. Hailing from Western New York and Indiana, he's an interesting mix of the two areas.
RC Pickering
RC is Lead Game Designer and Developer for Seven Day Games. He has been in the hobby game world since 2013, but has been playing games since he was 4. He has hosted a monthly game night for many years. His favorite games are Carcassonne, Castles of Burgundy, and Clank! He has many designs in the works ranging from party games to roll and writes and deep strategy games.
Josh Jones
Josh is Lead Playtester for Seven Day Games and contributing writer for the blog. He is the planting pastor of Three Trees (a small church in Hartford City, Indiana). He loves strategy games and the relational, community-building aspect of board gaming. In his free time, Josh is currently developing a game based on the Biblical year of jubilee.
We are pleased to introduce ourselves and hopefully we can meet around a gaming table someday!
Why Seven Day Games?
Part of the philosophy behind starting fresh is simply that, starting fresh. And having friends to shoulder some of the load is invaluable. Working together, we'll get infinitely more and better things done and that's good news for everyone!
Also, with our focus being on print and plays, the plan right now is to do seven day long crowdfunding campaigns for most of our games. We say most, because by necessity these things may have to change in the future.
Our motto is: Fun games, beautiful art, unique play, new ideas.
Fun games and beautiful art are obvious, but what about the other two? We want our games to be original. Why play our games when you can play the same thing somewhere else? We want our ideas to be different from everything else out there, so when you pick up one of our games, you’ll know you’ll be playing something you won’t find anywhere else.
Another guiding principal is that our games are wholesome. There are plenty of edgy, sexually explicit and grimdark options available today. Our games will always strive to be interesting and thoughtful experiences, but we'll stay away from the excessively violent and obscene.
Most of our games are merely vehicles for play, and especially in the case of our roleplaying games, it will be up to you to decide the content.
What about Life & Legend and Fugue from Lost Age Games, have you forgotten about those?
We didn't forget. In fact, we have some news about those games!
Life & Legend has been undergoing a major transformation over this past year. We’ve worked on the game and we're glad to finally say that a 2nd edition will not only be a reality, but is almost ready to go. There have been lots of tweaks and fixes, including the biggest news...
Life & Legend is now a journaling rpg!
This was (in our opinion) what Life & Legend always wanted to be and with the inclusion of the new LifeWord engine it finally is! If you aren't familiar with journaling rpgs, Colostle and Thousand Year Vampire are good examples.
Another great thing about this new edition is that it will still be fully playable as a card game without any of the rpg stuff.
Right now, everything has been thoroughly playtested and balanced, we're just waiting to get the final art finished for the character cards. That’s right! Character cards! Players will now be able to control a character in the game. Here’s a sneak preview of the new character card. The game now also uses an action selection system and we’ve replaced some text with icons:
We intend to have another Kickstarter and release the full game (with expansions!) as a commercial print and play. If there is enough interest we may be able to make a manufactured version further down the road.
And Fugue?
Fugue will be available to buy on our website as soon as the store goes live. During the Kickstarter a couple years ago, we weren't able to release all of the micro-expansion stretch goals we had hoped to. In the near future we will make these available as print and plays.
What can you tell us about the upcoming games?
Expect to hear a lot more about these in the future. In the meantime...
Foldwright: RC has been working on this one for a couple years now and frankly, we've never seen anything like it. It's a roll & write and we bet you've never seen anything like it before either.
Eden Dawning: This is a solo card game about a lone drone terraforming distant worlds (with some optional co-op and competitive elements thrown in). As you complete the missions a wild story unfolds.
LifeWord: This is a narrative, rules-light roleplaying game that handles gamemastering "differently". It can be played almost anywhere...even while you're playing another roleplaying game.
Dimheaven: A surreal sci-fi tactical and narrative rpg hybrid.
Hopefully that piqued your interest! Check out the front page of our website for more info about these games.
Tell us a little more about the future.
Since we’re ringing in 2023, we have a few resolutions for Seven Day Games. We want to hit the ground running this January and start promoting our games and building our community. Here is the timeline we’re holding to:
A big disclaimer is that we have to take things one day at a time. There will undoubtedly be a lot of failing forward. As always, we'll do our best with what we've been given. Please be patient with us.
Estimated Timeline
Q1 -Q2 (2023)Launch newsletter
Bring Online store to life
Release Fugue micro-expansions
Release Life & Legend 2E
Q3 - Q4 (2023)
Release Foldwright
Release LifeWord Engine
Q1 - Q2 (2024):
Release Eden Dawning
Q3 - Q4 (2024):
Release Dimheaven
Newsletter and Blog
Our schedule is to release a blog each week on our website. Adam will be writing most of these. They’ll focus on our games and their development, but Adam will also spend some time walking down memory lane and sharing a few of his formative experiences with rpgs. He's calling this series Forgotten Lore.
Josh will also contribute to the blog. His monthly series The Ethical Gamer will focus on navigating certain issues that arise during play from a biblical and ethical perspective (for example, how to be a gracious winner, what are the ethics of lying in a game, etc). Each article will include helpful tips for families with gamer children.
There may also be the occasional review or interview.
At the end of each month, we'll release an issue of this newsletter recapping everything. As we go, we'll add new features until this is the best newsletter ever.
Our Approach to Social Media
We're taking a different approach to social media than what many companies do. The consensus is to be very active on all the major platforms and compete for that small slice of audience with diminishing returns.
We’ve found this to be exhausting and want to try something else.
While we aren't going to completely forego social media (that would be silly), we simply aren't going to focus on it. Instead, we want to encourage you to sign up for our newsletter and visit our website, where you'll be guaranteed to stay up to date with everything we're doing.
As far as social media goes, we have a Facebook and an Instagram page (we may drop the Instagram). We have a YouTube that we may utilize, but any videos will be hosted on our website. We're using Substack to host our newsletter. We've also talked about expanding our Discord. This will be about it unless something changes.
We invite you to subscribe to this newsletter as it will be the primary means of communication we’ll be using. Of course, you’re always welcome to connect with us on the other social media platforms as well!
In Closing…
That’s probably enough for this time. Thanks for coming this far! We'll have more info next month. For now, please visit our website and check out the new blogs we’ve posted.
Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter before you go!
Sincerely,
Adam, Matt, RC, and Josh @ Seven Day Games