All-Seeing Dev Bjørnë
Welcome to our Dev Blog—part news, part diary covering our progress toward shipping ILLUMINATI, a new video game based on the classic card-game from Steve Jackson Games.
Last week, I made 3 quick Kickstarter updates to get backers up to date on the work we did in the past month. It was good to get everything out there and up to date—we made some solid progress, and we’re a week away from getting the game out to even more people. Still, I’ve been wanting a less formal forum where we can give more insight into our work as we move forward, both for backers as well as anyone else who’s interested. Thus: Welcome the All-Seeing Dev Blog.
We’ve talked a lot on Kickstarter about our hard work, so let’s kick this off with something more on the fun side, focused on something that’s been brewing in the background since late summer.
Where to start? Well, basically, we made some Bjørnës.
I remember telling Steve Jackson how glad I was that old-school Illuminati fans had such affection for Bjørnë. For those who might not be urgently familiar, here’s the quick backstory. In 1994, when Steve was expanding the Illuminati universe for what would become Illuminati: New World Order, he looked to add Personalities to the game, as a new class of puppets for secret masters to control. Since a Peaceful conspiracy—Shangri-La—was being added, it made sense to feature a Peaceful Personality. Thus there came to be a friendly, pink Scandinavian dinosaur whom the children all adore, Bjørnë. After the game’s release, some clever player discovered a card combo to which Bjørnë was key. It ends with the poor…whatever he really is…killing himself, in return giving the player who’d controlled him enough power to shower destruction down on their enemies. So far, Bjørnë has found his way onto at least three of the new 2020-era cards, and that does not even count his Personality card.
As an aside while talking about card art, Steve told me it was quite easy nowadays to have a stuffy made to spec, and required virtually no effort on our part. What do you know: the Internet is an amazing place full of, among other things, people who make custom stuffed-animals for a living.
We had three Bjørnës made with surprisingly little effort or expense by doing little more than forwarding a copy of the original card art. Two of them came to us from Ukraine—one by an artist in Dnipro, the other from Kiev. We were grateful and humbled to hear that both artists appear to be in safe places for now.
Three backers had been gracious enough to support our campaign at its highest level: YOU ARE ILLUMINATED. In recognition of their generosity we sent them care packages, and each one came with a stuffed Bjørnë and a large print of the video game’s version of the Bjørnë card along with few other surprises—like some posters we’d put up around San Francisco as an early promotional effort. Here’s an unboxing photo from one of our ILLUMINATED backers.
The third Bjørnë was made by a company which vetted its design for bulk production.
Of course, we have a large product already in progress, to put it mildly, but in few months when we can take a breath, we could see placing such an order if enough people are interested. Details are yet to be nailed down, though it seems they’d cost less than $40. If you’re interested in the existence of Bjørnës, let us know.
Most importantly, without delay, we are focused on Late Alpha. More news to come.