Robophobia

Enjoy this short story from the world of burncycle.

Hi all,

I’ve been pretty busy with the recently-completed campaign for Hoplomachus: Pandora’s Box, but it had been my plan to write my next post about the making of Chip Theory Games’ burncycle: New Recruits round of content, which is currently being fulfilled to backers and is available for preorder on the Chip Theory Games store. However, after getting pretty exhaustive with my recently-concluded series on the making of Too Many Bones: Unbreakable, when I started to work on this article, I realized two things: First, I said most of what I wanted to say about the way I approach writing for burncycle in my post about the release of the base game last year, and second, I was involved in the process of making New Recruits in a much more indirect way. As such, I would encourage you to read last year’s post if you missed it and then read on for some brief thoughts before I share the actual new piece of writing that I’m bringing to the table today.

In the spring of 2022, when it became apparent we would be making another round of burncycle content, I went to a coffee shop across the street from my office with Shannon Wedge and Salem Scott, the two developers responsible for most of burncycle’s missions and unit mechanics. There, we fleshed out the idea for the game’s new evil corporation, Ebbwall – a facility that trains guards to mete out maximum pain on freedom-fighting bots – as well as a variety of potential missions, items, captains, and bots to populate the game with. I got to do the most fun/easiest part of the job, which was to come up with a bunch of ideas and say “maybe we could do that.” After that, my involvement in the rest of the project lessened considerably, as I was still attempting to get a couple of other games out the door and preparing for other projects that would be coming down the campaign/production line in the next year.

Most of the actual game development in this batch of content was done by Salem, with a considerable helping hand from Shannon in mechanical refinement. As with the base game, I mostly came back in at the end to write mission descriptions and jokes for the new equipment cards, collaborating with Salem on several of the ideas. I’m happy with how my contributions played out, and Salem and Shannon did a great job with the new content, particularly the game’s five new bots, which are among the most fun to play out of all the burncycle characters.

The lengthiest contribution I made to the New Recruits cycle, however, was a short story that was serialized across the Gamefound updates we ran during the campaign. In the first burncycle campaign, we put together a short story collection establishing the futuristic dystopian Earth of burncycle continuity, but because this campaign was conceived and turned around very quickly (and the first short story collection was a complicated labor of love that would take a long time to replicate), we decided to just add a single story to the canon that would be published online for free (the art was done on the fly by one of Chip Theory’s artists, Anthony LeTourneau, whose black and white drawings added an aura of Chick tract creepiness to the proceedings — albeit better drawn and without all of the unfortunate fanaticism).

Now, at the advent of the game’s fulfillment, the complete story has been published over on Chip Theory’s website, and you can check it out right here. Like most of my Chip Theory fiction work, it is a strange little beast – it’s very much commercial art, written to tie into all of the new products we were offering on the campaign – but I tried to imbue it with some of the same passion and rage that drove me as I was writing the original burncycle fiction collection. I’m happy with how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it.

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What else is good on the internet?

I can’t remember if I have recommended the new season of Blowback yet, which came out in August, but in case I haven’t, go listen to Blowback! This season is about the United States’ half-century of involvement in Afghanistan, and it is essential, compelling listening for anyone wishing to educate themselves about the American imperialist project.

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From the field

I wrote a review of the new science fiction movie The Creator.

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Follow me on Twitter @RTHowitzer, bluesky @RTHowitzer, read my Letterboxd reviews @mrchumbles, listen to my Star Trek podcast at outofcontreks.podbean.com, or email me at outofcontreks@gmail.com.