Crowdfunding Corner
Crowdfunding Corner
Deeper into the Triangle Agency
Nicole Amato and Sean Jaffe
Here we go, True Believers! Sean Jaffe from Nerdy City here, and this month I thought we’d change it up by highlighting a specific campaign I found interesting and specifically pointing out what makes it work. I’ve been excited about a lot of upcoming campaigns like Wet Ink’s upcoming Campaign for Garbage and Glory, which mixes traditional fantasy adventure with the always-crowd-pleasing midnight antics of your neighborhood trash pandas, or even our own Holomatixx: a New Wave Order, which will place you in the role of an 80s teen by day, and revolutionary holographic fashionista new-wave popstar by night. However, this month, a game caught my eye and I felt I had to write about it here.
To be clear, I have zero connection to this game or this company whatsoever. I know no one who is involved at any level of its development or execution, but when the ad came across my feed I just had to know more. I have no dogs in the race and nothing to gain by boosting what is already a pretty high-visibility campaign, but if you want to see what a ttrpg crowdfunding campaign done right looks like, look no further than Triangle Agency by Haunted Table games.
The setting, at first blush, looks like a cross between Remedy Entertainments: Control and The Office’s Under Mifflin. According to the Kickstarter, it would seem that agents investigate paranormal weirdness, but this is just a job, and office politics and relationships seem to be as important (if not moreso) than flamethrowers and silver bullets. Balancing absurdist bureaucracy with genuine SCP-style Chills seems to be the name of the game, and that’s a juicy setting to offer any potential GM.
I reached out to Caleb Zane Huett, one of the designers, and they had this to say:
Caleb Zane Huett: Triangle Agency was initially designed by me, Caleb Zane Huett, and Sean Ireland. We started working on it together as an excuse to hang out on a weekly call! It didn't take long for the game to build momentum and take on a life of its own, though. We both had a lot of experience with bad jobs (and actually met at one!) so we were interested in making a game about bad jobs. Combining that with a love of paranormal fiction and horror got us to Triangle Agency, a game that combines a meta-narrative popular in horror fiction like House of Leaves with a totally new game system we've developed around what modern TTRPG tables are already doing.
Triangle Agency’s campaign also boasts a beautiful, smooth clean, look. Nerdy City’s own layout artist and production manager, Joshua Brain Jaffe, was complimentary of the design. He stated:
Joshua Brian Jaffe: This beautiful and clean design not only promotes easy reading and rules searching, it really allows the vibrant art to really pop off the page at you.
Joshua is coming from years of experience on dozens of titles, and he’s not necessarily easy to impress.
Haunted Table has clearly done their homework., Their page is littered with links to podcasts and let’s plays highlighting Triangle Agency. They have built up a healthy buzz, and now, they’re taking this thing live. It’s already made more than 37 times the ask, so the effort has paid off.
I asked about the design of the campaign itself, and they said this:
Caleb Zane Huett: The result (we hope!) is a game about figuring out your place in a frustrating, all-too-real supernatural world together with your table. We wanted the Kickstarter page to reflect that! So all of our design leaned on making it feel immersive and evocative of the final product. Michael Shillingburg, who designed the visual elements of the page, is an extremely skilled designer who works for modern companies; he did an amazing job translating a corporate visual aesthetic into something slightly weirder and more triangle-themed. Our trailer, which we wanted to tell an in-universe story, was scripted by me (Caleb) and then built with Shannon Strucci's editing, Carly Monardo's voice, and assistance on additional text and footage-finding by Sean.
I wanted to know more about the massive success of the project, and they had this to say:
Caleb Zane Huett: “The experience is wild!!! We did not expect this big wave of support. You put everything you have into a project and hope it will do well, but we never anticipated this level of success even in our dream conversations. Right now we are focusing on getting organized, and then our next several months are going to be a big whirlwind of work.
Triangle Agency looks spectacular, and I can’t wait to bring it to my table. It’s a fine example of a smooth, clean, enticing campaign, masterfully crafted and perfectly executed.
For more information on Triangle Agency, see the Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hauntedtable/triangle-agency-paranormal-investigation-ttrpg
This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network’s blog series. The content of this article reflects the views of but one member of the IGDN. This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Sean B. Jaffe from Nerdy City. If you want to get in touch with the contributor you can visit their website at nerdycity.com.