John August

Store

Introducing AlphaBirds

Geek Alert, Projects, Store

In addition to making apps like Highland and Weekend Read, my little company makes physical stuff, including Writer Emergency Pack and One Hit Kill.

Today, we’re releasing a new game called AlphaBirds. It’s a word game like Scrabble® or Boggle®, but faster and more fun.1

AlphaBirds is ridiculously simple to learn.

  1. On your turn, draw two cards.
  2. Play one card in front of you, and one in front of any other player.
  3. Make words if you can. Longer words are worth more points.

Yes: there are more rules. But that’s the gist. Most players pick it up in 30 seconds or less.

We’ve been playing AlphaBirds in the office every Friday afternoon for more than a year. It’s the perfect game for lunchtime or beer o’clock. You can carry on a conversation while playing, and don’t have to keep things in your hand. You draw; you play; you’re finished until it’s your turn again. Most games last about 10 minutes.

AlphaBirds isn’t a Kickstarter. It’s available today. It’s $19 + shipping.

For now, AlphaBirds is only available through our own store. If you like word games, I think you’ll dig it.

  1. As a fan of both Scrabble and Boggle, I stand by this statement. AlphaBirds is more fun than either of these games. ↩

We’re having a spring cleaning sale

News, Store

Update: We sold out! Congrats to everyone who bought one of our last shirts.

Whenever we come out with a new Scriptnotes t-shirt, we sell it only by pre-order. We print just the t-shirts we need, then send them out in one big batch.

So we don’t really have “inventory.”

Except we kind of do. In the corner of our office is a set of shelves holding stray t-shirts left over from previous print runs. They exist because we overprint by roughly 10 percent just in case orders get lost or damaged.

Yesterday, we took a count and realized we have more than 50 shirts in random styles and sizes. They’re doing no one any good sitting on a shelf, so we’re having a spring cleaning sale.

Everything in the store is 50% off this week, or until we’re out of shirts.

In addition to the t-shirts, we have 10 remaining Scriptnotes 200-episode USB drives. They’re 50% off.

We also have Writer Emergency Packs. They’re 50% off. (And also 50% off on Amazon.)

At the moment, we don’t have any One Hit Kills on hand, but we’ve marked them 50% off on Amazon, too. If you’ve been curious about our card game of ridiculously overpowered weapons, this is the cheapest you’ll find it.

Finally, we have one wondrous misprint. It’s an Umbrage Orange t-shirt that missed one of the steps during silkscreening, leaving it oddly faint.

I hope to see someone wearing it one day at a live show. Like all our shirts, it’s better in your closet than our shelf.

So stop by the store and take a look.

Tuesday Reviewsday

Challenge, Projects, Reviewsday, Store

As someone who makes apps and other things, I know how helpful reviews are. They let makers know how much you love their products, and encourage potential customers to give new things a shot.

One of my goals for 2016 is to be better about writing reviews for the products I love. Every Tuesday I’ll be leaving reviews on the applicable store.

Today’s picks are:

Leaving reviews is not a big time commitment. I wrote all four of these while waiting for an appointment.

If you’re looking for something to review, many readers are probably familiar with some of the things we make, including Highland, Weekend Read and Writer Emergency Pack.

Podcasts are especially review-dependent, because they signal to the powers at iTunes to feature certain shows. A review for Scriptnotes would be much-appreciated.

Toddler books in the Store

Store

[binky] A surprising number of readers have been buying stuff through the Store,1 leading me to wonder, “What other tangible products do I have opinions about?”

It turns out, the tangible items I handle most these days are board books for my 17-month old daughter. She has her favorites; I have mine. I’ve taken the overlapping subset and created four new pages in the store with our mutual recommendations.

As a general word of advice for new parents, or those buying gifts for new parents: when it comes to books, think repetition. As you thumb through pages in the bookstore, ask yourself, “Will this provoke thoughts of murder-suicide upon the 50th reading?”

I’ve only included one book like that in my list, Sandra Boynton’s Perritos. It’s a counting book with dogs who bark in Spanish: “¡Jau! ¡Gau-Gau-Gau!” Fun at first, but really hard on the vocal cords after three times through.

The other books are generally great. I’m particularly partial to Leslie Patricelli’s books, the complete canon of which I now have memorized. Sometimes, stuck with a cranky toddler, I find myself “reading” the Binky book to her, flipping the invisible pages. It buys a few more minutes, which is sometimes all you need.

  1. For reference, my biggest week has been a whopping $43. Which more than covers the site’s hosting fees. But I’m not giving up my day job yet. ↩