I ended the last post with a bit of a rant. Maybe it was emotionally suitable for the pandemic. Just indulge me a bit more; I am actually going somewhere. This is probably late 2020 to early 2021, and I am kind of tired of it all. The worldwide uncertainty was slowly getting to me, with all life plans on hold. The many roadblocks when developing something different and ambitious were building up.

At this point, we released Caper: Europe. I was very thankful to the guys at Keymaster that they were willing to give the game a second life, and I think we scrubbed it up clean while keeping the spirit of the original. But Caper was, at that point, a game that was five years old. I had changed a lot from my mid-20s to my early 30s, and there I was redoing my first game when I had something much more interesting and current on my desk.

But I needed a break. I packed up my life and moved to the Canary Islands for over a year. Life felt more organic there, spending time outdoors on the beach, having an active social life. In the city, it was all rather gloomy, with curfews and all. I also put a lid on Limbo.

Every creative project starts off strong, then hits a valley. You just need to see that valley through. But sometimes you don’t. When the project has spanned seven years, one or two of a valley sounds like a reasonable time. The problem with valleys is you don’t know when they are over, and if they ever will be.

Looking back, it was a very enjoyable period of my life, which makes me think that maybe the key to happiness is not making board games. Just joking. Kind of. Eventually, I got the itch back; it always comes back, the fucker. The idyllic island period ended, and so did the pandemic. I came back to Barcelona and took care of some grown-up basics, such as buying and refurbishing an apartment (check). I recorded my last music album to date (check). And then I took a good look at that strange creature called Limbo with the perspective of someone who had lived in a perpetual summer for the last two years. And I asked the hard questions:

Why do I even make board games? Why do I put my time, energy, and money into it?

Limbo wouldn’t do. I loved the project but I wasn't connecting with it as much anymore. The world was going to hell and there was I, making some metaphorical pseudofantasy world that would probably just pass on as another game offering an evasion from reality. More importantly, Adriano, the illustrator, had vanished for a while, leaving some bits of work undone. An old school friend, Jon, came into my life here. We hadn’t seen each other for over 15 years but happened to live nearby. He also happened to be an amazing illustrator, and for a few months, we worked together repurposing Limbo with a darker, more direct style. He wasn’t going through the best period either and vanished and reappeared a couple of times. I decided to let it rest; I guess the pandemic and its aftermath had affected us all in different ways. Unemployed blokes, struggling mental health; that was the norm.

I made the decision at this point to totally let go of Limbo as we knew it. It had to be something different. But I wouldn’t like to let Adriano's excellent work go to waste. This is why I am 'open sourcing' all his work. Along with the release of our first game The Idles, I will be releasing all of his work for you guys to use as you see fit, and eventually all the worldbuilding work we did, art briefs, etc. Just ask and I'll fish the files. We will only ask that you attribute us - Adriano for his illustrations, and Unair Games for the theme and worldbuilding.

This post here is me officially letting Limbo sail away. It was a good ride, but the best is yet to come. And I didn't answer the last couple of existential questions yet, but I’ll take a rain check for the next article.

I’ll cut it off for now, take a long Christmas break, wind down from a year of absolute workaholism. I’ll need those energies for what’s coming.

On the 29th of January we are launching the game. Along with all the info and preorders, we will release some PnP decks, etc.

For those subscribed to the newsletter, we will also send over the decks played at the first The Idles tournament that we ran last November.

Merry christmas in advance everybody!

To be continued….