Spilled Coffee Creatives, crafters of interactive storytelling games and experiences, are raising funds for Beneath Hallowed Halls. Our team consists of Ali Mark (she/her) and Nell Quinn-Gibney (they/them), both of whom are writers/game designers/graphic designers/about a dozen other hats!
Q: Easy question first: Give us the elevator pitch of your project. Tell us about it in two sentences or less.
A: Beneath Hallowed Halls is a social deception game of friendships that run deep and bodies that are buried even deeper, built in the Powered by the Apocalypse system. Get drunk off vintage brandy, ramble about your obscure intellectual passions, and most importantly, don't go down for a murder one of your friends committed.
Q: Is this your first ZineMonth project or have you done it before? If it's your first, talk a bit about what inspired you to give it a shot this year. If you've done it before, what's something you've learned from previous crowdfunding projects that you may be doing differently this time, or, if you're not doing anything differently, talk a bit about your previous projects.
A: We have been producing immersive, interactive material for several years now - LARPs, murder mysteries, escape rooms, TTRPGs, and more. Much of our work has actually been in the corporate field, designing and hosting team-building events for organizations ranging from tiny businesses to Fortune 500s. We enjoy this work, but are trying to shift focus to our passion projects - such as this game! Beneath Hallowed Halls is our first game we're hoping to publish in physical form, and our first ZineMonth project. We have been big fans of past ZineMonth projects, so when we started talking about the bones of this game last year, we decided that ZiMo creates the exact kind of community we want to be a part of.
Q: Finally, tell us something about your current project that really excites you but the average backer may not be aware of. Maybe a twist to an old trope, a new way of presenting something, or maybe just something you've never tried before that you're using this as an opportunity to try out.
A: We're absolute devotees to the Dark Academia genre - we love the tension, the friendships, and of course, the betrayals. We also love PBTA and we knew this was the system we wanted to use - it's an incredible game for genre emulation and interpersonal drama. It doesn't often focus on player vs player action, however. In a bizarre combination, we pulled inspiration from the game Paranoia in formatting our GM guide and PvP mechanics.