Falling Sideways Through 2025

Hello Voidfarers,

2025 has been a weird year. This time last year we were celebrating our wins and laurels at Minnesota WebFest and our successful Kickstarter campaign.

Things went downhill when November 2024 rolled around. Levels of business uncertainty were introduced that we frankly had not accounted for. Lives were upended. Some of our crew were making good on backup plans to backup plans. We built bulwarks for ourselves, because the health and safety of our artists always takes #1 priority. A few of us, myself included, went on hiatus for personal reasons. As the economy and geopolitics were once again upended for the worse, we went rather silent.

To be clear, we never stopped working on Stardust. The story was revised and is now double the length. It’s quite an artistic and financial endeavor for a motley crew of internet creators to produce a full audio drama adaptation of a book for simultaneous publication. We will cut Stardust into three Acts, each clocking in at over four hours long. Our voidfarers and Kickstarter backers of Voidfarer tier and higher will receive these episodes as completed. Lex Feathers’ original score will be made available for streaming on all major services.

The limited-edition paperback book will be published shortly after Act Three is released. Stardust will always be “free to read” on the Sublight Games website.

The game is shaping up well. We’ve released a free beta over Tabletop Simulator and debuted the game at several tabletop cons, through which we’ve received insightful, much-needed feedback from players. The friendly guys over at Lead Pursuit podcast were effusive in their praise for what they played, and we couldn’t be happier with how mechanics playtesting is wrapping up. We are making inquiries about retail production and looking into how we can best deliver Stardust 1.0 to market.

But we’ve only just been able to keep the ball rolling. Like Ashlee Rinn, our production is falling sideways. I am sorry to report we are feeling the same pinch the rest of the entertainment industry is right now, and doubly so as a very modest American small business.

I put together a teaser of what’s in store earlier this year. In that video, I foolishly projected a 2025 launch date. I must be honest and report that there is no way we can publish Act One this year. I have taken this lesson to heart, and I will not be making such launch projections going forward—for story content or the game itself.

However, we aren’t too far behind. There are now sixteen people (!!) working on the Stardust drama and game in various night-and-weekend capacities, not accounting for our slate of actors. We have made greater strides recently with the addition of an assembly editor and a tech artist. The Bary is taking shape, ever so slowly. But progress is relentless, however modest.

No one at Sublight works full time on this property. We don’t have investors. We haven’t taken out business loans. We refuse to enshittify our creative output with generative AI. We are beholden entirely to you, our fans.

My goal today was to make sure our fans know what’s up—that it will take some more time to get to our destination. The stars are far away. But they are destiny.

Thanks for hanging in there with us. <3

— Faith K. Falkner
Narrative Producer
Sublight Games