If you’ve seen me in the last year, I was probably wearing some sort of Exocolonist merch.

Between finishing Exocolonist and waiting for it to come out, I entertained myself by making basically an entire wardrobe of test pieces. They didn’t all work out… well honestly most did not! One of them is currently for sale in the Official Finji Store, which is the limited edition Hawaiian shirt Mei designed. Colin and I both love the pink version:

Also in the Official Finji Store, we now have stickers, pinnies, and a t-shirt with design by Eduardo (in both regular and crop top versions). Mei designed the stickers and pin and they are the cuuuuuutest.

Physical Card Game

Another merch item I was keen to make was a real, in-your-hands, physical card game. I imagined we’d use these as business cards and give them out at events like PAX, with the idea that if you collected enough you could play a micro-game to try to make the highest-scoring hand just like in Exocolonist.

They have the same names and art as in the game and feature some of our amazing 100 card artists, but I had to tweak the values and rules a little to be playable on a tabletop.

It was worth doing, because dang, this little game turned out to be fun! Colin and I took prototypes to events so we could playtest it with friends. The rules are simpler than the actual game, because adding up a lot of little numbers is more easily done by a computer than in your head. Instead, you need to arrange five cards from your hand of seven to earn bonuses from a list. For example a pair is worth ⭐, or having all cards of the same color is worth ⭐⭐.

You win if you can get three stars, which is almost always possible, but sometimes pretty hard. We play a multiplayer variant where we both draw a hand and try to find the best score, then swap and see if we can find a better one.

It’s 52 beautiful cards in an adorable little tin box, available made-on-demand at The Game Crafter.

“Secret” Unreleased Merch

Now I’ll let you in on a secret! Once the Hawaiian shirts sell out, if you’re still desperate to get your hands on one, you may still be able to get one printed on demand from the source at ArtsCow. Some of my unshipped experiments are in there too!

I also have a couple designs up on HugePOD, another place that offers on demand all-over prints. These shops print the art onto flat fabric first, then cut and sew like they normally would. It’s a neat process that means they can have hundreds of styles to choose from, although they do take extra time to ship because they have to make them after you order.

Though most of these designs will never go beyond my own wardrobe, it was so much fun to do. Let me tell you, it’s a bit addictive (and way easier than you’d think) to design your own clothes!