The prognosis is not good and your spirits have been very low. Threatened by the prospect that you might die young and unmarried, your father sends you to an exclusive spa-hotel in Venice to convalesce. The air is supposed to be wonderful for your lungs, and the hotel offers many treatments to aid the recovery efforts of its attractive, consumptive, and wealthy patrons.

This seaside vacation hasn't been good for everyone's health, of course. There's only room for you on the patient list because there's been a murder. One of the eight people taking accommodations at the hotel was the victim of a perfect crime and you're determined to solve it.

Ailing Away is a solo mystery game with historical romantic elements. It really is a little bit like CLUE but it's meant for one player, you get to kiss some of the suspects, and there's no board to set up. All you need to play is a copy of the book, a deck of standard playing cards, a pair of ten-sided dice, and writing implements of your choosing.

While this game is designed to be played solo, it is also very fun to play one-on-one with a single player and a game master.

The zine will be digest-sized, roughly 40 pages long and illustrated in full colour. Physical copies will be printed by Mixam.

Please note that there is a completely optional detective's journal included in every tier. You don't need it to play the game, but it is a handy way to keep the details of the case organized. The detective's journal is black and white.

There are 8 potential suspects in Ailing Away, each one of which is a potential friend or romantic partner. One of them will die at random before your game begins. Your mission is to find out who killed them, and why. There are 48 clues divided among the suspects to discover. Foster relationships with each character to gain an insider scoop on the case.
Each time you try to learn a secret, you put either your social standing or your precarious health at risk in some small way. Repeated failures may find you being sent home in shame or succumbing to your illness. Your stats can be modified with gifts, treatments and the quality of the relationship you are exploiting.

Creators all deal with burnout from time to time, but Ailing Away has been a real comfort project for me. When I'm miserable, I want to pander to myself, do the whole wish-fulfillment thing and write a game about luxuriating at an extravagant seaside hotel but also maybe getting a bit maudlin about mortality. So I did, and gosh, it feels good!

The majority of my work clocks in at 20 pages or less, but I really want to be able to give this game some room to breathe and flesh it out. Without crowdfunding, I couldn't hope to afford a print run of such an ambitious project. Your support means so much to me.

$1,500 CAD: UNLOCKED! Digital downloads come with a bonus one-page mini-mystery game.

$2,000 CAD: UNLOCKED! The Detective's Journal is expanded with bonus content to help you fully realize the characters and setting, including a map of the Hôtel Illusion and more art!

$2,500 CAD: UNLOCKED! I embarrass myself for your entertainment, recording a playthrough of the minigame lookin' ridiculous and dapper in period costume.

$3,000 CAD: UNLOCKED! Lithograph nerds, this one's for you! Because we somehow hit this goal, physical copies of AILING AWAY will be printed by PrintNinja instead of Mixam. Mixam is a wonderful company and they consistently produce quality product, but they use digital printers unless you print more than 1000 copies. PrintNinja uses offset printers right from the get-go. While offset printing has higher setup costs, the results are absolutely stunning. Besides, offset lithography has been around since 1875 and it's a thematic nod to the printing tech that would have been available in 1905.

Feb 7th: Campaign begins.

March 3rd: Campaign ends.

August: Digital fulfillment begins. Backers will receive an email with links and instructions to access digital copies of the game on both Itch.io and DrivethruRPG.

October: Supposing there's no major disaster with the digital release, I'll order physical proofs at this point to make sure the game looks good in print. If there's something amiss, I make adjustments accordingly and try again.

November: Physical fulfilment begins! The extremely reliable Floating Chair has graciously agreed to help get this game into your hands. They carry all sorts of great stuff, go check out their shop!
Please note that we'll be charging backers for the shipping of physical copies at this stage, not before-- shipping is not free for this campaign.
As a rough estimate, you can probably expect to be charged about $13 CAD for shipping in Canada and approximately $7 USD for shipping in the United States of America. We never got a quote for the United Kingdom but we can ship there, too!