The Blinking Birch Puzzle Hunt

If you follow me on Bluesky or itchio, you might have seen me come out with a new game recently: The Blinking Birch Puzzle Hunt 2025. While this is not an RPG, it's very much about RPGs.

For anyone who hasn't encountered the term "puzzle hunt", this is a series of puzzles that eventually leads to an end goal or prize. They're often compared to scavenger hunts and ARGs. Some puzzle hunts take place in person, others online, and many involve creating teams that compete to reach the end the fastest.

I've wanted to create my own puzzle hunt for many years and finally decided to make one themed around indie TTRPGs. I made eight puzzles and a Discord server where players could collaboratively solve them, and I launched the hunt on a Saturday morning. The server reached the final prize, a very short & silly RPG, by the end of the day Saturday, and I had a blast watching them work through the puzzles all day.

Rascal also interviewed me about the puzzle hunt, which is very cool!

Even though the hunt has concluded, all of the pages are still up on itchio, so anyone can still try to solve the puzzles. I've also added hint documents for each puzzle.

If time allows, I plan to turn this into an annual event, so keep your eyes peeled for it next September!

Lost in the Editing Sauce

This year has been a big editing year for me! Here are the editing projects I've worked on throughout 2025:

Jan-Feb - Line/copy for A Fool's Errand by J Strautman & B Marsollier (~33k words)
Feb-Mar - Line/copy & proofreading for The Time We Have by Elliot Davis (~3k words)
Mar - Wrapping up line/copy for An Infinity of Ships by STATIONS (~9k words)
Mar-Aug - Developmental & line/copy for A Perfect Rock by Nick Gralewicz, and line/copy & proofreading for the corresponding Rock Oracle Deck & Guidebook (~8k words)
Apr-Jun - Wrapping up line/copy for the Outer Rim Uprising Campaign Handbook by various authors (~4k words)
Apr-Aug - Developmental & line/copy for Dragon Reactor by Nevyn Holmes & Samuel Quinn Morris (~9k words)
Jun-Present - Line/copy for The Lost Bay by Iko (~41k words and counting!)

In total, so far this year I've edited about 107k words! Some of those with two different types of editing passes! That's a lot!

Additionally, I'll be working on the following before the end of the year:

The rest of The Lost Bay
Line/copy for Full Send by Laurie O'Connel
Line/copy for Make Haste East, a module for The Lost Bay by Caelin Araven
Proofreading for A Perfect Rock
Proofreading for Dragon Reactor

After this, my editing work slows down. This is very intentional. Because of all the editing commitments I booked (and partially due to burnout, the development of the Blinking Birch Games website, and various life happenings), I haven't been working on my own games much this year. So I'm taking a half-step back and being more intentional with my editing projects.

Next year, I'm only booking projects that are (with few exceptions) no more than 10k words. I'm also only going to book up to 10k words of editing per month, which might be one 10k project or two smaller projects. This is good for me for a few reasons:

After editing for a couple years now, I know how much I can edit in a month while also putting time aside for my own projects. 10k words is a pretty nice middle ground and will still bring in about $600 per month.
I've found that I burn out when working on longer editing projects, even when they're projects I love and am excited about. Working on multiple, shorter projects will keep things fresh while also allowing me to work with many different designers.
If a project gets delayed by a couple months, it won't have as large an impact on my schedule.

With that said, if you have a project under 10k words that needs editing next year, check out my editing info and consider reaching out! I'm already booked in January & May, but my slots are currently open for the rest of 2026.

Okay but what about the games

I don't have a lot to say about the games! All I can really say is that I'm currently working on two new ones. But both games are bigger than anything I've ever made before, both are entirely different than anything else I've written, and both are still in early stages of development. So I'm keeping a lid on the details for now, and it might be a while before I have more to share.

One is a cosmic horror mystery game, and the other is a generative megadungeon crawl.

Because these projects will take some time, I'm thinking about making a much smaller game in between my time spent on the larger ones. Like something that could be printed out on my normal home printer and mailed in an envelope. Dirt cheap and dirt simple. Not sure what this would be yet, maybe a mini Anamnesis hack or a pamphlet adventure for Mothership. Are you guys interested in something like that? Let me know if so.

Oh also, Death of the Author won the 2025 CRIT Award for Best GMless TTRPG. This is very cool! I always feel weird asking people to vote for me in popular-vote awards, so I didn't really advertise much that Death of the Author was nominated, so winning this was a big surprise. Thanks everyone!

Actually, one more thing - I wrote for Stellar Remnants 2, a supplement for Necronautilus! It's currently available for pre-order at the World Champ Game Co. store. Necronautilus is one of my favorite TTRPGs (I've run at least 6 one-shots by now, all of them zero prep except for reading the book), so it's a delight to have my writing in the supplement.

Sam's "Other" Corner

Here are some things I've been enjoying lately in no particular order.

Fields of Mistria (video game) - This is my first farming sim game and I'm really enjoying it! And by that I mean I played it literally all day Saturday. Like 10 hours. I can't remember the last time I played a video game for 10 hours straight. Sorry Silksong, sorry Hades II, I don't know you.
9 Lives to Valhalla (TTRPG) - I ran this game at my FLGS. First time I'd ever played it and we all had an absolute blast. I made the final boss Chuck E Cheese.
KPop Demon Hunters (movie) - I am not immune!! My brother and I watched this together and I've been listening to the music so much since.
The Chromatic Fantasy (comic, 18+) - My friend lent me this comic by H.A. about a trans man who makes a pact (ahem) with the devil, and then slowly falls in love with another trans man. I'm obsessed with the style, and the way H.A. depicts casual intimacy in both actions and words. This one is really weird!! And I really, really loved it.
Arcane (TV show) - I haven't watched s2 yet, but my brother has, and we're currently watching from the beginning together. My mom has also joined us, and it's her first time watching any of it! She's loving it. Very exciting.

Until next time,

Sam Leigh