Space Gerbils (early access)
A downloadable game
You are the galaxy's most famous bounty hunter, but nobody knows your real name, or what your real voice sounds like. In fact, you've never taken your helmet off in public, at least as far as anybody knows!
The interstellar tabloids have accused any number of public figures of secretly being you. They are, of course, all wrong. The real reason you never remove your helmet is that you're actually a bunch of space gerbils operating a human-size mech suit.
You're very keen on not letting this get out.
This game is a work in progress. It's being offered for comments and playtesting. The current revision is playable for one-shot missions, with rules for campaign play to come in a future version. Feedback can be provided either via the comments here, or using the Penguin King Games Discord server.
Credits
Written and edited by David J Prokopetz.
Cover art and graphic design by @hotkoin.
Interior illustrations by @hotkoin and Kaninchenbau.
Beta reading by Jan Caltrop.
Playtesting by arcanistlupus, jimmy-dipthong, mechtroid and wearerevolutionary.
License
The text of Space Gerbils is licensed under CC BY 4.0 
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Playtest results: the Action Phase sucksMar 09, 2024
- Moving playtest documents to itch.ioMar 05, 2024
Comments
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It could just be me, I hope it is. I could not get into this. After a few pages I lost interest because I had no idea what the actual game is. Have you thought about putting examples of play before page 41? A full example round would help me not only understand what the terms like analyse, condition, cycle and complication actually mean. The walls of text explaining things I have no refence for may as well have been actual walls.
There will be examples of play eventually. The "early access" tag isn't just for show – it's genuinely a work in progress at this point, with substantial changes to the core mechanics from version to version, and writing worked examples of play too early in development is a great way to end up with a game where the examples are talking about a completely different version of the game than the accompanying rules text.
This is very Cute!