It's finally time. 2024. The year that Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse enter the public domain. And Captain Pete. But no one remembers Captain Pete.

To celebrate the world's most famous IP finally being available for public expression, we are proud to announce Steamboat Willie: Down the River.

Steamboat Willie is a solo tabletop roleplaying game about creating a world from a blank canvas. It's also about the connection between art and capitalism.

You play as The Artist creating Mickey Mouse (see below) and storyboarding his adventures. It's every cartoonist’s dream… to actually make a living from your art! This dream comes with a catch: marketing is constantly asking you to make changes. If you refuse to bow to their demands, your art might fade into obscurity. Or you might have to ignore your own conscience to keep your steamboat afloat.

This game is played with a deck of cards, some pre-selected storyboard art, and your favorite art tool. You’ll be journaling and drawing as you create a new history for the Mouse. Starting from a blank canvas.

Here’s how it works:

1. Choose your genre!
Sure you have some creative freedom. But you only have so many options, and what you do in this episode sets up expectations from the audience for your next one.

You get to select from Action, Comedy, Romance, and Weird -- each tied to a certain suit and generating one of 52 episode titles.

2. Marketing!
Art isn’t free, buddy! Marketing needs this episode to sell toys and sugary cereal, after all. They’ll ask you to insert just a little propaganda. (You’re cool with tobacco, right?)

Yes, you can refuse, but it means you’ll either have to compromise your ethics or waste time on a project the Company doesn’t want to fund.

3. Storyboard!
This is the journaling part of this journaling game! Draw the outcome of your choices. We include images from the public domain cartoon Steamboat Willie for you to fill out with your characters and story. Write and draw as much as you want about your episode.

4. Consequences!
Oof. Yikes. Let’s keep happy thoughts and skip this one.

5. Do it again!
Your imagination is running wild, Artist! And rent’s still due. With each new episode, your creation will change and the world around him will change, too.

With every episode you produce, anywhere from 2 to 11 years pass. When 95 years are up, so is your game. At the end, you can look back at almost a century of creation. How did you do? Are you proud of what you’ve done? Are you proud of what you’ve done?