Hey gang!

This is going to be a rather brief blog, but full of good news! At almost 3 months behind, we're finally catching up on our monthly Home by Dark playsets!

The August playset, Children of the Past, is our homage to The Flight of the Navigator. Here is the synopsis:

It’s the American bicentennial—Fourth of July, 1976. The residents of Hollywood, Florida are preparing for a night of fireworks and friends.

A band of kids are playing in the water near the city’s boardwalk. Without warning, a riptide clamps down and drags a handful out toward the ocean at an incredible speed. They yell and scream for help, but it’s too late.

That evening, the kids who were swept away awaken on the beach. They stand up and look around, confused. Everything looks the same, yet different. They make their way home to discover it’s now July 4, 1986—they’ve been missing for a decade. Their friends and families are older; everything feels wrong. The doctors and police seem bewildered by the anomaly.

Word of the missing kids gets the attention of the National Space Institute’s security team. Dr. Stephanie Nordling, director of the team at NSI, is especially interested in how these missing kids seem to have appeared within the same time frame as a strange alien vessel that was discovered just off the coast of Hollywood.

The kids need to find a way home, while the vessel needs to find its own way home. Hopefully, they’ll find a way to get what they both need.

The September playlist, The Harvest, is our homage to It with a bit of Clive Barker to boot! It also introduces a new variant: The Epic! Start the story as children and finish the story as adults in a tale that spans the life of the characters. Here's the synopsis:

Welcome to the small town of Surrey, Massachusetts. It’s a little community with less than 3000 people. Most people leave the town for college and never return. Surrey’s lasting population is made up of everyone else—those who never left.

It’s the fall of 1987, a beautiful time of year in Surrey. The leaves change color, and the air has a little nip on it. This year feels a bit colder than usual, though. The adults seem to recall a similar chill gripping the town when they were kids, but they don’t remember much else about back then.

Children have returned to school. Some, however, seem to have disappeared and the most unsettling part is that the town seems to not even notice. Every day, another child or two disappear. Families become distraught. Then, within a day or two, they seem to just go on with their lives, forgetting they even had a child.

The disappearances seem to have begun about the time that the annual Harvest Fair began. The farmers bring their crops to the fair, which has all sorts of enticements: candy, rides, sideshows, clowns, and more. Children have claimed to see a circus ringmaster on the outskirts of town. Adults don’t pay any attention to these rumors, considering them figments of the kids’ imaginations.

You’ve seen him, though. He calls himself Metzger. He wears a long-tailed jacket, pantaloons, and a top hat. His words are welcoming, yet he fills you with fear.

“Fall is harvest time,” he barks, “and you reap what you sow, kid.” You reap what you sow.

That's it for now! I hope to have more news soon!

- Jason