More Progress
about 4 years ago
– Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 12:14:20 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
Things are moving along. Sorry this update is brief, but we are rather busy! Even so, we wanted to let you know where things stand.
Core Game: All 10 Encounters are fully play tested and written up. Minor rules tweaks have been incorporated into the rule book. This means we are almost done with the rule book and we will pass it on to the next stages, translation and layout.
To be clear, there is a little work still to be done on the rule book. The back page game summary needs to be created. There are lore/character bios that are written, but are not inserted into the rules yet. They will be added during layout to fill any empty space. The automatic table of contents will be adjusted; there are too many entries.
We have a PDF of this version of the rule book, if you want to look at it:
Click here for the near final rulebook.
If you send feedback to the support e-mail address, we will try to incorporate it. Note that the rules section, the first half, is almost identical to the rule book we first published when the project launched. The recent play testing to balance the Encounters did not show any flaws in the core rules we developed before the project launched. Don’t worry, two of us will proof read it again several times before release!
The Cursed Fjord: Play testing is complete! We are creating the rule book now and expect to be able to show it to you next week.
The Witches’ Sabbath: All encounters have been created and we are play testing them now.
As a reminder, the production molds for all miniatures are complete. Cards and art have been ready for some time. Things are really coming together. In the next update, we’ll have The Cursed Fjord rule book to show you.
On a different topic, we have been nominated in the “Most Anticipated Board Games of 2020” competition on BGG. We are in the horror category. If you are looking forward to the game arriving, why not vote for us! Be quick, voting closes at the end of the month.
Click here for the BGG competition.
We are sure backers are aware of the Coronavirus. We hope all our backers, colleagues and their loved ones are healthy and safe. We have already reached out to our production factory in China. They are back at work and since our production window is in the future, they believe that there will be no change for us. Of course, we understand that things are fluid and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.
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Progress
about 4 years ago
– Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 02:06:16 AM
Hello Heroes!
We’re still moving forwards. In the last update, we spoke about production minis being almost complete and showed a table of what had been done and what was left to do. There’s no need for a table now, it’s really simple: all production minis have been approved!
Here are some before and after images.
Something odd happened to Gerald’s nose/mouth on the right. It’s been cleaned up on the left.
Fateem’s blunt nose was also the problem here and it’s been addressed.
This one’s a bit more subtle. Leiurus’ hand-teeth did not come out well, but you can see his nippers on the right.
Blind play testing continues. We have recruited another round of players to take a fresh look at the game. This brings us to the next milestone: all encounters from the core game and The Cursed Fjord expansions have now been play tested. Some of The Sabbath encounters are being tested too.
With feedback from these players, the rulebook has been tweaked and is in its final form, except for replacing the images with new cards. Once these images are prepared, we’ll let you see it.
Magenta, originally a core Hero from The Order of Vampire Hunters, who appears here as a stretch goal Hero, is crossing over to another game. Take a look at Tanares Adventures, an expansion for Arena: the Contest, if you want to see what she is up to. We are really looking forward to seeing the new sculpt they create for her.
We’ll be back soon with more progress.
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Tiny Happy People
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Jan 06, 2020 at 02:06:49 AM
Hello Heroes!
Let’s start with a little history. Back in October, in Update #49, we announced that we had finished sculpting and had produced a resin prototype of every mini. In the same Update and then again in update #51, we said that we had started work on the production molds. This is a long task, but it is coming to the end.
We can now say that all production molds have been created and we are well into the approval process for the miniatures. We have not finished the approval process yet but the few problems that we have seen only require small adjustments by the manufacturer.
A few days ago, we received a box of 63 production minis from China and there is a second box containing the remaining 20 in transit at the moment. These are sent to us as part of the approval process: we receive physical samples that are created exactly the same way as the miniatures that will be sent to you and we check that we are completely satisfied with the quality.
It’s a bit nerve-racking opening the box, knowing how important the miniatures are to everyone. But it was very good news; like a late Christmas present for us, really. Here is a quick summary: of the 63 different sculpts, 58 were accepted as final and we identified 5 that need some adjustment. If you are interested, here are the details:
But I don’t think you are here for the numbers! Here are some of my favorites from this batch of production minis:
You don’t get the full effect of having approved 58 minis until you see them all together.
Wow, that’s a lot of minis! Here is a picture of all 15 approved minis for the core game. You can see the minis a little better.
So the next stage is to perform the same careful inspections on the 20 remaining minis that are currently in transit and then repeat the process for the few miniatures that need some adjustment. We have already started communication with the factory about the 5 issues in this batch and we expect this to be resolved quickly, before 25th January. Some of the problems may turn out to be very simple, for example a weapon that was manufactured correctly, but bent in transit – these samples are sent to us in a bag, not a nice protective insert like the one your game minis will have.
Finally, we can show a side by side photo of the original resin prototype and final PVC production mini. We are very pleased with the level of detail. Take a look and see if you can tell which is which.
The darker miniature on the left is the resin prototype.
At the same time we completed the last of the cards for your review. This PDF contains the Botanical Cards and the Plague Cards.
Click here for the PDF of the Botanical and Plague cards.
After seeing the lovely art on the ID and Item cards, I am afraid these cards are a little plain. However, they are very important in the game.
The Heroes draw from the Botanical Deck when they pick up a Botanical Token and use the Botanicals to fuel their Alchemy Spells. There are many copies of each Botanical Card in the Deck and a few harmful plants too.
The Plague Cards are used by the Witch Master to drain Stamina from the Heroes. As the Soul Track advances, the Witch Master draws Plague Cards from the deck. Then they can be played as an Action by Exhausting the Stamina shown on the card. Once in play, the Plague reduces each component of the Heroes’ Stamina, limiting the Actions they can perform each turn. Heroes can cure the Plague by killing the Witch that spread it.
We want to reiterate the status of the cards. We have had the cards you see here for some time now, but in a different form. Early on, they were hand-written, later they were plain printed cards. We have been using them in our play testing for quite a while. Although the simple cards are not so much fun to play with, they are much easier to edit as we make adjustments. We are still play testing and there may be some changes, but these should be limited to small adjustments to the numbers: we are not introducing new powers, abilities or effects at this stage.
Your feedback has been very useful and we look forward to hearing from you again. Typos and grammar will be fixed immediately and if there are elements that are unclear, we will try rewording cards and rules if we think we can significantly improve the game. However, we will only be making changes from feedback that is e-mailed to support, with “DR Feedback” as the subject.
We have posted many other PDFs of cards, check the last few updates if you missed any.
These are all the cards in the core game, all those added by Stretch Goals and cards for the Cursed Fjord Expansions. There are a few more cards in the entire product line, for example Solo Mode. We always intended to complete play testing on the core, SGs and Cursed Fjord components and then complete the Witches’ Sabbath and Solo Mode, for the simple reason that it’s hard to balance the game when many things are changing.
I do not want to give the impression that these last two packages are not started, far from it. You have seen Madra’s ID card and Grimoire and you know she is part of the Witches’ Sabbath. In fact, all the Witches’ Sabbath cards are done, they are in the PDFs we have been showing. I have a printed and sleeved deck of all the solo cards in front of me here. The art for all these cards is complete too. It is just that the play testing is not as advanced.
We understand that there is some concern over us starting the Neo-Morphosis Kickstarter before completing Dark Rituals and we know that, from the outside, this looks like it will cause delays. However, because different staff are active on these projects when they are at different stages, this will be less of a problem that you may think. For example:
Artists: All art is complete for Dark Rituals. Allowing artists to start on Neo-Morphosis will not cause delays for Dark Rituals. However, since the artists will be around, working for us on Neo-Morphosis, we can interrupt them if any last minute art requirements for Dark Rituals do come up.
Independent Blind Play Testing: This is one of the longest tasks remaining on Dark Rituals, but it is not done by in-house staff. We will not be ready for independent play testing for Neo-Morphosis for quite some time, so there is no resource conflict here.
Rule Book Layout: We are close to starting the professional layout of the various rule books and rule sheets for all the different products in Dark Rituals. We want to complete play testing first. However, this is done by outside contractors and we are not close to doing this for Neo-Morphosis.
Some staff will work on both projects, for example me! An advantage of an early start date for Neo-Morphosis so that its Kickstarter will be over before I am required to make the final edits to rules being used by the play testers. This timing works well for other staff with tasks on both projects.
Which brings us to the schedule. Our plan was not to discuss this further until we had a firm manufacturing window. We did not want to give you dates that might slip and, once we have a manufacturing window, the dates are set in stone. Recently, work has been progressing well and we have been meeting internal milestones. We think it’s safe to discuss some dates.
The major outstanding tasks are:
- Complete play testing on Core, SG and Cursed Fjord game play components and scenarios. This is very nearly complete.
- Complete the Witches’ Sabbath and Solo game play components and scenarios. These are started, for example all the Witches’ Sabbath cards are done, but they are not as advanced as the items above.
- Final edits of all rule books. Mainly updating the graphics to match the new components.
- Rule book layout.
There are many other tasks to be done, for example reviewing the next batch of minis, but each of these tasks is small by comparison.
We have two important dates to pass on:
Late-February: We expect to start negotiation of a manufacturing window. Once that date is agreed, we will announce it. They will also tell us how long it will take them to make the game and we’ll communicate that too.
April-August: This is our best estimate of when we will be ready to send all files for manufacturing. We have a much narrower time frame internally, but we think it’s best not to over-commit with you at this stage.
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