Spiel 2019
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 02:45:22 AM
Hello Heroes!
This is just a quick note while we are working on the giant PDFs of cards that we want to show you.
We are too busy at DGGames to have a dedicated booth at Spiel 2019 in Essen, but you can still come and say hello to one of us. Emiliano Mancini will be hanging out with our friends at Ludus Magnus Studio in booth 2F112, and we will have a display case with our figures.
You will be able to see the production prototypes of your Dark Rituals minis, but there is more! Emiliano has early resin prototypes of our next game, Neo-Morphosis. If you want a sneak peek, or if you just want to say hello, head over to booth 2F112.
We have been keeping Neo-Morphosis rather quiet, simply because most of us are working full time on Dark Rituals. I am sure you might think of Neo-Morphosis as our newest game, but it is actually one of our oldest. We had the Neo-Morphosis Kickstarter ready to launch in 2016, with a rule book, art and sculpts, etc. But we also had the Order of Vampire Hunters reboot ready, and we decided to lead with that instead, because we had so many loyal backers asking us for the re-launch. Pretty soon, some of us will complete our Dark Rituals work, and we’ll be able to dust off Neo-Morphosis. We’re not sure when, as we are totally focused on Dark Rituals at the moment. We are not even going to show pictures of the Neo-Morphosis minis now, as it is not where our main efforts lie.
We were really pleased with the response to our last update, and saw you asking to see more minis. Your wish is our command!
We have Heroes!
Monsters!
Horrors!
Lovelies!
Champions!
And Cuties!
We’ll be back soon.
Pick a side!
No More Renders
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Oct 10, 2019 at 02:42:10 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
We have completed prototyping resin minis. We have seen resin versions of them all! It’s really impressive to see so many minis in one photo shoot, I wish I had them on my desk.
I have tried to select some pictures that show some different content, for example there are more tokens here. But it’s hard not to gravitate to my favorites. Anyway, let’s get on with the slide show.
Here are the Stamina Bowl, the Burning Witch token and some scenic 3D tokens.
Heroes (and pets) from the Cursed Fjord. That wolf looks more friendly than my dog.
Magenta and the Plague Doctor were my favorite concepts and are now my favorite minis.
I thought Skeetor was great when I first saw the art and I have not changed my opinion. But I did not like the Zombie Wall so much. After seeing the mini, I am a total convert, and think this will be my favorite zombie miniature (and I have more than a few!).
Skriga is just amazing. I have a soft spot for HPL’s deep ones and this is my favorite water monster, by far.
We seem to show Madra every update, but she’s irresistible. Sorry there is no other mini in the picture for scale, she’s huge.
We have started creating the steel molds for mass production and hope to have production minis for the next update. See you soon.
Pick a side!
Progress (2)
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 02:01:58 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
Don’t forget we are about to close the Pledge Manager: we will lock your pledges later today. If you want to make changes, make them now. We can see that there are more than 60 backers that still need to complete the PM. If you leave it until after we close, managing the changes in Backerkit will be inconvenient for us. If you leave it too long, you may miss the bulk shipment and incur extra shipping costs. Please complete your surveys now.
If you need to, you can recover your account here:
https://dark-rituals-malleus-maleficarum.backerkit.com
Don’t worry, you will still be able to change your address later.
Let’s continue with the status round up.
Art
All art is complete! This would include the large pictures for boxes, map tiles, regular pictures that are in the rule books, and small images on cards.
Cards
We have game text for all cards (with an exception, see below). We have a lot of the flavor text ready, but it is not complete – we wanted to get all the art, so the text could match the art.
Here is the card for Fateem, the Cutthroat. You’ll see a minor change from similar sheets we showed during the KS: we have named all the Heroes. We hope this helps the Hero players bond with the character they are playing. All Heroes have an ID Sheet, an Alchemy Book and their own weapon.
And here are the cards for Madra in the Witch’s Sabbath expansion. These also show a minor change: the Legion of Darkness has been randomly transported to Earth by the will of a Conjunction. On early cards, we used English to name the Witch’s powers and abilities. Now, we have translated them all into Neemossian!
I think this is the first time we have shown the final art for the larger Grimoires, an early stretch goal. These large sheets are a big improvement over the double sided cards: you don’t have to flip cards looking for information.
The 3D print for this mini came out so well, I’ll slip in another mini picture.
Rules
So far our play testing has not required any changes to the rules of the game. However, the rule books are not complete. They need minor changes to clarify the existing rules and we need to do the layout. We are waiting until all play testing is complete, so that we are sure explanations are completely clear.
Play Testing
With so many additional characters, cards and encounters added as stretch goals, this is the biggest outstanding task.
I said there was an exception above: we have a good draft of the cards for the Witch’s Sabbath expansion, but we intend to work on that expansion last. We want to finish balancing the base characters before we work on the over-powered characters in this expansion. However, we are making very little change to the base characters, so we expect our draft of the Witch’s Sabbath to be good.
Don’t forget to complete your pledges!
Pick a side!
Progress (1)
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 03:17:11 AM
Hello Heroes!
We are about to close the Pledge Manager: we will lock your pledges on 30th Aug. This means that you will not be able to add any extra add-ons after this date. Your credit cards will be charged 1-4 days after. This is a batch process organized by BackerKit, so we have no control over the exact processing dates, but we do expect many of you to be charged on the first day that we close.
Don’t worry, you will still be able to change your address later.
Rather than show a little new material, we’ll start with the first of a couple of Updates that will be a more complete view of the project status. Of course, we’ll include a little new material!
Miniatures
We have made very good progress. All 3D sculpts are complete and have been sent to the manufacturer for review. The manufacturer made some suggestions to improve the casting process and all those changes have been made and resent to China. We believe the 3D sculpts are complete.
The manufacturer creates 3D high resolution prints as part of their manufacturing process. All the miniatures have been printed. This is an internal process and we do not have full details, but it looks like they are using 20 or 25 micron resolution, similar to an EnvisionTEC DLP printer that we have used ourselves. These photos were taken by the manufacturer, they look great!
You can see improvements we have made since we first showed you the minis, such as more detail on Karakurt’s face and the scars cut into Girtiya’s leg and shoulder. Alfrik Wolf-Friend’s wolf does not look very friendly.
Our minis are not all little people! Here are some of the tokens in the 3D Token Pack.
We showed you our first mold many weeks ago, so you know the next stage, production mold creation, has started. We have 4 PVC production minis in our hands! Here are some quick photos, Wolgar the Warden and Pekka, a Witch, both from the core game.
Next we’ll continue our progress report with the status of the Art and Cards.
Don’t forget to complete your pledges!
Pick a side!
Pledge Manager Status
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 02:04:31 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
This is just a short update letting you know the PM status. We will not be closing it on 1st Aug since there are too many incomplete pledges. We do not want the overhead of managing the open pledges while we are so busy with the game. It is our current intention to close the PM on 16th Aug or 30th Aug, depending when enough stragglers complete the forms.
If you have lost your survey link you can recover it here:
https://dark-rituals-malleus-maleficarum.backerkit.com
We really want to close the PM. Please double check your account, make your final selections and add all the information required (address, credit card info, etc). If you are worried about moving, there is no need for concern: you will still be able to change your address after it closes.
The later you complete your pledge, the higher the chance you will miss the bulk shipment and incur extra shipping fees. There will be no extra fees if you complete before 16th Aug.
Enough nagging. Here is a picture of me screaming because backers have not finalized their pledges.
And here’s the debt collector we’ll send out in September.
You’d better close your account :)
We will be back with a longer update soon: our manufacturer has just 3D printed a new batch of minis. We’ll pass on photos and more information as soon as it is in our hands.
Pick a side!
