Progress Update #3: A Small Person
over 5 years ago – Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 01:54:49 AM

Hey villagers, what's happening?

I'm here with a really quick update, so let's go!

As you may know, I've been taking time away from my desk while my magnificent girlfriend gave birth to our first child. I'm exceedingly happy to tell you that James Clarke was born on August 1st at 01:59 - mother and baby are doing well.

New Artwork

While I've been off messing about, Haakon has been at the coal-face 18 hours a day, creating new artwork for Villagers with the bloody stumps of his fingers. As of last week, he's finished all the Countess cards which are used in solo mode, and also the Developments expansion cards. We'll look at the Countess cards another time, but for now I wanted to show you a couple of the Developments, which I think are glorious. 

These are just previews - Haakon will do the a final pass on the graphic design before we go to print.

I really like playing Villagers with this expansion. It adds a whole new layer of opportunity & strategy with very low rules-overhead, which is exactly what a relatively straightforward game like Villagers needs in an expansion.

What Next?

Very soon we'll do the random draw to decide the four lucky winners whose image will be immortalised on Founders cards, to be included in every copy of Villagers for ever more! I'll post an update letting you know the hows & wherefores closer to the time, but it will probably be done on a Kickstarter video livestream so you know I'm not fudging the numbers :)

Physical samples of the updated wooden coins, development tokens, and first player token are en-route from China, and should arrive early next week. Expect pictures in the next update!

OK, we're done, I told you I'd be quick - it's about all my sleep-deprived brain can handle right now!

Much love,

Dave & Haakon & Carly & James

PS: We lit up another green light on the progress-o-meter...

Progress Update 2.5.1: The Great Coin Debate: The Result!
almost 6 years ago – Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 01:46:17 AM

Hey villagers!

Voting on The Great Coin Debate is now closed. 5476 of you expressed a preference, and the result was a massive nod of approval for the newest multi-coloured coin design.

So, the coins for Villagers (of cardboard and wooden variety) will look like this:

To clarify, each and every copy of Villagers comes with 150 cardboard coins as standard. The wooden coins are an optional extra, and do not replace the cardboard coins. Coins will have identical print on both sides.

Moving forward, we're ordering coin samples with the new design, and we'll be pairing them up with samples of the wooden Development tokens and the fabulous First Player cockerel / rooster. We'll show you those in the next update. Cock-a-doodle-don't miss it!

Thanks to everyone who voted and posted comments - we're grateful for all for your input.

Much love,

Dave & Haakon

PS: Using the phrase "Cock-a-doodle-don't miss it!" in a professional capacity is one of my highlights of 2018.

Progress Update #2.5 - The Great Coin Debate
almost 6 years ago – Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 02:28:49 AM

Villagers, yes, that means you. Your village needs you!

We need to settle on a design for the coins included in the game, and also the optional wooden coins. The design will be the same for both.

We've requested feedback on our previous design suggestions, and there were enough dissenting voices each time that we decided to rework our plans. We come to you today with a new design, and the opportunity to cast your vote on two options: all gold, and multi-coloured.

A link to the voting form follows after these images of our candidates!

To keep things fair, the voting form requires you to log in to a Google account, limiting responses to one per account. We don't want any accusations of electoral impropriety!

Vote here!

Progress Update #2 - Pledge Manager Open
almost 6 years ago – Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 01:33:24 AM

Greetings villagers,

It is I, your humble project manager, here with a quick update on our progress.

TL:DR - The pledge manager is open. Everything is fine. Delivery date has not changed.

Let's do this in ascending order of how many delicious images I have to show you.

Pledge Manager

BackerKit has given us the all-clear to open the pledge manager! We have already sent invites to around 5% of backers, just to test everything is working as intended. We sent the other 95% of invites shortly before this update was posted, so by the time you read this, the pledge manager is open! If you don't have your email invite yet, just sit tight - there's a lot of emails in the send queue!

Your pledge manager invitation has been sent from BackerKit to the email address associated with your Kickstarter account. It is vitally important that you follow the unique invitation link given in the email, complete all the survey questions, and give us your shipping address. The pledge manager is also where you can express your interest to be entered into our "Your Face on a Founders Card" lottery!

What is a pledge manager? It's where we'll collect your shipping information, and where you can add extra items to your pledge if you wish.

I Went To See a Really Big Shed Today

I went to see a really big shed today, which is exactly the kind of excessive rock & roll lifestyle I've become accustomed to since the success of Villagers. Previously, I'd be lucky to find myself in a medium sized hut or ample outbuilding, but the tables really have turned. What a time to be alive!

Said shed is actually a bonafide warehouse from which we will be able to send out 14,000+ copies of Villagers in style. After much deliberation, we decided that our big garage at home is unsuitable for such a mammoth task - mainly due to access issues rather than available space. After putting out some feelers it turns out that a friend of a friend runs a secure storage business not two miles from my house, and we were shown around the premises earlier today. The space is enormous, and will be available for our use early next year, when Villagers arrives via boat and truck from China. This is the final, key part of our fulfilment logistics solved, even down to us having access to a ridiculously overpowered fork-lift truck (and driver) on site.

Enjoy the most glamorous picture you'll see this week. That heap of weird black stuff will be gone by the time we move in.

Wooden Coins - Take Two

After listening to all the feedback on our wooden coin samples, we've settled on a slightly different design. We know we can't please everyone with this, so if you hate the new design, we're sorry. Instead of differently coloured coins, we're going to go with a single colour, and make them all gold (actually, yellow). The game refers to money as "gold", so it makes sense in that way, and helps to avoid confusion when learning the game. We also want them to look similar to the actual coin icons on the villager cards, in keeping with Haakon's clean and minimal design.

One recurring criticism we heard about the previous design was that the coins didn't look like a cohesive set, and we agree. We've altered the design of the coins so there are now themes linking the 1's, 10's and 100's, the 2's and 20's, and the 5's and 50's. We really hope you like them!

Developments Expansion Artwork

I know you're probably overwhelmed at this point by photos of warehouses and small bits of wood, but if you will allow me to risk sensory overload this one time, I would like to share some of Haakon's brand new artwork.

I don't mind telling you that I did a bit of wee when I saw the last one of these.

So there you have it: I hope you'll agree it's all good news. As always, we value your feedback, so please let us know what you think in the comments.

Moving forward, while Haakon continues to create fabulous new art, I'm working with the factory on a second set of sample coins using the new design, samples of the wooden Development and First Player tokens, and blank samples of the boxes for the game and wooden coins. Exciting times!

We'll speak to you soon.

Much love,

Dave & Haakon

Progress Update #1
almost 6 years ago – Sat, Jul 07, 2018 at 12:43:28 AM

Hey there villagers,

I hope you like the exciting title of this update. I spent a really long time on it, and I think it came out great.

As we move into the long and sometimes laborious production phase of Villagers, I'm going to be keeping you up to speed on where we're at, and share various milestones with you. I'll try to keep it brief, for all our sakes.

TL:DR - Everything is fine. Delivery date has not changed.

Pledge Manager

I said the pledge manager would be open today, and it isn't. It will open at some future time that is not today, or tomorrow. It's my first time using BackerKit, and I'm still finding my way around their system. Progress has been made, but I need their wizards to go through & check it with me, then we'll run what they call a "smoke test" on a small number of backers before we open it for everyone. It doesn't effect any other aspect of production, and I want it to be 100% right before we go live.

The pledge manager, provided by BackerKit, is where you'll give us your shipping details and change your pledge if you want to. It's also where you'll tell us if you want to be included in a random draw to have the likeness of you and a loved one drawn onto one of four Founders cards, to be included in every copy of Villagers, ever!

Localisation & Licensing

I've been doing a lot of work on this lately. We want Villagers to be available in as many languages as possible, and it looks like that's exactly what will happen. This week saw the first licensing contract signed, and I'm very happy to say that Villagers will be published in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. I hope to finalise several other languages by the end of the month.

That box...

Followers of the Sinister Fish Games Facebook group might have seen this photo of a mysterious box appear on Wednesday...

 It's not barbecued hog, nor is it Gwyneth Paltrow's head. It is, in fact...

It's actually shocking how close they look to Haakon's 3D renders, which were all we had during the campaign. Some of the base colours need to be tweaked. These photos don't capture the colours accurately, but the 1's are too dark, and the 20's, 50's and 100's are too bright. Correcting them is just a case of giving the manufacturer new Pantone colour codes.

Overall I'm extremely happy with them, the print is centred within acceptable limits, and their 4mm thickness means they're not at all fiddly to pick up. Samples are on their way to Haakon, who will make the final call on the colour changes.

I'll wish you all good health, and leave you with some more pics, plus our updated production schedule.

Much love,

Dave & Haakon