THANK YOU!! 🎉
over 4 years ago – Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 04:46:55 AM

What an incredible journey  🍁

We reached the end of the campaign - and the beginning of a new chapter! With your help we collected over 400.000 EUR in funding - this is 2000% of our original goal! Seriously - I'm totally speechless and didn't expect this little project to find so much support and I am DEEPLY THANKFUL for that! 😍 

As I mentioned a few times before, this is a passion project and I will do my very best to make this game amazing! I found a lot of support along the way and met wonderful people. Please continue to reach out if you want to contribute to this project with your ideas, knowledge and friendship. 🌱

What's Next?

In the coming weeks I will keep you updated on the next steps, the overall timeline and share the progress we made during this time.

➔ Pledge Manager

The most immediate next step is to launch the Pre-order store with the help of BackerKit so that you will be able to manage your pledge, add your shipping address and potentially add more items to your order. Please note that I will need a few weeks to finalize the shipping costs and look at options for potential Add-ons. Once the Pledge Manager is fully configured you will be notified by email.

However - I will open a minimal version of the Pre-order store a bit sooner to accept late pledges.

➔ About Add-ons

I know that many of you want to add items to your order as it is very common on Kickstarter. I want to manage your expectations here as Add-ons require a lot of my time and work and I didn't originally plan to invest much time into that. As a 1st time creator working solo I have plenty to learn on all the aspects of the process and I want to concentrate on one thing - delivering the best product possible.  👍

➔ Community Poll

Next week I will share a link to all backers using SurveyMonkey to vote for your favourite SOLO mode and seed shape. Until then @Designers - make some buzz, engage with testers, iterate on your rules!  😘 

That's it from me for today! I'll try to catch up with the hundreds of comments, Emails and PMs on all channels  😅 

Lots of love  🌳

Tommy

The last 48h 🍃
over 4 years ago – Thu, Jul 15, 2021 at 09:57:47 AM

It's incredible

We just passed the 310.000 € funding mark and have almost reached 6000 backers!! 🌳

It's really amazing to see how you guys lifted this game from a small Berlin apartment - out into the world and up in the sky. I'm speechless - Thanks so much for making this happen! 💚

We also reached the last stretch goal even 2 days BEFORE the end of campaign and we are officially stretched out! The last 2 additions include 10 more illustrations for all Achievement cards and 16 Blessing cards, adding some really cool gameplay elements to your future games of Forests of Pangaia!!

In the following weeks and months I will go into more details on the illustrations and gameplay aspects and continue to share updates on the latest development.

The 4th Spirit

I'm super happy to present you our last spirit! With soft and gentle moves, the forest dragon is enjoying the last light of the day while dancing with the clouds.

Similar to the other spirits, the dragon has a strong origin in the realm of plants. The antlers and parts of his back are made of trees, branches and leaves while his skin has elements of a tree bark. The spirit is also the origin of the clouds and creating and forming them while flying through the sky of Pangaia.  🍂

Thank you Marcel Domke and Chris Karbach for this amazing work!

A tree is taking shape

In the last update #7 and #8 I was already revealing a bit about the background story of Forests of Pangaia and introduced the early versions of the trees.

Today I want to show you how one of those four prototypes - the conifere - evolved over time to become the tree you will receive with this edition of the game.

My first trees were inspired by the concept of the Tower of Hanoi. On top of the tree base there was a vertical stick, allowing you to stack a number of treetop segments. The trees had a certain visual appeal when fully stacked. But when some treetop segments were missing, those empty sticks looked quite strange and somehow unhealthy. I searched for other ways to stack the treetops without a central support stick and the easiest solution was to go with stackable cone shapes that resemble coniferes.

After my first clumsy samples made of wood and clay I found a local carpenter to help me out. I made some sketches and we started to work together on finding the right shape and dimensions and it took us a few iterations to get it right. But the stacking mechanism didn't feel robust and satisfying yet because special tooling is required to turn the wood with the right level of accuracy. For my first mini series I was working with the traditional woodworking manufacturer Schalling in the German Erzgebirge. They are specialized in producing wooden miniatures in larger quantities and that was just a perfect match to create my first 'real' prototypes. 🌱

I also made attempts to design stackable deciduous trees but wasn't satisfied with the outcome so far. If you have any ideas, please share your thoughts or links in the comment section! 

And finally...

Please continue to help this campaign to stand out ❤️  Share the news with your friends and family and anybody who might enjoy the magic of a forest - transformed into a board game.

Thanks so much and have a great week everyone!! 🌳

Tommy

I've also just backed this wonderful game called 'SOLUTIONS' by my friend Sam! 

It’s a race against time to fight climate change. You and your friends must work together to reduce global emissions  before it’s too late! As you strategically deploy climate solutions,  you'll need to think critically and discuss with your teammates to avoid  climate catastrophe. But watch out for dangerous feedback loops and  global climate events! Will your team save our planet, or will you break  the thermometer as global temperatures soar?

Please help Sam to have a great 1st day of his campaign!! 🌱

The last mile 🌳
over 4 years ago – Thu, Jul 08, 2021 at 05:15:41 AM

Congrats everyone!! 

In the past few days we unlocked 2 more stretch goals  🎉 

Our Facebook group grew to over 1000 members and we unlocked the last of 4 additional achievement cards! We now have a deck of 10 achievement cards that will help to play each game slightly different.

And by reaching over 255.000 € in funding we can produce Forests of Pangaia in a sustainable way!  🌱 We will only use materials that are certified by an established international standard, avoid the use of any plastics and offset any CO2 emission to achieve an eco-friendly product!  🌳

Votes  📣

Today we enter the last 7 days of the campaign and we still have a few community votes to take!  🌟

To not exclude anyone I will wait for the campaign to end before sending out surveys to vote on the custom seed shape as well as the favourite Solo mode.

I considered doing the poll via Email, so nobody is forced to create any extra account just to participate. Do you have more ideas and input on those topics? Please leave your comments below!

What's next?

We are on the last mile and I've collected lots of ideas from you guys about what you would like to see as the last 2 stretch goals. Thanks so much for all your great and positive input!!

I want to start with something that was more present in some earlier comments and also long due. Now that we have all 10 achievements completed, each of those cards should have it's own custom illustration. I want Forests of Pangaia to be language independent and avoid text if possible. Having achievements with unique and expressive illustrations will help a lot in that regard. The style of the illustrations is still TBD and will go hand in hand with the according iconography.

The last stretch goal is dedicated to gameplay and I want to explain a bit more about my decision making process.

In the course of the campaign I watched closely all the feedback from your comments, from our Discord group as well as from all those professional reviewers, testing the game in real life.

A common feedback so far was regarding the replayability aspect of the game and having too few ritual cards. I countered the latter by adding 4 more cards to the deck, but adding more rituals is not the only way to approach this. On the other hand I saw a big wish for more depth - like asymmetric spirit powers.

I want to keep my promise and make a very approachable game. On the other hand I do agree that the game will be better for everyone, if its current symmetry is softened up to a certain degree.

I want to present you Gaia's Blessings. Blessings are event cards that can be purchased for 2 resources of the same type during your turn. This additional deck of 16 cards allows you to temporarily leave the strict phases of your turn and add an element of surprise to the game. I'm sure you'll love it 💚

For those of you who are concerned about the complexity - the use of Blessings and Achievements is totally optional and can be easily left out if playing a game with beginners or casual players. But I'm sure after a few games you will be happy to include them in your game! 👍

One last thing...

After the first days of the campaign I decided to NOT use paid advertisement anymore. Advertisement is great for scaling, but in the grand scheme of things it is always paid by the consumer and does make the product more expensive. I don't want that. Instead I prefer this game to grow organically - totally against the trend of our time :)

Please help this campaign to stand out regardless  ❤️

Thanks so much guys!! That's it from me! I hope you enjoyed this update and share the news with your friends!

Have a fantastic week everyone! 🌳

Tommy

4 Rituals and more!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 03:33:11 PM

Dear Community

It was a beautiful Sunday and we reached another fantastic milestone 🌟! We unlocked 4 new ritual cards including a set of custom illustrations! This addition to the deck will extend the duration of a 4-player game and increase the variety and replayability aspect.

The Rituals deck now contains 10 Trail cards, 4 Peak cards and 4 Star cards. Time to take a deeper look at how Trail rituals work.

Trail rituals

When playing a Trail Ritual you choose two of your trees as the start- and the endpoint of a trail, matching the land types you see on the card. The goal is to connect those trees by a continuous path of other trees belonging to any player. The longer the trail is the more Life Points you gain.

Although you only gain Life Points from opponent trees if they are small :)

Solo Mode

Meanwhile the designers of our community are actively working on their Solo Modes - in total we have 4 submissions now! From what I can tell they couldn’t be more diverse - I love your creativity!  💡

How do we move forward?

While I hold on to my priority to focus on the core game, the development of the Solo mode is something from the community for the community. I promised that one Solo mode will be included in the official rules if it reached a level of maturity. That’s only possible by testing - and iterating - and more testing.

Take the opportunity and make an impact, play the game, give feedback, make it YOURS.

I will run a poll on Discord by the end of the campaign and ask for your favourite mode. Until then - better get to know them all ☺️

@Designer: that also includes you - play the other modes, learn from each other, help each other and if you feel a synergy - team up! ❤️

The origins of Forests of Pangaia

The first impulse I had to create a game about forests was a few years ago when I was hiking through the woods in Southern Germany. I'm sure everyone enjoys the silence and harmony while walking through a forest, but what you see is just a small snapshot considering the normal lifespan of a tree. The image dramatically changes when you take the tree's perspective and expand your time scale - the surroundings might not be as peaceful or silent after all. There is a constant conflict for space and light between the species and if we could fast-forward through the centuries or millennia, we could see a spectacular play of species come and go depending on evolutions, climate change and many other factors. That was one of the ideas I tried to capture in a game.

I started early to experiment with game mechanics to find out the best match for my vision - I designed different tree species by giving them asymmetric abilities. I included concepts of evolution and let the species evolve over time. I tested skill trees, weather events, seasons, hazards cards, animal set collections and much more. The theme is offering endless possibilities and exciting mechanics, my biggest challenge was to narrow them down to something simple.

This is hopefully the beginning of a longer journey and I have many ideas to build on top of this foundation. What are your thoughts on this?  Let me know in the comments!

What’s next?

This SG is something I was planning for a while and I wanted to start this week with a full commitment to sustainability 💚! In the past months I was in touch with many manufacturers to inquire about the necessary sustanability certificates regarding the supply chain and the assembling factory. It's still not very common in the board game industry to emphasize this topic, but the manufacturers report to see a growing demand from publishers and creators to produce eco-friendly games - let's do this!  🌱

We're almost stretched out but I might have room for 2 more :)

What would you like to see on the finishing line? Can't promise anything but let me know what you think!

Have a wonderful week everyone - may the forest be with you! 🌳

Tommy

🌱 1000% Funded!!
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Jun 30, 2021 at 11:16:00 PM

Almost halftime

And we reached another magical milestone 🌟 - with your help and over 3700 other backers we collected 200.000€ in funding - and still have 17 days to go! We've built an active community writing over 876 comments in the public section alone, I've answered over 150 PM requests and countless of emails! THANK YOU so much for believing in this project and for supporting it actively!! 😍

Behind the scenes

Time to give you a quick glimpse behind the curtain - I'm Tommy and I'm currently living in Germany with my wife Sonja and my two little kids Ophelia and Jakob (Jakob is not in the picture).

I'm a Software Engineer and working in the computer games industry & startup scene since 2007. Ever since I've been in love with digital and analogue games and how they enable us to learn new concepts in a fun and highly interactive way. At the same time I tend to have notoriously strong passion for trees and forests 😂 🌳

Almost 4 years ago I started exploring the idea of growing my own forest as a mechanic of a board game. It started as a recreational activity after work and I spent many nights working on various aspects of the game design as well as the stackable wooden pieces.

It was around when COVID started to disrupt the world we live in, when the game reached a certain level of maturity - and I took the decision to seriously pursue my dream and publish the game with the help of crowdfunding. In hindsight I probably entered the Kickstarter scene quite naively without much prior knowledge - the more I was surprised to find an invaluable friendly community of experienced creators who are eager to help you in any way. Thank you all creators for helping me with my first steps into board games! 💚

I'm happy to dive into more details about my past journey - is there something specific you would like to know? Leave your questions in the comments :)

The Spirits

Meanwhile Chris Karbach and Marcel Domke continued to iterate on the player boards of our four spirits and the corresponding tokens. We're quite happy with the 3 of them - the 4th is still in an early concept phase.

Our little Axolotl fellow will be the spirit of the amber forest. It's a magical forest, filled with subtle, golden sunlight and calm little ponds. 

Our stone spirit will be the guardian of the dark green pine trees. We continued to refine the posture a bit and added a few details to the environment to give this big guy a gentle touch.

Our last spirit is bringing lush, new life wherever the roots of its hooves touch the soil. It's a majestic, old tree creature with many facets, reminiscent of a stag and an owl.

What is your favourite spirit meeple & illustration and why?

What's next?

A few of you requested an extra bag for the additional wooden tokens of the Premium Edition - that makes a lot of sense and I will add an additional cloth bag to keep them all safe.

On top of that I want to further extend the game and add 4 more ritual cards and illustrations to the existing deck and increase the total number of cards to 18. The cards will belong to the Trail Ritual type, leveraging the existing rule set but improving the variability and replayability.

That's it from my end! I hope you enjoyed this update and continue telling your friends about Forests of Pangaia! 🌱 I can't wait to start the manufacturing process and work on bringing this game to life!! 🌳

Have a wonderful week everybody! Take a walk in the woods, take a deep breath and enjoy the summer! 🌱

Tommy