Crazy first week!
almost 5 years ago
– Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 04:56:19 PM
What a week!
Since the campaign started it's been a bit over a week and it felt like an entire year to me! We moved at such speed and reached some incredible milestones! To start with, we collected 160.000 € in funding with the help of over 3000 backers, that's 800% of our original funding goal!! We unlocked 11 stretch goals, have over 500 subscriptions on BGG, over 1200 are following us on Instagram and already 120 of you joined our hands-on community on Discord, giving feedback on balancing, contributing ideas and testing the first 3 solo contributions. This project is already alive and kicking because of you - THANK YOU 🌳 💚
Art Progress
In the meantime Chris, Florian and Marcel are working hard to bring the magic of this world to the surface - and with every little brush stroke they allow us to walk deeper into the Forests of Pangaia.
Here is the latest iteration on the STAR RITUAL for the Snow lands. The ritual's power is emerging from the center of the forest, forming a star shaped artefact.
This is the TRAIL RITUAL between the lands of Water and Sun. We chose a giant decaying tree, giving shelter to countless seedlings and young trees - making their way through the desert.
There is more progress on other rituals and the spirits. Let me know in the comments what you want to see in the next campaign update :)
The Lands
As soon as we unlocked stretch goal #7 Florian started to work on improving the user experience of the tiles as well as bringing the land illustrations closer to the world we're building. We shifted the color of the Wind terrain from fire orange towards fuchsia, to add more contrast to the palette. The illustration below is the current iteration on that topic. In my opinion the amount of water on the Rain lands should be reduced to differentiate them better against the corresponding lake. Also I like to see a softer transition on the tile border to avoid a hard clash of the biomes. My goal here is to find a good balance between the aesthetics of the map composition while ensuring a good user experience. What's your take on it - what would you improve?
What's Next?
I have another few component upgrades in the pipeline that were high up on the community wish list!
All land tiles will be upgraded to 3mm cardboard and get a nice linen finish!
The Box will get an insert of natural kraft cardboard to keep your components organized.
And finally one of my personal favourites: Screen prints for all 4 spirits! Please forgive my amateurish sketch of a screen print. Of course this will be properly done by Marcel :)
What about Gameplay?
The Discord community started this week with testing the game, giving feedback on the rules and coming up with ideas for future expansions. There are also 3 super cool solo modes to play, designed by members of the community! Have you tried them already?
In parallel I'm working on an additional ritual type I want to present within the Discord community next week to collect feedback. Everyone is welcome to join! Please play Forests of Pangaia on TTS, get familiar with the regular rules and find weaknesses. Now is the time to make an impact and iron out issues to improve the game for everyone. You guys are awesome! 💚
Have a beautiful rest of the week 😊 🌳
Tommy
Entering the Forest
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 02:41:45 AM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Solo Mode Game Jam!
almost 5 years ago
– Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 01:52:00 AM
The last set of stretch goals was dedicated to improve the user experience of Forests of Pangaia.
The redesign of the tile art will help to differentiate lands faster. Larger cards improve overall readability and dual-layered player boards just feel amazing when placing your components! I'm so excited we reached this point: Thank you so much!! 🌱
What's up next?
I love to read through your ideas, thoughts and feedback about the game! One of the topics that kept popping up is the wish to have seeds that resemble actual leaves or seeds. Let's do this together!
Below you can find my personal take on it, but please share your thoughts on possible shapes to give us food for design. Towards the end of the campaign we run a vote! 📣
In the same spirit I want to move forward and dedicate the coming week to game design.
Solo Mode Game Jam
I've been approached by many designers in our community who offered to work together on the Solo mode. First of all a huge THANK YOU!!! I realized quickly that I want to include all of you guys in this process to collect feedback.
We dedicate a full week and work together on finding the most promising approach to play Forests of Pangaia in Solo!
How does this work?
(1) Everyone will get access to our TTS workshop to get familiar with the components and existing set of rules of Forests of Pangaia.
(2) All Designers can team up or work alone and send me a document with their rules anytime from now and throughout next week. I will include every solo mode proposal and make it accessible via the TTS workshop.
(3) The backer community will receive a campaign update on Monday with an invite to our Discord server. There we can discuss feedback regarding every single variant in dedicated channels. Additionally I will provide a form to submit structured feedback for each variant as well.
Game Design Requirements
- Only use existing components.
- The core mechanics of rituals, growth and decay must stay the same.
- Keep the rules compact. 1-2 pages max.
What to expect?
- A Game Jam is a creative process, don't expect final rules.
- The designer(s) contributing to the final rules will get full credit for it in the final game.
- The Solo mode will not delay our production schedule. We follow a "train leaves the station" approach. If the mode is mature and solid it will be printed. Otherwise it will be published digitally after finalized.
I'm really looking forward to next week and hope you will enjoy the game jam!!
In the meantime, have a fantastic weekend 🌳
Tommy
Spirit Stretch Goals reached!
almost 5 years ago
– Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 04:23:45 AM
Thank You
We reached another amazing milestone!!!! I couldn't be more thrilled and I'm so grateful that all of you made this possible: Thank you awesome community!
Spirit Stretch Goals reached! 🌟
The last set of stretch goals was dedicated to put a spotlight on the spirits and let each player have a custom illustrated player board and spirit meeple to go with. It's something I was looking forward to for a long time. That's why I was excited to read all your comments and find out that custom spirits were one of the things many of you asked for as well.
Before I dive into the early sketches and drafts I want to introduce two members of our team: Marcel Domke and Chris Karbach. Both are two amazing artists and I'm so grateful they joined our team for this project! Marcel is designing the characters and the line art while Chris is doing the final painting.
The Axolotl
We imagined the 4 spirits being equally powerful but very different in size, appearance and nature.
This little spirit's working title is the Axolotl, a creature feeling equally at home in the air, on the ground and in the water. It's a gentle creature of the twilight, it has elements of an amphibian while showing origins of a plant as well. Most of our spirits have traces of plants, leaves and mushrooms in various forms. Here are some early concepts and a colored version.
Do you like it? What should be the name of this little fellow? Call for entries! 📣
More Spirits
I also want to show you some other early concepts for a centaur-style spirit with tree-origins and a flying dragon made of leaves and flower petals.
We have many ideas and keep iterating. Let me know your thoughts in the comments! 🌱
What's up next?
We continue focusing on quality upgrades for the artwork and game components.
For the next set of stretch goals we will completely redo the tile illustrations and improve usability while making them work visually together with the ritual cards.
It would be a pity to show those beautiful illustrations of Chris and Florian on standard sized cards and that's why there will be a size upgrade to a 7x12 cm tarot style cards to give the artwork more space.
Finally I want to introduce dual layer player boards! Many of you requested this upgrade and I couldn't agree more: all those 6 treetops and 3 seeds will fit nicely in the little inserts.
What should be the next stretch goal topic? Sustainability, Component upgrades, Gameplay? Let me know!
You're the best! Cheers 🌳
Tommy
We're funded!!
almost 5 years ago
– Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 03:03:01 AM
Thank You!!!
Hi everyone!
We still can’t believe how fast everything is happening. 🌱 You managed to hit our funding goal in less than 5 hours, this is incredible!
It is amazing to see all of your support and feedback so far: thank you all for bringing this project to life!
It’s time to jump to the Stretch Goals! We’ve prepared some beautiful upgrades and we hope you will enjoy this part as well. Please let us know if you have any questions in the comment section.
Introducing Stretch Goals
We start off with some quality upgrades for the components (1st already unlocked!) and some handy cloth bags to keep your wooden components neatly organized. We have a zero-plastic policy and want to produce Forests of Pangaia just using organic materials.
Finally we have some amazing artwork upcoming that you will love. Every ritual card will have it's own illustration that is reflecting the lore and the game mechanics at the same time.
Thank you once again for your love and support, and we will be talking again soon!
Sincerely yours,
Tommy
