Bits & Blessings 🍁
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 04:39:34 AM

Dear Community

First of all, thanks so much to all of you who completed the survey so far!  🌱 And also my greatest apologies for the several hiccups with the Pledge Manager configuration. Despite using Backerkit as one of the best Pledge Manager tools, there were still a few caveats to iron out. Find below some nice statistics and a list of FAQs!  🌐 

Pledge Manager FAQs

•  Until when is the PM open? - I will keep it open until the end of October at least. Once we get closer to the date I will give you a more definitive timeline.
•  I still haven't received my PM invite! - Sometimes emails don't find their way as expected. If you have not received your personal survey invitation yet, please send me a private message via Kickstarter. I will send you the link right away.
•  I have no credit card, what to do? - In case you have no credit card please send me a private message via Kickstarter. I'm happy to share my Paypal with you.
•  Where can I select Local Pickup? - That's a little hidden under the list of countries. If you live in Berlin and want to pick up your copy at my house, select "Local Pickup" instead of the country "Germany". Can't do anything about that, sorry.

About Add-ons - Beside that I'm in touch with Laserox as second provider for the wooden insert and will receive a sample in the next 4-5 weeks. Unfortunately it takes a little longer because everyone is super busy with the preparations for SPIEL 2021.

Artwork & Blessings

I've been working on the blessing cards quite a bit and came up with a family of icons to make all the cards language independent. Marcel also started on some illustrations to give each blessing card their own expressive artwork. Most blessing cards just need 2 icons to describe their actions, but this one below is a bit more complicated. Any idea what this blessing card is about? Please tell me in the comments! 😀

And we're almost art-complete! Florian is in a drawing-frenzy and is wrapping up the illustrations for the 31 cards we have planned! To recap, in total we have 18 Rituals, 10 Achievements and 3 card backs.

The rough concepts are all finished and he's on the last mile to finish the final renderings within the next 2 weeks. I couldn't be more happy with the results and I think the illustrations will be absolutely stunning on those 7x12 cm tarot cards!  😍

Question: For production reasons we can print a few more cards than we actually need for the game. Any suggestions on how to use those? 💡 I thought of blank DYI cards so that you can come up with your own rituals. Please share your thoughts, but remember I won't include any more rules, artwork or rituals at this point :)

Production & Timeline

I have received the first version of the tree samples from Eastar! While the shape is matching my design close enough, I'm not happy yet regarding the surface quality. There are noticeable artifacts from the turning process and they are iterating on the tools to improve this. 

Also the varnish is not final yet. I'm planning on using wood stain instead of the paint typically used for wooden game components. I prefer to use a stain, because it brings out that nice wooden texture instead of covering it. But on the other hand it is really hard to control in mass production and I'm still evaluating different options at the moment. Chances are I have to go with the more practical paint following the best practices of the industry.

In parallel Eastar is working on the white sample production of the game. That means that they will produce one sample unit, that contains all the components but without any printing on them. I will share pictures of the white sample once I've received it. 📦

Beside that I'm finalizing the layout of the rule book and plan to have it completed by the end of the month. Afterwards we will start the translation process to French, Italian and German.

There is more progress on other parts of the game as well. Stay tuned for the next update in 2 weeks!  😘

This is it for today - enjoy the beautiful Indian summer of 2021 and I wish you a wonderful time with your friends and family!

All the best,

Tommy

Pledge Manager is live 🚀
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 01, 2021 at 10:57:42 AM

Dear Community

I'm happy to announce that I finished the configuration of our Pledge Manager and also sent out surveys to the first 5% of backers.  🎉 After monitoring the response over the weekend and making sure everything runs smoothly I will send out the survey and the link to the Pledge Manager to everyone by Monday.

You will be able to:

• Choose the language for your copy of Forests of Pangaia
• Add additional copies to your order
• Provide your shipping details and do the final checkout

 If you have any problems, questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me 😌

Regarding Add-ons: As previously announced I have NOT included any add-ons so far and prioritised to allow you to submit your shipping details first. I will let you know once I have prepared some add-ons and you will have the chance to add them anytime afterwards.

Tree Planting Activity 🌳

It's about time for a big shoutout to our friends and partner at Treecelet, who have supported our project from the very beginning and committed to plant a tree for every backer of the campaign - that's 7,597 trees!

Miha Hrovat is the founder of Treecelet and dedicated his life to planting trees and making our world a better place. For Forests of Pangaia he's financing the plantation of mangroves within their Madagascar tree planting project. Most of the trees will be planted in the northwest coastal area (Mahabana and Aranta are one of the tree planting sites). The main focus is to provide stability against erosion and improve ocean and coral reef health. Tree planting activities in Madagascar are active all year.

As a matter of fact, Miha is in love with board games as well and also part of our backer community! 💚 Please support his cause and visit the website of Treecelet here https://treecelet.eu/ and https://treecelet.com/.  THANK YOU!!

SOLO Modes ✍️

It was quiet around SOLO but there has been steady progress - today I want to put a spotlight on two different modes that received a lot of love from their designers Erlijne and Marvin in the past weeks. I have selected their modes because both reached a certain level of maturity and have great potential! 🌟

Please give Erlijne and Marvin feedback and leave comments below or directly in the document. NOW is the last time to make an impact on SOLO - let put our heads together!

• Erlijne's Solo-02: Link to the rules 
• Marvin's Solo-04: Link to the rules 

As always I will pay much attention to all of your comments and every opinion matters. From my point of view I like both modes very much and will make a final call, after you've had a chance to read through the rules and leave your feedback. Remember to show respect for the time and effort the designers put into this and please keep up your positive and constructive attitude. Thanks so much 🙏

And Finally...

My own current focus is to provide our manufacturer the final files for the wooden meeples & tokens as well as all prerequisites for a white box sample. In parallel Florian is working on the final renderings of all Ritual and Achievement illustrations, while Marcel is designing the new Blessing cards!

I will be sharing more details on our pre-production progress in our next bi-weekly update!

That's it from me - enjoy this last weekend of August, spend time with your loved ones and have a fantastic day! 😍

All the best,

Tommy

Production Timeline & more
over 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 12:42:05 AM

Dear Community

First of all I want to apologize for the delay of my bi-weekly update. I recently got my first vaccination and shortly after fell sick, I haven't properly recovered since and this is delaying my original time plan by almost 2 weeks now. I'm sorry about that 🙏

To kick off this update I want to share the mobile wallpapers with you, that are included in all of your pledge levels. I will make them available to you later this week via a download link in a personal message. I hope you like my selection and will enjoy seeing those beautiful landscapes on your phone soon! 🌳

Manufacturer & Timeline

I'm super happy to announce that after a long and diligent phase of evaluation I now signed with the manufacturer Ningbo Eastar, one of the top board game manufacturers in China! They were awarded for the Best Production Quality in 2020 for Dwellings of Eldervale and 2019 for Tainted Grail. I'm very confident that they are the right partner to produce Forests of Pangaia in a great quality.  🌟

We started working with their production team on a tentative timeline that I want to share with you. The graphic below will give you an overview of the upcoming production cycle and milestones, where each 'dot' ⚫️ corresponds to one week. I will keep you in the loop anytime we reach one of those major milestones and adjust the timeline if needed. 🕓

Pledge Manager

I was planning to launch the Pledge Manager this week, but due to my sickness I wasn't able to make any progress unfortunately. I'll do my best to catch up and get it launched ASAP so that you will all be able to finally complete your pledge.

Regarding Add-ons: I want to give you a heads up that the first launch of the Pledge Manager will NOT include Add-ons yet. I'm working with a manufacturer for a wooden insert and I also received the first sample, but unfortunately I'm not convinced by the quality so far. As my time is very limited I need to deprioritise that topic for the time being and rather focus on the asset preparation of the game components. Once I reach the first two milestones of my plan I will come back to the topic and look into including a few Add-ons to the Pledge Manager if there is time.

Last but not least  

I want to share the shapes of all 4 spirits, now finally united! I hope you like the new dragon! I might still tweak some proportions here and there but overall I'm quite happy.

I wish you a beautiful end of the week! Enjoy the last days of summer outside!! 💚 In Berlin you see already early signs of autumn and the first chilly winds find their way through the streets 🍂

All the best,

Tommy 

Seeds & Achievements ⭐️
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 02, 2021 at 12:29:39 AM

Hi there

It's been 2 weeks since the campaign ended and I found time to catch up with some of those many messages and requests that reached me during this turbulent time. 🙏

While I'm working in the background on several aspects of the pre-production and logistics part I want to primarily focus in this update on the recent community poll and the latest art production.

Community Poll

A BIG THANKS to everyone who participated in the community poll to vote for their favourite seed shape and engage in the discussion! In the final round we received a total of 3193 votes! Quick recap, I included 3 shapes: The abstract drop shape, the stylised Pine Cone and the silhouette of a Seedling 🌱. Similar to the first round of votes, the poll resulted in a very close tie between 2 options. When I closed the survey on Wednesday night, the Pine Cone and the Seedling had almost an identical number of votes. 

Before I move on to my decision I want to share some LEARNINGS. While I really enjoyed gathering suggestions from the community it is also quite a challenge to manage all expectations and maintain a consistent style of the game. Some great ideas were tricky to integrate with the existing theme, others were not feasible within my budget. A community poll is a balancing act between the joy of direct participation and the potential of disappointment. I found the factor of disappointment in this case particularly strong, as there can only be one final winning option. For me this wasn't immediately intuitive as my primary intention was to make best use of our hive mind and generate excitement and not frustration 😌 

So, without further ado I want to announce the winner of this vote: the Pine Cone! The tiny majority of votes is neglectable, but from my point of view it is the simpler and more robust shape, going best with the stylised trees that I have designed so far. Ultimately as a creator of this game it's my responsibility to make a coherent game and ensure the quality of all components.

Even though the discussion might have seemed verbose to some people I think it's important to listen to the views and opinions of others - and I for my part learned a lot in this process! I hope you enjoyed this direct participation as well, even if you had a different favourite and gave your vote to another option 😘

Achievements

Meanwhile Florian Moncomble drafted a first series of achievement cards. Like the ritual cards they will have the classic tarot dimension of 7x12 cm and will follow the same artistic style, going for full-format illustrations. The 4 achievement cards below are the ones you unlocked via the social goals! They are awarded to the player with the most trees on one specific land type: Wind, Sun, Snow and Rain.

The achievement cards below have more unique conditions, like owning the most trees of level 2 or higher. Again the illustrations I show here are early drafts and will be refined in the next few weeks.

What's next?

➔ Pledge Manager - I'm still waiting for the worldwide shipping cost table but I'm planning to finalize the setup of Backerkit as Pledge Manager during August. You will all receive a personal notification once the Pledge Manager is live and be able to choose your language and fill in your shipping details. 

➔ Late Pledge - I started to accept Late Pledges via Backerkit until we start production. I have NOT included shipping costs here either and every Late Pledge backer will receive a notification once the Pledge Manager is fully configured. As a regular backer of this project, please ignore the Late Pledge section.

➔ Solo Mode - This week I will look more deeply into the current submissions and decide which modes are sufficiently developed to participate in the poll. 📣 Once I made my selection in the second week of August I will again send every backer a link to participate in the poll to select their favourite Solo mode.

I will keep a biweekly rhythm for now and send the next update in two weeks, including the latest development and a preview on the production schedule. 👍

Please let me know about anything you'd like to hear about in the comments or via PM. Have a beautiful week everyone!! 🌳

Cheers, Tommy

Community Poll Results [Backers only]
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 03:11:37 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.