New Movement!
almost 4 years ago
– Fri, May 22, 2020 at 10:43:09 PM
Dear Backers,
We are as frustrated as you are that there was no progress to report regarding the project for a long time. As we mentioned in an earlier update, we are completely in the hands of our manufacturer Panda now. A few days ago we finally received an updated timeline for the remaining samples. Let's just share the message we got from Panda:
...
I have not been doing a good enough job keeping this project on track and providing the proper updates, and I am sincerely sorry. I am working with the factories to accelerate timelines so that we can begin mass production immediately and quickly once samples are approved. If any of the previous components (wood, laser cut acrylic) have been approved, I can begin mass production on those now. Here is an update on sample components - all samples will have pictures sent prior to sending:
Dice sample: Will be sent on Tuesday
Plastic disc samples: Will be sent on Wednesday
Corrected playmat sample: Will be sent by 5/25
Plastic tray/Printed copies: Will be sent around 5/30
We can be in mass production on these components while your team is reviewing the digital and physical proofs of the printed components as well. I am pushing to have the pre-production copies of the games sent no later than 5/30 for final approval so that we can begin mass production as soon as possible.
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We've received similar plans before that we didn't share as it quickly became clear they would not materialize. This time though, we received sample images and since yesterday have a tracking number with an estimated delivery date of a shipment for 5/25. Here are the token images we received:
If the overall plan holds, it would mean we could probably start mass production around the 2nd week of June. We will send another update as soon as we start receiving the samples.
As always, thanks for your support!
The Team at 612 Entertainment
Progress!
about 4 years ago
– Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 01:27:23 AM
Dear Backers,
Last Friday we received a tracking number from Panda and what can I say, yesterday we received updated samples. These are only the samples for some of the in-game pieces, but what we received has the correct size and looks good! We are still waiting for the other components such as updated mat, cards and boxes, but we have been informed that those are being worked on again as well and we should receive more material soon. Some images:
Wooden meeple style pieces
Acrylic cannon
Acrylic UFO
Bunker, delivered with protective film
Bunker, unwrapped
Unfortunately, no update yet on the overall timeline. As we are all noticing, the coronavirus is even more disruptive than already expected and it is unclear how big the freight backlog is in China. We do hope though, that production updates will come in more frequently within the next weeks.
That's it for today, as always, thanks for being on board!
General Update
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 01:51:47 AM
Dear Backers,
We were holding off on this update for a while as we were hoping to provide something more substantial, but unfortunately we are still not there yet. Let's start with the most important message: This project will definitely ship. The design has concluded, it is fully approved, the games are ordered and the manufacturer is paid - there will be no surprises there.
Unfortunately we have still not received the updated physical components (check the last update for images) that we should have originally received in early to mid January and that we absolutely need to see before we can green-light the actual production.
Manufacturing status - A short summary of the dates we received from Panda:
* In November we were told the new components would ship before Christmas and arrive in January.
* In January we were told the components were lost, and would be resent immediately, but didn't materialize.
* Then we were given the 18th, before Chinese New Year - Shipping Info never materialized.
* End of January we were told the factories would reopen immediately and send the fully assembled prototype as soon as possible. Shipping Info again didn't materialize.
10 days ago we got this:
"Thank you for checking in; I apologize for the slow response. Due to concerns over the Coronovirus, our factories have extended the Chinese New Year holiday, and will reopen on Monday, February 10, which has delayed our set timelines. We are working on keeping all delays to a minimum.
This afternoon, I've received the good news that our factory responsible for wooden, acrylic, and rubber mats is partially open now and will resume normal operations on February 8. At that time, I expect to have the ship date for all revised samples to go to both Thomas and TAITO. I will be sure to send both recipients tracking numbers and shipping updates, and we'll plan to get everything out as soon as components are available to help expedite the approval process.
I will send another email at the end of the week to provide a progress update."
> Probably needless to say that we are a couple of exchanges further by now and still do not have the revised shipdates and more importantly, no tracking info.
We have selected Panda Manufacturing as our manufacturer because they have a good image in the business. I am not sharing this message to slam our partners and pass the blame, but to point out what is getting clearer and clearer by now: This whole Coronavirus affair has affected business in China much more and much earlier than anyone is willing to admit. We still believe that Panda is the right manufacturer and it is likely that we'd have run into this delay with any company that uses Chinese factories.
Like you, we are waiting anxiously and without our approval copies, all we can do is wait for the whole situation to normalize. This will calm down soon and the updated samples will ultimately be sent - I will give you an overview of what all of this means for the general timeline further down.
There is not much we can do at this point except apologize to you for the inconvenience.
Communication:
As those of you who have already reached out know, there is always a direct method to reach out via [email protected] for production and game related questions. For project status related questions please reach out to Sirus directly at [email protected]. Most of the time we will not check the Kickstarter forums while there are no substantial project developments on our end. We have far too big a stack of other projects in front of us, and at least for myself, I have to say I simply don't have the bandwidth. Admittedly, we are lacking in that department and while we are trying to improve, it will take a bit until this will become noticeable. As may be apparent, we are no big fans of "stay the course, be happy" updates: The next update will either be "samples are on the way" or "we will switch to Plan B" - in any case, please be assured this game will be made and shipped.
General Timeline:
Once we get the production samples, and assuming all issues are resolved (as they should be), gaining approval will take us about a week. Production will take about 2-3 weeks, shipping to the warehouses will take 4 weeks to America and 5 weeks to Europe. Discounting import delays (that are also mostly outside of our control), that means that from the time we will have the approval copies you will receive the game in about 10 weeks. We will inform you immediately as soon as we have confirmation the samples are moving!
Thanks for being on board & please accept our apologies for the lack of more concrete info!
Playbook Translations
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 08:08:54 PM
Dear Backers,
Today we have a short update for those of you who are interested in the Playbook translation.
Aside from the original English, we now have French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese rules.
You can find the pure translations sans final layout, together with the English PDF and a table with the translations of the card effects, both as PDF and Excel file, under the following dropbox link:
As always, thanks for supporting the project & have a great weekend!
Component Update / Timeline / Playbook
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 12:54:49 AM
Dear Backers,
Please excuse the late update. While we did receive sample components several weeks ago as expected, in the aftermath we had to go through longer than expected internal approval discussions as well as talks with our licensor and manufacturer. Some of the components were not up to specification - not necessarily all bad, but not the level of quality that we want to release. We are sorry that with a licensed product like this, we can not always share all events, good or bad, immediately with you. Ultimately we had to conclude that our manufacturer will have to make quite a lot of changes and we were unable to start mass production as originally hoped.
A few examples:
Here you see the play mat with some of the wooden components of the Standard Edition as well as the Deluxe Edition bunkers. As you can see, the cannons and UFO are much larger than their designated areas. According to our specs, these should have been produced closer to the size of their placeholder icons on the game board. There are also problems with the overall scale of the board graphics as you can see here - the card frames would be quite a bit smaller than the cards:
Talking about the play mat specifically: In principle, the overall quality is very nice, especially as we decided to manufacture a variant with stitched edges:
There are also some approval related changes. E.g. Taito insists on the UFO being produced with windows for all editions, originally the Standard Edition UFO would have been produced without windows, like this:
Several of the Deluxe Edition components were unfortunately totally off, wrong shape, wrong size, surface quality problems, too thin, the UFO should have window cutouts - we have no idea what happened here, as our design templates were 100% correct:
We have addressed the problems with Panda and they will all be resolved, but unfortunately due to the holiday season coming up, this will create a delay of at least 6 weeks and a significant slip of the release date. We originally planned to start shipping the rewards to backers mid to late December, this will probably be delayed to late February. We are still in discussion with Panda to nail down the exact timeline and will let you know a more specific timeframe as soon as we can. Please accept our apologies for the delay.
Finally, some good news: The digital playbook pdf got approved and is now available for download - Download Playbook Here!
We will also have the localized rules texts sometime next week and will make those available as soon as possible. The pdf versions with full layout will take a bit longer due to additional Taito Corporation approval.
As mentioned before, in case of questions that require a timely feedback, please reach out to [email protected] or Backerkit support.
Again, we are very sorry for the delay. We remain committed to deliver the game with the best possible quality level that does justice to the license.
As always, we are grateful for your ongoing support!
