I dag slapp den 100ede oppdateringen av kickstarteren og der var det mye å forholde seg til:
100th Update Celebration!
Ten years ago, in 2012, a humble but ambitious little project called Kingdom Death: Monster was launched here on Kickstarter. It had a photo finish, funding not only the creation of the core game, but also many expansions! The kickstarter was fully fulfilled November 2016, including canceling and refunding the Lantern Festival expansion on Update 100. It was an expansion that I felt was not living up to all it could be at that time. Our not so little project, the core game, and its 12 expansions were met with critical acclaim and since then many survivors have joyfully perished!
Finally, 5 incredibly fun years of hard work, 2 really shitty challenging years (thanks pandemic!), and exactly 100 updates later, my heart is full! As the Gambler's Chest, originally meant to be a little bonus box with character filled narrative miniatures, has become the true successor project that I envisioned the Lantern Festival to be. Rebranded as the Gambler's Chest Expansion, I cannot express the swirling feeling of excitement, accomplishment, and anxiety that is sending this expansion (comparable in size to the core game) to print.
And to that end, I can finally and formally say...
THE GAMBLER'S CHEST IS PRINTING!
Estimated Delivery - Q2 / Early Q3 2023. (A bit of padding for CNY, Freight Logistics, etc)
The Gambler's Chest Expansion Overview can be found
here.
So far, we have received proofs of the Encounter Board, Token Sheets, and a production sample of the Razor Sharp die!
Here's a look at other components currently in production.
The box of miniatures is insane. While they are the same length and width, the Gambler's Chest has a significant height advantage.
I planned to go all out on this project. And I let nothing get in the way of that plan!
Here is the the original core game pitch vs what went into printing:
And the original Gambler's Chest Bonus Box Pitch vs The Gambler's Chest Expansion that is now printing:
BACK ON TRACK
With the Gambler's Chest off to print and one of the most difficult periods of time in my personal and work life behind us… I can say that we are finally back on track. And it feels good. To summarize but not trivialize the challenges we faced, NYC lockdowns were no joke, our team friends and family were terrified, my uncle passed away from Covid early on really cementing the dread, I can't game develop a shared board game experience over zoom, we had a baby, then my dad died 3 days later (did you know peoples feet get really smooth as they pass!?), pretty much everyone we work with had their own personal circumstances and challenges, logistics were fucked up, my baby had to have a life saving surgery, and more stuff that is all... behind us now.
We never gave up. And while we carefully ensured that the quality of our projects was not affected, I cannot say the same about our timeline. For that, I do sincerely apologize. As I am very excited to begin the next season of Kingdom Death, the redemption arc! Starting next year!
We are fully the FUCK back to work!
Hard Plastic Showdown Board
Getting back to the table! A little before the Gambler's Chest lands in your homes, the Showdown board should be on its way, getting ready to upgrade your tables in time for that showdown with the Crimson Crocodile!
We'll have more information on the hard plastic Showdown board during our December update!
Estimated Arrival Date: Quarter 1, 2023.
A tale of two Dogs
The Frog Dog and Black Knight expansions are so close to completion! We will be turning our attention to them in December to wrap them up and get them into production ASAP, ahead of Campaigns of Death. More gameplay content will be making its merry way to your doorsteps.
The Black Knight is a node 3 nemesis monster, so in many of your campaigns you will have a new challenge to use instead of the Hand!
Estimated Arrival Date: Quarter 3, 2023. (Hopefully in time for Gencon 2023, we plan on returning!)
Campaigns of Death
The Campaigns of Death will be next on our hit list, returning to full development focus following the wrap of the Frogdog and Black Knight expansions.
Estimated Arrival Date: Quarter 4, 2023, Hopefully in time for Xmas!
Dark Herald 10 - Inverted Mountain Campaign
We have braved the malodorous scents of the Frogdog. We have forgotten those rendered faceless by the Oblivion Mosquito. We have trusted and distrusted the White Speaker Cult. We have harvested the secret fruit within the garden of the Nightmare Ram. We have inherited the legacies left behind in the Black Knight’s citadel. We have survived the Gryphon’s rampage. Now, all that we have left to do is climb.
The Inverted Mountain is a campaign expansion that includes the Frogdog, Oblivion Mosquito, Nightmare Ram, Gryphon, Pariah, Red Witches, and Black Knight into a single story. It tells the tale of a settlement of survivors nestled at the base of the Inverted Mountain, the struggles they face against the distinct quarries of their biome, and their relentless pursuit of the Mountain’s plateau-summit. The People of the Mountain campaign is a new 30 year campaign culminating in a unique finale monster, the Mountain Man. We will not be revealing intimate details of this showdown today. However, there is plenty more to share of the People of the Mountain’s story beyond just its ending.
Starting Life in The Cess Pond
Located at the base of the Inverted Mountain, the Cess Pond is the ultimate destination of the detritus that constantly sloughs off of the Mountain, a place where the building blocks of life are laid upon a foundation created by the deaths of those that came from above. All kinds of flora and fauna found within the heights of the Inverted Mountain begin and end their life cycle within the Cess Pond, and survivors are no exception to this rule.
Survival within the filthy soup of the Cess Pond is different. Merely existing is an ordeal for the senses, a constant assault of cacophonous noises and pungent smells.
To succeed in this hostile environment, survivors must learn to leverage the peculiarities of the Pond for themselves. The Skimmery is one such adaptation, a piece of infrastructure dedicated to collecting the Pond Scum that forms atop the Pond’s fetid waters.
Depending on how it is treated, Pond Scum can take on a variety of different characteristics. When it is mixed with sediment and dehydrated within the vicinity of lantern heat, it hardens into durable medallions. When woven, it forms a light mesh.
The Pond Scum armor takes advantage of both properties, offering lightweight protection without hampering the mobility of its wearer.
Aside from Pond Scum, survivors may also try their hand at diving into the Cess Pond in search of valuable resources, vermin, or perhaps an underwater demise at the cirri of a Siren Barnacle.
Of course, survivors will find that there is more to adapting to the Cess Pond aside from properly utilizing local materials. The Pond’s waters are mercurial, and a suite of new events ensures surprises for even the most veteran of playgroups.
Visions and Omens
Some survivors begin their journey with naught but the ink staining their eyes and the light of their lanterns. You awoke with a vision. The idea that there is something beyond the horror of your existence, waiting for you atop the Mountain.
Visionaries are special. They are survivors that dare to dream of a better life, endowed with an unwavering conviction that compels them to lead their settlements to greatness or death. A Visionary acts as the catalyst for the People of the Mountain’s quest for the summit.
A visionary’s personal gear simultaneously serves as their tools of choice and their legacy. These relics have powerful effects that can rally a settlement around their user.
In stark contrast to the Visionary, the Apotheosis is a survivor focused only on themselves, unconcerned with the desires of the rabble around them. Though they may not inspire the settlement like the Visionary, the Apotheosis also serves a core role in the story of the People of the Mountain.
Influenced by the grand ambitions of the paragons in their midst, the People of the Mountain are empowered to find purpose in their own lives.
From lantern year to lantern year, survivors look to their dreams and the nature around them in search of omens. Upon finding a sign and interpreting it through ritual festivity, a survivor is able to establish motivations for themselves beyond living to see another lantern fade. The survivor then etches the omen onto themselves with soot moth ink, allowing it to serve as a permanent reminder of their goals.
In times of duress, survivors will leverage insanity into transcendent manias that can be performed at similar timings to survival actions.
The Inverted Mountain
Furnished with gear and ambition, the ultimate goal of the People of the Mountain remains, invariably, the summit. After triumphing over their early game quarry and nemeses in the Cess Pond, the settlement must make its destined ascent. There, they will encounter more powerful monsters, new hunt events, and overwhelming heights.
Climbing the Inverted Mountain is a demanding affair, coupled with the constant danger of a lethal fall. As with their endeavors in the Cess Pond, survivors will develop new sets of tools and gear to assist with their hunt.
One such creation is the Mountain Dungeon armor, a set built around allowing its wearer to navigate the treacherous terrain of the mountain while leaving lifelines for the rest of the hunting party.
With commitment, the settlement is also able to establish base camps upon the Mountain, giving the hunting party more opportunities to rest and expedite traversal through lower levels of the Mountain.
These boons will be integral for surviving against the Trapdoor Men, a cadre of unwitting disciples to the Mountain Man’s demented meditations. These ambush predators camouflage as the ubiquitous stone faces found on all sides of the Inverted Mountain, waiting for a chance to silently disembowel their prey. Careless survivors may find themselves whisked off of the hunt board and directly into the arms of a starving Trapdoor Man. Even astute hunting parties may not realize that they are being hunted until it is too late.
Finally, the extraordinary challenges of the Inverted Mountain may drive the People of the Mountain into re-examining the utility of their existing armor sets, creating hybrid builds with both amalgamated benefits and novel effects.
The Ramfrog Armor combines the propulsion of the Membrane set with the padding of the Ram, allowing its user to barrel into monsters and terrain alike with vigorous force.
The Gryquito Armor forgoes the modal flexibility of the Oblivion Armor in order further hone in the aerial capabilities introduced with the Harlequin Armor.
With that, our ascent up the Inverted Mountain together must finally draw to a close. The peak, and the Man who sits atop it, exist outside of my purview. Thank you for joining me during all of these months. Should you have lingering questions about the summit, and should the Mountain continue to haunt your thoughts, I can only offer one suggestion. Continue the climb.
Estimated Arrival Date: Quarter 1, 2024, Hopefully in time for the new year!
Wanderers
The Anonymous Survivor is now Aeneas! The creator of the character and the original artist they commissioned have both reached out to us and well... the character really isn't so Anonymous anymore! We are finally moving forward with this unique project. It's our first (of hopefully many!) collaboration with a fan!
Wanderers are unique survivors that can join a settlement for a time. By interacting with their content and guiding them through their personal philosophy, settlements can earn knowledge cards, fighting arts, gear, and other benefits that persist after the Wanderer has left. Gameplay-wise, each Wanderer is distinct and can impact the settlement in different ways. While they have shifted a little bit from their initial pitch, I assure you the content will not be lacking!
With the Gambler Chest underway and a production estimate in hand, we are preparing our schedule to finish all the Wanderers sooner than later so they can be shipped out for everyone to enjoy with the GCE and its crazy amount of content.
Estimated Arrival Date: Over the course of 2023.
Screaming God, Honeycomb Weaver, Abyssal Woods, Ivory Dragon, Silver City, First Hero, Pathfinders of Death, Super Survivors, Promos of Death and False Messengers.
These projects have all seen a varying degree of development and all had to paused in order to bring everyone onto the Gambler's Chest expansion and complete its very ambitious development. We had our team spread too diffusely across all our projects. While it was great for generating ideas and quickly bringing things to the table, it did not result in the the polish level we require for Kingdom Death projects. Wave 4 projects will most likely begin to see their finish and fulfillment in 2024.
For us, rapidly expanding our tiny team and training new people to meet the development workload of this Kickstarter, did not work out as well as we hoped. We spent too much time training and not enough time doing what we love, making monsters! So we are returning to a smaller core team, with each project led by Anna or myself. That means that hardcore game development work on these expansions will be picked up in earnest as we finish the aforementioned Frogdog, Black Knight, and Campaigns of Death projects and send them to print. The artwork, small art, story events, miniature sculpting and hard plastic tooling will however continue to make steady progress.
Possessed Twilight Knight
Having now been through two different resin casters, we finally have enough units to fulfill this long outstanding project! In January 2023, we will be reaching out to the list provided to us from Sodapop Miniatures to confirm addresses and begin shipping these out.
Estimated Arrival Late February 2023
Painting Contest
We were FLOODED with entries to the painting contest! With well over 430 entires, it has taken quite some time to simply catalog them all for review! They are nothing short of amazing! At the time of writing we have begun to dispatch batches of Kings Coins and we are super excited to put on our best judging monocles to announce the winners before the end of the year!
Each King's Coin needs to have its unique serial code sculpted into it, and will be sent out in waves as they are completed! Here are some of the contest entries picked mostly at random for you to enjoy. Everything will be added to a formal galley on our website when we are finished.
Kingdom Death: Simulator - Open House
The Kingdom Death: Simulator (KDS) was our lantern in the dark times, and has given us board game development super powers. KDS has allowed us to iterate faster than ever before and test in ways we only imagined! It has also granted us the ability to have meaningful playtest sessions around the world. It has and will continue to help us fulfill the promises we made for this Kickstarter. Our internal testing tool has grown into having its own dedicated team of Dark Architects, who toil away improving the dwelling. They have informed me, through whispers and ciphers, that the Keysmith is stirring and it’s time to unlock the dwelling.
IT IS ONLY ON BLACK FRIDAY, THE BLACKEST OF ALL DAYS, THAT THE KEYSMITH CUTS KEYS TO THE DWELLING. IT SHALL UNLOCK THE DOOR THAT DOES NOT EXIST.
Would-be dwellers that miss this opportunity will have to wait until the next time the Keysmith is willing to cut keys. Maybe even until next Black Friday! It really depends on a lot of technical stuff I don't fully understand!
www.kingdomdeath.com/simulator
Basically we are taking pre-orders for the early access release of the Kingdom Death: Simulator and offering a cool black friday bonus with it. Invites are planned to roll out over the course of December.
Community Garden
How do we properly care for and nourish and support the community that has grown around Kingdom Death? Is it even our place? I don't personally know! But I can say that we will be reaching out to listen and formulate a plan to nurture this community.
A Future Things!
Kingslayer Twilight Knight!
PLAY
Kyu's Twilight Knight!
!!!!
Surprise! It's the Final GCE Surprise!
Despite it all, I managed to sneak in one last little surprise! We had to reopen the boxes in order to insert the encounter life tracking dice and a little bit extra happened to fall in while the boxes were open!
.
.
.
.
Meanwhile...