Frosthaven Preorders (Q1 2023)

Reviewing of Proofs
over 2 years ago – Sat, Jun 04, 2022 at 06:11:30 AM

Hello! It has been a busy couple of weeks over here as we scrutinize every last piece of the monumental Frosthaven box!

We had three copies sent to Price, Josh, and myself, which all arrived about 2 weeks ago, and after an initial review to fix any egregious production issues, we had six more copies sent out to other employees, developers, and partners to make sure we really had a high-level of scrutiny going into everything in the game. Those copies arrived this week (or will arrive early next week), and we'll be spending about one more week looking over things before we're comfortable hitting the big red print button.

We have already caught quite a few issues, so this process is definitely necessary to ensure that what arrives at your door will be the best possible game.

From there, we're looking at roughly 45 days before we'll be able to start loading the first finished games on containers, with production continuing to last several months beyond that. So freight shipping to our warehouses should start around the end of July, but will continue through the Summer and into the Fall. Please note these timelines do not yet reflect fulfillment warehousing timelines (Warehouse --> You), as those are still being defined based on our finalized production timeline and freight schedule and will vary by region. More information to come once production and assembly are more concretely underway!

It was certainly disappointing getting delayed by another month and a half due to the shutdown, but we're making the best of it and are still dedicated to delivering a truly impressive game to you as quickly as the quality and all these complications permit.

And I know I've opined on how awesome this game is many times before, but getting the full box in front of me and exploring it, well, you'll have to permit me to do a little more opining. The scale and detail of this game is simply unprecedented.

One of the first things I did when the box arrived was to read through the scenario book, section book, and event cards to do a full review of the narrative, making sure everything lined up logically and all the section numbers flowed as intended (and there weren't any production issues, of course). Just the depth of the lore and the arc of the story really blew me away. This was one of the main ways I wanted to improve with Frosthaven over Gloomhaven, and I am really happy with where we ended up.

There are just so many fun characters to fall in love with and powerful story beats and just so much cool stuff to discover as you play. This game is on a whole other level from Gloomhaven, it just going to blow people away.

Having already seen and labored over every piece of this game, I didn't think I could be surprised by how good it would feel to have everything come together in that box, but it really did. As the person most intimately familiar with everything already, that thing still impressed. I can't wait for all of you to get your hands on it and see your reactions!

And if you want to check out Frosthaven before then, you can always stop by our booth at Origins next week (booth 1423). We'll be demoing Frosthaven and displaying components from the box.

That's all I have for you this week. I am looking forward to coming back next time to tell you that production has officially started! Until then!

New arrivals
over 2 years ago – Sun, May 22, 2022 at 01:48:06 AM

Hello! I know we just had an update last week, but that was off-cycle, and it is time to resume our normal schedule. This is good, though, because we've got two big arrivals to let you in on!

First of all, one of our Frosthaven proofing copies finally arrived at Price's house yesterday! That's right, this game actually exists, is playable, and is quite impressive when beheld in full! And Price already pulled an all-nighter communicating first notes and findings to our printer. That said, it did just arrive, plus my and other copies are still en route, so there's some more waiting and a lot of work to be done before we can give you a full update on it. But for now, I just thought it would be nice to let you know that we are finally seeing progress again after the shutdown.

Here are some pictures for you!

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And while my metaphorical child Frosthaven is finally arriving, the second arrival was my literal child, who was born on May 9! He is doing great, but supporting him and my partner has taken quite a lot of time, which is why Price sent out the update last week. No pictures with this announcement, but I will tell you that his nicknames are Neigh-Neigh and Snarf, because those are the sounds he makes when he is hungry and feeding, respectively. Also he is 100% adorable, and I know all new parents say that, but we have confirmation from numerous independent sources.

So give us a little time to deal with all these new arrivals, and I'll be back in two weeks with more details about what is going on next. Have a great weekend and stay safe!

Helper App Update: Partnership with Lucky Duck Games!
over 2 years ago – Mon, May 16, 2022 at 12:26:14 AM

Hello! As promised, here is our off-cycle announcement about the helper app, which I will get right into.

We are incredibly happy to announce that Cephalofair Games is partnering with Lucky Duck Games to develop an app to assist with all the combat upkeep in Frosthaven! Lucky Duck Games has a strong background in application development and app-based gaming, and has spent the last five years truly innovating how apps can be integrated into and improve the board game experience with games like Chronicles of Crime, Destinies, and most recently their successfully funded project The Dark Quarter in collaboration with Van Ryder Games. One of their core tenants is that app-assisted games should bring people together, not isolate them on their phones, and so we are very excited to see what innovation they will bring to the Frosthaven app in terms of UI and functionality!

Esoteric Software, the developers of the Gloomhaven Helper app, did an absolutely commendable job with that previous app, and we are very grateful to them. When they announced they wouldn't be moving forward with a Frosthaven app and also wouldn't be supporting the Gloomhaven app because of the time commitment, we understood and accepted that and began to work towards finding another developer willing to take on the massive task of creating apps for both Frosthaven and Gloomhaven and who could commit to maintaining them.

Lucky Duck is one of the best in the business, and we are confident that they are fully up to the task. We're still ironing out development timelines, but the plan is to first release a Frosthaven app that supports full in-combat character, summon, monster, ally, and objective tracking, initiative order tracking, as well as loot, monster abilities, and monster/ally attack modifier draws. Basically, our goal is to streamline the combat process as much as possible. After the Frosthaven app is released, they will then assist us with quickly delivering a counterpart Gloomhaven app as well, to bring everything under one roof.

Also just a quick note to clarify that you do not need an app to play either Gloomhaven and Frosthaven. They are both fully playable without an app, but some players feel they improve the experience by eliminating setup times and reducing the game's footprint on their tables.

Thank you for all your patience and understanding as we worked through this and got an official agreement in place. We can't wait to see what Lucky Duck comes up with!

Proofing stalls and more to come next week
over 2 years ago – Sat, May 07, 2022 at 01:55:38 AM

Hello! I am going to keep this update short because we will have a bigger off-cycle announcement about the helper app next week, so please look forward to that!

For now, I'd like to just give you an update on the physical proof situation, which is that we still don't have them. When I wrote the update last week, I had been informed that the shipments were imminent, but that has sadly proven incorrect, and I apologize for that. All there is to say at this point is that we are in daily contact with the factory, doing everything we possibly can to get full production proofs sent out to us as soon as possible, but the restrictions in Shanghai are still making that difficult. It is very frustrating for all of us at this point, but the situation looks like it is improving.

Other than that, I have just a couple more small updates. I did manage to get all the ooze slaying done last week on the Cephalofair Twitch channel, so you can go check that out if you had a name you had me slay an ooze for. I did it all in alphabetical order, so the first video is A-D (plus numbers and symbols), the second video is E-K (except that I later reshot the E's in an extra video because I screwed up the audio), the third video is L-M, the fourth video is N through some Toms, and then the fifth video is the rest of the Toms through the end of the list. I'll be working on pulling these off Twitch and uploading them to Youtube with some annotation next week.

I also wanted to throw a quick shout-out to the Kickstarter for the 2023 Board Game Mosaic Calendar by the talented Katia Howatson at Board Game Art Creations. A mosaic of Frosthaven is the art for November, and it is pretty cool!

And that's it! I hope you have a great weekend and happy Mother's Day!

Physical proofs not quite here and the start of ooze slaying
over 2 years ago – Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 12:05:02 AM

Hello! Not a whole lot of news to share this week. Shanghai continued to be locked down from COVID these past few weeks, so we sadly still don't have our hands on the physical proofs. Luckily, we just got word last night that the restrictions are being lifted, so the proofs should start getting shipped out very soon! These proofs are super-important as the last line of defense to make sure everything in the game is presented as intended, and we should be able to review everything next week and actually get started with production!

Also starting next week: ooze slaying! Anybody who pledged an extra dollar and answered the corresponding survey question will get an ooze slayed in their name. I will be streaming this live on my Twitch channel starting Monday at noon Pacific, and will continue Tuesday and Wednesday as well (schedule details here). Come Wednesday, I'll set the schedule for the rest of the week, depending on how many names we have left.

So you can come hang out and watch the ooze-slaying live if you'd like, or the videos will be archived for later viewing as well. If we get the proofs of Frosthaven in, I might show off a little of that as well, but I wouldn't expect anything more than me playing video games and rattling off a list of names at any given time. I'll try to interact with chat a little bit, but there are a lot of names to get through!

Finally, a quick update about Gloomhaven/Frosthaven companion apps. We are continuing conversations with a developer and hope to have some exciting news to be able to share soon. But for now, thank you for your patience and understanding.

Oh, and another small announcement! Cephalofair will be attending at Kublacon in San Francisco, May 27-30. We are recruiting booth staff for the show, so if you'll be attending as well and want to help out in the booth, you can apply through this Google form. Or you can just stop by the booth to play a demo with your favorite Frosthaven starter class and keep your ability cards afterward! We also have plans to attend Gen Con, Origins, Essen, and PAX:U this year. I personally won't be at any shows this year because we have a baby coming, but physical copies of Frosthaven will be attending in their full glory, and that's probably more exciting anyway. (Keep in mind, these will just be display copies.) 

And that's it! I am very disappointed we don't have proof pictures yet, but we're almost over this delay. Next time!