Helper App Update: Partnership with Lucky Duck Games!
almost 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
almost 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
about 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!
New artwork for the starting six and a delay on physical proofs
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Apr 15, 2022 at 04:01:29 AM
Hello, and happy two-year anniversary! Yes, it was two whole years ago that we launched this project, and, wow, has a lot happened between now and then. We wanted to commemorate this with some new art for you, but first, some less-good news.
We were scheduled to have the factory send out physical proofs to us earlier this week so that we could have them in hand to review and gush over and share pictures of for this update, but a recent COVID surge in Shanghai has left everything, including shipping, in lockdown and the factory hasn't yet been able to send them out. So we're in a bit of a holding pattern while we wait for things to cool down there.
In more fun news, though, we recently saw an amazing piece of Gloomhaven fan art from Phan Tuan Dat and decided it would be great to commission him to do some portraits of the starting six Frosthaven characters. I am very pleased to share them with you now, and feel free to use them as social media avatars (you can download them all individually from our website).
On Kickstarter they might not show up well because of the smaller, lower-resolution icons, but you can use these instead (for Kickstarter or whatever else you want):
Or if that is still too detailed, going with a classic character icon is also an option:
(Again, all of these can be downloaded from our website.)
I am really very happy with how all of these turned out, and I hope you enjoy them! Not only did Dat do a great job with the art, our new art director BJ Hensley did a great job getting the best out of him. Also I just wanted to note this art isn't used anywhere in Frosthaven and isn't replacing anything. It's just something cool we wanted to do so we could look at more fabulous art!
That's all I've got for now. I wish I had exciting physical proof images to share as well, but hopefully we'll have lots for the next update, depending on the resolution of the Shanghai lockdown. Until then, have a great weekend and stay safe!
No news again
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 04:52:58 AM
Hello! Just checking in for the update, but I don't really have anything to report. I can't give you a full update on proofs yet because we are still in the middle of it. We ran into a technical issue with the proofs (which is the reason we do it) that caused some delays, but we're getting there.
Other than that, though, I don't want to waste your time with too much fluff. I'll catch you next update with some more substantial news and other cool stuff!
