Frosthaven Preorders (Q1 2023)

What timeline the new year brings
over 2 years ago – Sun, Jan 02, 2022 at 12:57:25 AM

Hello! Well, looks like we're gonna get through 2021, and whatever else 2022 brings, there will definitely be Frosthaven, which should make it a pretty great year regardless! And though 2021 was a bit of a struggle for us, trying to get all the files done and ready to go, it ultimately made Frosthaven so very much improved, and it will be worth the extra time it took to cook.

So where are we? Digital proofing is almost all wrapped up. It's taken a little longer than expected, as we did find some mistakes in the files that needed to be iterated upon. But that's why we do it! We're doing our best to make sure that what arrives at your doorstep is the best experience possible, which means taking the time and catching all those needed corrections.

Once digital proofing is done, the factory will proceed with pre-production samples, which are physical samples that we can look through to make sure everything looks good before going into full production. We're hoping those will be able to go out in the next couple weeks, and by the end of Chinese New Year, which will be at the beginning of February, we'll have everything fully reviewed and approved so we'll be ready to ramp up production. From there, the factory is estimating that it will take three months to produce all the games, during which time we'll also be dealing with ocean freight to get the games to fulfillment centers.

Of course, ocean freight is where the timeline gets more fuzzy. There are still a lot of variable factors here that we are working through, but now that we have a more concrete production timeline, we'll be able to better figure all that out in the coming weeks and months.

So that's all I know for now, but as always, I'll keep you updated as more information comes in.

Also, I just want to shout out to our organizer partners Laserox and Folded Space, who are doing a phenomenal job sticking to our production timelines to make sure that there won't be a fulfillment delay on their end.

And just one more teaser image for you: the envelope X reward box!

Everything is coming together! It is just a massive undertaking in a challenging time, so things may be moving more slowly than what you'd expect on a smaller project, but it is very much coming along.

So with that, I wish you all a happy New Year, and I hope 2022 brings you lots more awesome things in addition to Frosthaven! Have fun and stay safe!

PAXU Event
over 2 years ago – Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 11:22:54 PM

Hello! It was great to see everyone who came out to PAXU last week and stopped by the booth or attended the event (or both). I love interacting with you all and hearing about how our games have brought joy and happiness to your lives!

We did make a big announcement at the end of the event about a separate crowdfunding project we'll be launching next year for miniatures for all monsters in Gloomhaven, Frosthaven, Jaws of the Lion, and Forgotten Circles. It's going to be a lot of minis! We'll be releasing more info about that on other platforms as we get closer to it, so for now (since this is a Frosthaven update), I'd like to focus on the rest of the event, where went through and talked about a lot of the big elements of the game and touched on the current timeline and why it is taking longer than originally anticipated.

Here's the whole video for the event, graciously provided by the hosts, Mik and Starla from Our Family Plays Games (the audio gets better after the intro):

I don't want to rehash everything from the video, but I do want to touch on a couple of points, the first of which is the timeline. I know I keep saying this and I apologize, but we are still finalizing a schedule with the manufacturer, and so I still can't provide any concrete dates. In the video, I give an estimation of 4 months to start fulfillment, but just know that is still a pretty uninformed estimation assuming everything goes perfectly with manufacturing and freight shipping (which we know it won't). Basically, you can count on it taking at least 4 more months, but it will likely take longer. I'll let you know more when I know more.

Next, I just wanted to share some of the visuals of the presentation with you that people seemed to respond positively to:

And finally, I just wanted to touch upon the inspiration resource, which is something I mentioned during the event, but haven't explored in an update at all. One important way we wanted to improve upon Gloomhaven when we were working on Frosthaven was to make the campaign progression at all player counts more balanced. Lower player counts in Gloomhaven saw fewer character retirements, which led to less prosperity and less content overall.

And it was especially important to get this right in Frosthaven because the campaign progression is much more involved. Character retirements determine what buildings you have access to, which fuels all aspects of improving your town and preparing for the harsh winters. We had to make sure the pace was equal at all player counts, so we came up with a simple resource called inspiration.

Basically, inspiration is gained whenever you complete a scenario, and you gain an amount equal to 4 minus the number of players. You'll see very little of this resource if you're playing exclusively with 4 players, but if you play with only 2, you'll see a lot of it. It can be used as a wild building resource, but its main purpose is to help complete additional personal quests.

Whenever a character retires, if you have at least 15 inspiration,  you can spend 15 to immediately complete an extra personal quest in addition to the one the character completed, so you gain all the benefits for none of the work. It doesn't help you complete the quests players are working on in any way, but it basically just simulates an extra player at the table completing a quest every 15 scenarios or so.

Looks like our next update is scheduled for New Year's Eve, so I'll see you then with all the timeline updates I can get from the factory. And in the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season!

Box images and rule book snippets
over 2 years ago – Mon, Dec 06, 2021 at 07:16:44 PM

Hello! I again don't have a lot to report this week, as we're still just working through digital proofs. The rule book is still a work-in-progress, so that isn't available yet, but it is definitely getting close and the delays there aren't going to affect our overall timeline, as we'll be proofing other files for another couple weeks at least.

I would like to show you some snippets of it, though, just so you can see how nice looks and how friendly it is to the reader.

The first thing you probably notice is that we are using some rule book stickers, legacy-style, for some of the new mechanics that will be added to the game as you unlock more buildings. If you look closely, though, you can see some other changes we've made since Gloomhaven, like hazardous terrain damage scaling and drawing three battle goals each scenario instead of two.

I also wanted to show you some images of the final box itself, as I think it turned out really nicely.

And I really need you to just really look at this beefy thing from the side, and note that this box is over 2 inches taller than the Gloomhaven box. 

Now that we are transitioning into production, I would really like to give everyone an updated timeline, but we haven't solidified that with the factory yet. I am hoping to have something concrete to give you in the next update.

In other news, we've processed all the data from the organizer surveys, and are working through all the refunds on Kickstarter (this'll be done early next week). We're also working on adjusting all the SKUs in Backerkit, so in about a week your pledge manager should accurately reflect the changes.

And, hey, since I haven't mentioned it in over a year, I also just want to acknowledge that I owe a lot of you a video where I slay an ooze in your name. I haven't forgotten, and now that I have more free time, I'm going to start working on that. If you have any suggestions on video games to play that have lots of oozes to kill, I'd welcome them in the comments.

And finally, PAX Unplugged! If you're going, I'll just encourage you one more time to come attend our Frosthaven and Beyond event Saturday at 10:30 am in the Leviathan room. I think it will be worth it, he says cryptically. And if you won't be at PAXU, Our Family Plays games will be filming the event, so you'll be able to watch it on their channel later. You might also want to look out for a video on our channel soon after the event ends.

Okay, I have run out of things to say. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I'll catch you next time!

Moving Along
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 09:15:06 PM

Hello! I hope everyone is doing well! I don't have a big update for you today. To get right into it, nearly all files have been submitted to the printer and we are getting ready for production.

Yeah, I said "nearly". I would have really loved to not have to put that "nearly" in there. I know we had a hard deadline for the end of October, but we hit a number of setbacks on getting the rulebook finished, and so, unfortunately, it is the last outstanding element. Which sucks, because I really want to show it to you, but that will have to wait until next update.

The good news is that the rulebook goes right at the top of the box, so we're able to move forward with production while we wait for that to finish up. One other interesting tidbit about the rulebook: it is 84 pages long, which is 21 saddle-stitched sheets, which is...more sheets than a staple can handle. So we'll actually have two rulebooks! One for the rules for playing a scenario, and one for the campaign elements and outpost phase of the game, along with all the appendices.

Not much else to report other than that. I would like to mention that we will be at PAX Unplugged, which is in Philidelphia, Dec. 10-12. We'll have Frosthaven demos set up both at our booth (#2531) and the dedicated demo area, where you get to keep the character ability deck you demoed with when you're done. We'll also be doing a Frosthaven & Beyond event at the show (Leviathan room, Saturday at 10:30 am), which will kind of be a retrospective on this whole Frosthaven project, a Q&A, and some other cool surprise stuff, all MCed by Mik from Our Family Plays Games!

And if you are going to PAXU and/or are local to the area, we're looking for a few more seasoned players who are familiar and excited to share the new Frosthaven mechanics as part of our demo team. You can sign up to help us out here.

And that's it! Once we finish with proofing and actually start up the printing, we will be getting a much better idea of our schedule going forward, which will also be helpful in our continuing effort to coordinate the shipping leg of our journey. So you can look forward to more of that info in future updates.

Until then, have a great weekend and stay safe!

Oh, and one additional edit: we're working with Backerkit to get the requested organizer refunds out, and we should start processing them next week. Sorry for the delay!

Some info on solo scenarios
over 2 years ago – Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 12:55:09 AM

Hello! The surveys are now closed for the new organizers, so we will be working with Backerkit to get refunds to everyone who wanted them and we're working on a new survey for those who selected Laserox between the full wood and the tuck boxes (see last update for more info).

In addition to that, we are still finishing up the very last of the efforts, like the rulebook and the 1-page sheet going at the top of the box to explain how to organize everything inside. We anticipate they'll be done by next week, and they're the last things to go in the box, so they aren't stopping up us from moving forward with production. We're still going through proofing for now, but I'll let you know when we have more activity on the production side.

What I wanted to do today is talk about something I haven't really touched on much this campaign: the solo scenario book addon. This book functions similarly to the solo scenario book from Gloomhaven. Once a character is level 5 (there are no other requirements), they may attempt the scenario designed specifically for them and only them as a single character. You play it by yourself, and if you're able to finish it, you are rewarded with a class-specific item.

There are a few significant changes, though. First of all, the items are very much class specific, which helped to keep them balanced. This means that you can only get the items through the scenario, and once the character retires, the item doesn't stay in the item pool for other characters to purchase. If a new character of that class wants the item, they'll have to play the scenario again. This also means the item doesn't have a sell price, so at the moment you get the item, if you don't want it, you are allowed to gain a perk instead.

Unlike the other scenarios in Frosthaven, the solo scenarios are designed as more of a puzzle, where it is intended that you'll have all the information up front. For this reason, we didn't want to implement the new scenario structure seen in the Frosthaven scenario and section books. Instead, the presentation is similar to the Gloomhaven books, where the entire scenario is on the same page and you can look ahead. Though all the graphical elements have been updated, of course.

Like everything else in Frosthaven, these scenarios went through a lot of play testing, and the item rewards are also more finely tuned, so I'm excited for you to get all 17 of them to enjoy! And if you didn't add the solo scenarios to your pledge, they will be available later through our webstore and conventions.

So that's all I have for you this time. I hope to have more production info for you next time, and in the interim, I hope you are doing well, and have a great weekend!