As you already know from our latest update, we were waiting to approve the first mass-production copies to start mass assembly.
Around a week ago we received photos of the final items that we were waiting for to be printed. You can see a collage of pictures of the last paper components below.
While Panda recently had Covid issues at their manufacturing facility, they have been very communicative and active to accomplish this project before the Chinese New Year.
The mass-production copy will arrive to us on the 28th for a double-check, but we have seen many videos and photos and already approved and given directions to start right away with the assembly. Here are the photos that Panda sent us to approve the MPC. The complete unboxing will happen in a video update once we receive the MPC. In these photos, we are partially showing the printed components.
Our hope is to have everything ready by January 10th. We have organized and pre-booked the containers, vessels, and everything related to make it happen on that date and we will keep you informed along the way.
We want to wish you a great time during these holidays and we hope to give you good news at the beginning of next year.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask in this update.
We really appreciate your patience and support.
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
Everything on track - Darwin's Journey Q&A
almost 2 years ago
– Wed, Dec 07, 2022 at 08:24:51 PM
Dear Explorers,
We hope you are well.
If this is your first update in a while, you might want to read all of these:
We are very close to receiving the first mass-produced copy, and our manufacturer said that the schedule communicated in the latest update is being met.
Here are the dates.
A few weeks back we did a Q&A with our community on Twitch to answer any questions you had about the production and fulfillment process. Here you have an edited video with answers to your questions.
We have added the topic title on the video sections for you to skip to what interests you the most, or you can also listen to it like a podcast.
Here is a digest of everything we discuss in this video:
Production of the game discussion
Announcement of development feed, a feature that will be found in our new website that is in the works
Timeframe for assembly
Backers QA copies (early shipment to selected backers for testing)
Distribution and timeline for publishing
The delivery date for the game
Communication and Backer's expectation
How to prevent delays in the future
Future of crowdfunding and our industry after covid
Thundergryph's future of crowdfunding
Local production and manufacturing
We recommend opening the video in another window and searching for the question you want to be answered by looking at the video thumbnails in the video timeline.
We will hopefully have news soon about the mass-production copy as the manufacturer recently reached out to us to confirm our address. We will share more news, videos, or photos we will receive in an update.
We really appreciate your patience and support.
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
October Update - Production and Q&A Livestream
about 2 years ago
– Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 12:59:19 AM
Dear Explorers,
We hope you are well.
If this is your first update in a while, you might want to read all of these:
We had an important meeting with Panda yesterday where we discussed several things about Darwin to establish a proper date for the end of production, assembly, and delivery of the games. After that, we also had a chat with some of our fulfillment centers to plan everything accordingly.
We requested photos so you can see that we have produced several components for Darwin and we are awaiting the printed files to be done! I hope this will give you trust and perspective on this project.
In the last few weeks, there was a back-and-forth communication between us and the manufacturer regarding markings, game boxes, cartons, and how they will assemble each box to organize everything in the best way possible.
Despite the fact that we were all planning to finish production by November 2022, it will take a few more weeks. This is by far our most significant single production ever, which means that we need to be extremely careful about how we do this game as any mistake, as minor as it could be, would lead to a lot more issues to resolve and a budget to be spent.
I personally take responsibility for how I planned this project, communicated all our deadlines, and how optimistic I was since the beginning. We had a few less than 30 stretch goals planned at the beginning of this project and we ended up with 50, as I truly believe that you deserve to share the success of the project. I don’t regret how this project was managed because I can honestly say that the entire team has been working extremely hard on making this project happen. We are learning exponentially how to deal with the creation of games, but eventually, we need to step up. Therefore, for future campaigns, we will ensure that the game and related goals are pre-produced and the rules are finalized before launching.
Here are the final estimates for everything regarding Darwin’s Journey
You probably have a lot of questions on how all of this works, and for this reason, we will have a 30 min round of Q&A where Gon will be answering questions and explaining the process before our weekly Livestream for Spirits of the Forest: Moonlight today Friday 28th at 7:30 pm CET 1:30 pm EDT. We will then edit and post the video later in our comment section and as a comment in this update for the ones who couldn’t make it to the Livestream.
If you can’t attend the Livestream, write down your questions in the comment section of this update and we will try to answer them all in the Q&A section of the Livestream.
We really appreciate your patience and we can’t wait to finally show an MPC copy. We are confident that you will be very proud of what we have created together.
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
September Update
about 2 years ago
– Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 04:56:00 AM
Dear explorers,
We hope you are well.
If this is your first update in a while, you might want to read all of these:
We did a small survey last month to understand how impatient and excited you are about this game, as we are recently reading comments filled with sarcasm and skepticism about delivery expectations and regarding how much we care about this game. We can guarantee you that we definitely care. Delays affect us profoundly and this is no joke to us. We are not relaxed in any way, and we are responsible for the time we took to address many balancing and changes of the 46 Stretch Goals unlocked during the campaign. The manufacturing timeline at Panda has also increased drastically during the past couple of years and there is literally nothing we can do about it.
[10% of backers answered the survey. Impatient: 4.8/10 - Excited: 7.7/10]
Despite all of that, we really respect you and your opinion, sometimes we would just appreciate it if some of your feedback was a bit more constructive, but crowdfunding has been like that even before Covid, so we accept it encouraged by most of you who are very kind towards us. We feel very grateful for having such a great community around us, which is very rare generally speaking.
Small production update
Panda sent a revised box height of 9cm as they feel this will structurally protect the insert and the contents better and would still fit everything perfectly once you remove the punchboards of the game from the box. This is barely a 1cm / 0.39 inches increase.
They also sent a revised insert with the few changes that were needed. You can see below how the final insert will look.
Our manufacturer is doing its absolute best to have the games ready for freight on Nov 2022 as stated in the previous update. We will be meeting our manufacturer at Essen this year to discuss how it is going and what we can do on our side to accelerate this process in the future.
We wish you all the best and thank you for your patience. We’ll be sending more photos/videos as soon as we receive them. We will be updating you once a month, as at the moment it is the most sustainable way to handle communications for our team.
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
Double layer boards are here!
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 03:50:03 AM
Dear explorers,
We hope you are all doing great!
As we communicated in our latest update, we were expecting to show you the last piece that was missing, which was unlocked after your requests during the campaign: the double-layer player board, exclusive to the Collector’s Edition of Darwin’s Journey.
We are very happy with how sturdy and great it feels. We appreciate the patience you showed while we were trying to make it in the best possible way.
We have good news for the ones that didn’t get Darwin’s Journey Collector’s edition as well. Since the board is folded into 9 parts, we needed to give more structure to the board from the moment we noticed that a few people were opening the folds in the wrong way and the board was tearing apart.
The retail edition of Darwin’s Journey will now come with the main board wrapped around the edges. There is only a single way to open and close the board and it has immensely improved the sturdiness of the board itself.
We will be sending a new update next month (September 2022) with everything that the manufacturer will send over (photos, videos).
If this is your first update in a while, you might want to read all of these:
