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!
over 3 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:
We wish you all the best and thank you for your patience.
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
Collector’s Edition plastic insert, now modular!
over 3 years ago
– Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 03:59:41 AM
Dear explorers,
We hope this message finds you well and that you were able to take a bit of time off this summer to play a few games and get your deserved relaxation.
The team members are taking a week off here and there throughout July/August, but we haven’t stopped working on everything, and we are taking turns to make sure we take care of everything that needs to be accomplished this year.
During the last update, we showed the printed components and the layout for the Collector’s insert. In this update, we have photos to show you!
But first, if this is your first update in a while, you might want to read all of these:
There were a couple of things that you really wanted during the campaign that we didn’t plan at all. The double layer boards of which we have white samples already while we are waiting for the printed samples; and the plastic insert for the Collector’s edition.
We were very thankful for your interest in this game and we wanted to reward you with both of these improvements. Initially, we thought it would not take too much work to get these done but it was definitely challenging, I’m very proud of the team and thankful for all the help Panda (our manufacturer) gave us in this process.
For the insert, aside from unlocking it, we have improved it in four different ways:
The insert is now modular (3 different trays will hold all the components for Darwin’s Journey, including add-ons).
The insert has been improved in thickness and quality (if you have Iwari Deluxe Edition you can expect the same manufacturing process).
The insert will also include a lid to protect all the components from moving around.
Considering how the insert was done, the box doesn’t have to be that big. We have decreased the size from 30x30x12 cm to 30x30x8 cm. This means you will have a bit more space for other games, or a smaller box to carry if you are bringing this game somewhere.
We need to apply a minor change (increasing the size of a slot by a couple of millimeters and we will be ready to go. The insert fits Sleeved Cards as shown in the photos.
In the next update, which is scheduled for this month, we will show the last final piece which is the double-layer board, and a more detailed timeframe based on the feedback from Panda.
We really appreciate you and we are looking forward to sending this game out to you. As soon as the first few mass-manufactured copies are assembled, we will be sending them over to a selected group of backers and you’ll be able to hear from them what to expect!
If you have any questions, please feel free to write a comment in this update.
We wish you all the best and thank you so much for your patience.
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
📌 Printed samples photos and what's next!
almost 4 years ago
– Sat, Jun 25, 2022 at 01:15:22 AM
Dear explorers,
We hope this message finds you well and safe.
If you think about this journey with us and close your eyes, you might feel the sun touching your skin and the breeze running through your hair just like being on the HSM Beagle, or maybe you just feel angry about it. Neither is to say this game has been a colossal work that we have done with so much love along with your kind patience. Thank you for that.
Instead of sitting on my couch and talking to you about this, I wanted to do something different. I’ve been reading and seeing misinformation about the shipping prices and I felt I wanted to talk about it. This video is not a must, but will definitely give you an overview of how we felt during this Pandemic.
📌If this is your first update in a long while, you might want to see the rest first
If you visited the comment section a week ago,I posted a short video to notify we received the printed samples from the manufacturer. I will start doing more of that in the upcoming weeks.
Here are a few photos from our playtest sessions. Please notice that these were printed digitally and cut by hand. The final product will be bright and well-cut as you have seen in the press videos.
Here is what happened during the last week:
I unboxed all the printed items during a video conference with the team (as many of you know, we have always worked remotely from home), checking that the right file version was printed and to see if we missed anything inside the boxes.
I revised the structure and finishes and the materials, to see if everything that was unlocked was there.
I sent the copies to Pier, our game dev and art director for Darwin’s Journey. He spent several days playing the game with each of the expansions along with a rotation of players (some of them our backers!)
We sat down to discuss what we all found. There are only seven small things to change/update which is definitely the lowest number we had so far for a game. To give an example, we will update the lids on the envelopes of the mini-expansions to make sure the glue doesn’t go over the cards inside the envelope. We also still need to receive the dual-layer printed board.
We had a video call with Panda, our manufacturer, to discuss manufacturing and assembly. While they have been amazing to us, recently there were complications in Shanghai. Looks like to print all the rest of the printed components and assemble them for freight, they will need 2 to 3 months. We are all doing all we can to have it made as soon as possible.
We need this game to be a 2022 game for several different reasons, and before that, we need to send this game to you, our backers. We appreciate your understanding and we are here if you want to open a dialog with us.
What’s next?
Panda will update the changes and start the production of the printed components of all the versions and languages required. All the rest is already manufactured and waiting for the rest to be done.
We have already sent our dieline for the Collector’s insert to Panda and they will make the 3D version and start manufacturing it along with the rest.
The first few mass-produced copies will be air-shipped to be used for a special product QA session with some of you that have been playing the game extensively on Tabletop Simulator over our discord channel. Selected backers will be helping us recheck all the components that they have received to understand if the assembly was done correctly and avoid any mistakes once we start fulfillment for all of you.
This is the first time we are doing this and if this goes well, we would like to start doing it in all our campaigns. Minimizing the margin of error will help us immensely and will limit any frustration that you may have about it.
We will be posting an update with their considerations and opinions about the game too!
Thank you so much for reading this update. Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
June Update - FAQs
almost 4 years ago
– Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 06:38:05 AM
Dear explorers,
We hope this message finds you well and safe.
Here is a short update on how we are doing with Darwin’s Journey where we will be answering your FAQs
We will follow up next week with another update.
It has been a while since I’ve read about this game, what have I missed?
Need to update your address or complete your pledge? Click here
To complete the game, we need to produce the printed components (rulebooks, boxes, cards, punchboards) and go into the assembly of the games.
Why is it taking this long?
The lockdowns in Shanghai are adding another layer of complications to everyone, but mainly to the people who work in the manufacturing facilities.
We cannot approve the mass production of printed components unless we see their final look. We have been waiting for the samples for a while because of this situation since they have a backlog of work piled up, but we received news saying that the manufacturer has completed the printed samples and will be sending them to us between today and next Monday. Hopefully, the package will arrive in around 72h and we’ll be able to immediately draft another update with more information on how it looks, where we are at, and we should also be able to give you an exact timeframe once communicated by the manufacturer and accepted by us.
Thankfully the production of printed components should be immensely faster than everything else that has been mass-produced already.
This is unacceptable, I’m frustrated.
We always visit the comment section and we read frustration but also understanding.
At this point, we are frustrated too, as it is incredible how making something fun can become a stressful process sometimes, but it is also true that nobody expected what happened these past couple of years and how the production cost and process of several things produced in China have changed drastically forever.
We owe you so much. We were born thanks to crowdfunding and I hope you understand that we have always shipped all the games we have crowdfunded and we maintain the promise of creating a game you will feel proud of without asking for more funds or requesting anything else from you.
This campaign has been twice as big as our other ones, and making a tiny mistake can be considered dangerous for a small company like ours.
We will be talking again next week, but if you have any questions you want us to address in the video where I’ll show the received components, please feel free to let me know in the comments below.
Thank you so much for reading this update. Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
