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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
April Update - Language rulebooks, pledge manager reminder, and dual-layer
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Apr 16, 2022 at 12:59:39 AM
Dear explorers,
We hope this message finds you well and safe.
In our latest update, we showed photos of the produced non-printed components for Darwin’s Journey. If you haven't seen it, please do!We would love to know what you think.
📌 Update index:
Language Rules and timeline
Dual-layer layout
Pledge manager reminder
[General News] The stolen Darwin’s notebooks
Language Rules and timeline
While we haven’t received any printed samples yet due to general complications and lockdowns in China, we have good news as we are finally done with all the localized rulebooks. These have been an enormous amount of work and we thank all our translators for the immense help on this project: The Rulebook Translator, Wabbit Translations, Matthias Webel, David Martínez del Amor, and Juan P. Betanzos Soto.
And we would like to thank all our localization partners for their kind revision: Blackrock games, Skellig games, TCG Factory, and Ghenos.
If you have the time, we would like to know what you feel about the translations as we are ready to start the production of these rules.
We are aiming at wrapping the project production in June, but we are still waiting on news from our manufacturer with fixed dates of completion. We remind you that assembly normally takes around 2-3 weeks and freight 4-7 weeks. We understand and share your frustration, but we are hopeful that 2022 is a year of transition where all the projects and the pace will go back to what it was before.
Dual-layer development update
We had to do a couple of revisions to the dual-layer board that all the backers of the Collector’s edition will be receiving.
As the game is made of several components, we wanted to keep information on the player board in an organized way, but every cut needs at least 3mm of margin which made the work much more complicated.
After a couple of revisions, we decided to create single, bigger cuts on the top board to accommodate the components better. You can see how we have done it in the image below. We hopefully will receive this along with all the other printed components.
Pledge manager reminder
Darwin’s Journey is twice as big as any other of our Kickstarter campaigns and we want to make sure we keep it under control every step of the way.
We need to start working on the logistics to make sure freight will be smooth and vessels will be booked way in advance to be ready as soon as production ends.
We still have 1000 backers that need to complete their pledges and share with us their information (which is crucial to understanding freight much better).
We encourage everyone that hasn’t completed their pledge tovisit Backerkit and update it as soon as possible.
📌 We are automatically closing down all the 1€ pledges on May 15th, 2022. At that point, you won’t be able to upgrade your pledges but we will be planting a tree for each one of you with Trees for the Future.
The Stolen Charles Darwin notebooks
Unrelated but related to our game, Darwin's notebooks have been returned to Cambridge University Library after going missing more than 20 years ago.
The manuscripts were found to be missing in 2001. The leather-bound notebooks, which were wrapped together in clingfilm, were left in a pink gift bag on the floor at Cambridge University Library, with a typed note wishing the librarian a "happy Easter".
They were first found to be missing from the library in 2001 after a routine check discovered that the small blue box containing the scientist's work had not been returned to its proper place.
Thank you so much for reading this update and we look forward to talking to you soon!
Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
March Update - Non-printed final components
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 12:21:25 AM
In this update, we are excited to show photos of the final non-printed components. All of them are ready for assembling once the printed components will be ready.
As statedin our previous update, we should receive the samples of the printed components anytime. Hopefully, we will be able to do a complete unboxing in our next update.
Thank you so much for reading this update and we look forward to talking to you soon!
Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
February Update - FAQs
about 2 years ago
– Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 10:23:09 PM
Dear Explorers,
We hope you are doing great.
The Chinese New Year is over and we are resuming manufacturing. Since we have been receiving some frequently asked questions, in this update we will be giving answers to all of these questions.
What have you done and what is missing?
The manufacturer has completed the production of all non-paper components. Selected items that are not part of the game boxes were also assembled and prepared.
We are waiting for printed samples of the retail and deluxe edition to show you. After our last meeting last week, it looks like we will receive the non-printed components soon (including the wooden player lenses) and the complete printed copy next month. After that, we will start the production and assembly of the printed components.
When do we expect the game to arrive?
As stated in the previous update, we expect the delivery of the game to happen during Q2 2022. We will always keep you posted about the timeframe of each update.
Can dual player boards bend? We are awaiting two different samples of the dual player boards. We will share them with you and choose the best option to make sure it will stay flat.
What is the link to the final rules of the game? You can now find the rules of the base game and the Fireland expansion in the five different languages on our website: https://thundergryph.com/rulebooks/
I’m running out of patience while waiting for the game. We completely understand. We are the most interested party to deliver the games and see you proud and pleased to have backed us, and that is our main purpose when doing crowdfunding campaigns.
2021 brought unprecedented challenges and while you are probably tired of hearing it, it has affected our industry more than what it seems on the surface.
We are very excited and positive about the game we have created together and we truly appreciate your support and your excitement to play the game while we work on making it happen.
With us, you will always have comprehension and you will be heard when you give us your opinion. Feel free to interact with us in the comment section of this update and ask any questions you need answering.
Thank you so much for reading this update and we look forward to talking to you soon!
Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!
Sincerely yours, Everybody here at Thundergryph Games
January Update - Update on the timeline and Dual player boards
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 12:03:25 AM
Dear Explorers,
We hope you are doing great.
I’m sorry I couldn’t update you before the end of December as during the last few days of 2021 both me and Veronica got Covid and for a couple of weeks, it felt like for every 2 steps forward we went 1 step back. I couldn’t believe it would last this long, but I really appreciate your patience while waiting on this update, we both are feeling much better right now.
Let’s immediately talk about the timeline, as we definitely need more time to complete this production. We will also reveal our winner from our last contest and unveil a gift for you all.
Month resume and next steps:
We are waiting on an update on the insert creation for the collector’s edition. Hopefully, we will have something to show in our next update.
We had a few issues with respecting the production timeline as we are making sure everything is in order to avoid mistakes on a print run of this scale. It’s crucial to us that everything gets revised several times. Moreover, Panda’s manufacturing production time has drastically increased in 2021. It’s incredible thinking that 2 years ago, productions could be completed in 2 or 3 months. Now it’s taking twice as much compared to the timeframe we were used to.
As stated in the last update, we won’t make it before the Chinese New Year. The production will resume during the third week of February 2022 and it will continue afterward. We expect freight to happen during Q2 2022.
We will still send an update during February and keep posting every month more information about this process. We will try to hit announce an exact date as soon as possile.
That being said, we are the most interested party to deliver this game to you and release it in retail. While we understand it is frustrating, there are a lot of companies like us really struggling to find materials, get proper estimation and execution of productions and we hope you will feel confident that we will deliver a great game, just later than expected.
Darwin’s Journey Double-layered boards
You asked during the campaign and we ended up unlocking Debossing for your player boards. As stated above we are looking closely at all the components that will go inside the box and both us and our manufacturer believe that debossing is not good enough for what we want to achieve.
Despite the fact that the cost for a double layer is always quite important, as a way to apologize for our delay and because we believe the game should play and feel perfect, we decided to upgrade all your player boards to double-layered for free.
As we can only apply a double layer to one side of the board, as with the debossing, the Alfred board (solo mode) behind the player board won’t have the double layer on it.
You will be able to see the result of this once we receive the final samples of the game.
Become a Darwin’s Journey character winner
Thank you so much for your participation during our Species contest in our last update. We logged more than 600 unique entries and it is amazing.
