October Update - Player aid, Collector’s rules and more
over 4 years ago – Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 11:54:52 PM

Hello Explorers,

We hope you are great!

It is incredible how colossal this game feels after all the work is done. We have focused on addressing the rulebook writing as we believe it is crucial for us to communicate how every aspect of the game works.

This whole experience has been a masterclass for us on how to make euro games with the possibility of working alongside Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone, and the huge support with the rules from Jonathan Cox.

With more than 60 unique icons in the game, we want to give absolute priority to readability and usability and we are proud of what we have achieved together. Thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions. In this update, we will discuss this topic, but before that let’s have a brief round of what’s ahead of us.

Next steps:

• All of the different rules have been sent to the manufacturer
  
• Translations of the languages offered will be ready before November 5th when our publishing partners will then be able to proof them.
  
• Production is undergoing. We will have a better understanding of dates in the next couple of weeks.
  
• We are aiming to start freight before the Chinese New Year (Feb 2022).

Collector’s edition rulebook

Several of you have addressed in the last update that you would like to have a compendium of all the rules in the game (including the Fireland expansion and all of our mini-expansions included as Stretch Goals). This has been our intention since the beginning, but it took a bit longer than expected as many

In this 56 pages compendium, you will have all the required rules to play the entire experience, including all the additional content in the game we unlocked during the campaign. If you are curious, you can download it below.

Player Aid final reveal

Previously we have created player aids based on playing cards, however, with Darwin’s Journey, we wanted for you to have immediate access to the important information throughout the game.

To accomplish this we have created an index of all the components in the game, special actions, crew cards, and beagle objectives.

While playing, you will find the index number in the bottom right corner of the component

By taking a glance at the player aid you will be able to understand what each component does.

We ensure that within a couple of plays, you will become familiar with all of the different symbols and the player aid will be used just to refresh the rules from time to time.

On the back of the Player aid, you will find a compendium of important icons which can be also used as a reference guide for when you teach the game to others.

We really appreciate your patience while waiting on the game and we are confident you will feel proud for being part of it.

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

September Update: Rulebooks and timeline
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 12:15:04 AM

Dear explorers,

We hope this update finds you well. 

We are very excited to announce that both Darwin’s Journey base game rulebook, as well as the mini-expansions rulebook, are ready! At the moment, we are polishing the rulebook layout and details. We are really happy to be working with Jonathan Cox who has done a great job, and after several passes, he has just finished the last pass. Before making any further changes, we would like to share the rulebooks with you. Please let us know what you think about them, your opinion is important to us all.

At the moment the production is still running, and as you already know our 2021 timeframes have been dilated, but our goal is to make sure freight happens before the 2022 Chinese new year (before February).

We really appreciate your patience and support and we are available to respond to any question that may arise.

Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!

Sincerely yours,
Everybody here at Thundergryph Games

August update: Playmat photos and short update on rules
over 4 years ago – Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 11:58:53 PM

Dear Explorers,

We hope you are all doing great!

In this update, we wanted to show you the updated rules with all the final layouts, but after a meeting with Jonathan Cox yesterday, we believe we need to revise a few elements before we can publish them. We will postpone this to our next update that will happen as soon as possible in September.

You can expect rules for the Base game, Fireland, and all the mini-expansions. 

Thanks for your patience while we work on the last few steps to complete this important task. After this, we will start to work on all the translations.

Production is ongoing for the components while the rulebooks and boxes will be done before assembly.

Playmats

We received the playmat for Darwin’s Journey, and we are very pleased with the final look and feel. 

Here you can find some photos made with natural sunset light for a pinch of nostalgia.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! 

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

July update: Mass production begins. Rulebook creation Interview.
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 02, 2021 at 04:57:14 AM

Dear Explorers,

We hope you are having a great day.

We will be showing a bullet point list of things achieved within July, just like we did last month. If you are in a rush, you will get a good summary by reading the following list:

What we accomplished over the last month:

• The team took alternate summer breaks to keep things going during summer, therefore we are happy to announce that we sent to our manufacturer our purchase order last week with all of the files (excluding the rulebooks that will be printed later in the process). This means we are officially in the mass production stage.
• It looks like many games are under manufacturing at this time and the production process will be slower than usual. From what was communicated to us, we are aiming at 85-90 days of production and then we will undergo assembly. Hopefully, by that time, the freight situation will be much better.
• If you are interested in knowing more about the development side of the game and take a look at the packaging of what you will be receiving, please keep reading.
  

Rulebooks

While we are still working on the layout for the whole set of rules (we estimate another 10 days for completion), we had a lovely chat with Jonathan Cox, our rulebook author, during one of our live streams. You can see the full interview in the following video.

The case for the playmats

If you have ordered the playmat for Darwin’s Journey or you are a proud owner of the all-in bundle, here is the transport case for your double-sided playmat. We hope you like it!

Packing

We have been working a good amount of time on the different sides of logistics, as this game has several different items that we are bundling during assembly to avoid any mistakes during fulfillment.

The Base Game backers will receive:

• Darwin Journey’s Base Game
• Scenario Booster pack (all the Stretch Goals unlocked inside an envelope)

The Collector’s Edition backers will receive:

• Darwin’s Journey Collector’s Edition containing all the following as a bundle (in the same box):
  • Darwin’s Journey Base Game
  • All the deluxe bits for the game (like metal coins, counters, and wax seals)
  • The Fireland Expansion content
  • Scenarios Booster pack (all the Stretch Goals unlocked for the base game)
  • All Stretch Goals unlocked for the Collector’s Edition

For the ones of you getting additional items for the game like Darwin Worker mini-expansion or Falmouth Port, you will receive them in a separate envelope/tuck box.

As we did for our Matchbox Collection, we are manufacturing custom double-layered cartons to ship the games to you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!

Sincerely yours,
Everybody here at Thundergryph Games

June update: New lenses, pre-production files and rulebooks
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Jul 01, 2021 at 09:58:42 PM

Dear Explorers,

We hope you are all doing well.

We have been really pushing all the work required to enter production as soon as possible and we are glad to communicate that all files (excluding rulebooks and boxes) have been sent to our manufacturer.

We will try to condense everything that happened in a short bullet list for you to read in a minute.

📌 What we accomplished during the last month:

• The rules for the Base game, Fireland, and all mini-expansions have been written, proofed, and corrected. At this point, we are working on the layout and we hope to have great news in our next update.
• All the files (excluding rulebooks and boxes which will be sent later) are with the manufacturer
• The production quantity has been sent to our manufacturer, we are awaiting the purchase order.
• All the pre-production pieces of the game have been completed excluding the new printed components, which we are waiting for.

Rulebooks

We have learned a lot during the writing process of the rules and Jonathan Cox has been incredibly helpful. We would love to share this with you in our next live stream, so we have invited Jonathan to join and discuss our process.

Friday, July 2nd at 8:00 PM CET / 2:00 PM EDT we will go live on Twitch. 

Be sure to follow us to receive a notification. We will be discussing the rules, playing Darwin’s Journey, and raffle some prizes for our backers.

If you cannot attend, don’t worry. We will upload the interview to our Youtube channel and post it in our next update.

Wooden Lenses

We received your feedback about the wooden lenses and our manufacturer has been working on reducing the thickness and adding a stronger and more opaque finish to the lens.

Let us know what you think, but we believe these are much better. Please keep in mind that this sample is not painted.

What’s next?

Next month in our update, we will be able to share a bit more about the rules and we will mainly talk about: logistics, how we are packing the games, what and how you will receive depending on your pledge, explained with a minimal infographic. Don’t miss it!

Until next time, take care, stay safe and have fun!

Sincerely yours,
Everybody here at Thundergryph Games