As we say where we come from, sweet mother of pearl!
To be entirely honest, we don’t know if that’s an expression where we come from. The one of us with the closest to a clear origin doesn’t so much come from a place as a “shifting morass of ghosts from other people’s cultures.” But he says it, and he doesn’t know why he says it. We assume it had to come from somewhere. Honestly, for a while we thought that he had made it up, then we heard a stranger say it.
He also has exclamations about cake and Moses. The common thread is that they’re always sweet, even though he seldom exclaims concerning the sweetness of a situation. The cultural ghosts prefer ironic sugar, it seems.
Everything Has Gone Wrong*
We make games because we love stories. As storytellers though we admit to a long (and mutually beneficial) relationship with melodrama. (We’ve read a lot of Dickens.) In that spirit we hope you’ll understand when we say that every step we’ve taken this past month has felt like it stretched into a marathon. Through mud. In a storm. Uphill. Chased by Persians. And Victorian gentlemen.
You might recall that we had a sudden and unexpected need to research new production companies. It took longer than we had hoped but we did actually find a company. All the better, their quote is in the right range to let us sell the game at the low price point we had originally intended.
We had also received feedback that our Kickstarter Campaign was rather lacking in the “videos” department. Not being videographers ourselves, nor fit to appear on film, we thought we would take the opportunity to research board game related video channels and investigate having a video made.
Everthing seemed to be coming together–we found a production company and and made contact with video producers–then we realized that we had no more complete prototypes. Before we could commission any sort of video, we needed new prototypes.
Fortunately our new production company was happy to make prototypes, and with decent expeditiousness. Unfortunately they had entirely different file requirements from our original production company, so none of our established art and layout files would transfer.
Also unfortunately, the program suite we had been using didn’t work with their particular requirements. We had to procure new software, then learn how to use it, then recreate our layout documents from scratch. All just to order the new prototypes, with which we hope to commission videos for our eventual crowdfunding campaign.
Clearly, our anticipated launch has been further delayed.
*Slight exaggeration
Time, the Most Heartless Monster of All
We feel quite apologetic and ashamed of the delay. We really had worked really hard to plan time for failure into our anticipated schedule. We had underestimated our ability to fail. Or overestimated our ability (simpliciter).
And while we struggled after Cows, our other most notable project, Bardworthy, lay stagnant. We still hope to launch the next round of playtesting this month, but we also hoped that our Cows crowdfunding campaign would be finished by now.
For those who are following along and anticipating their chance to craft stories with our new system, we can only ask for continued patience. We remain convinced that it will prove worth your wait.
That’s all for now, but as always more news is always fast approaching! Eventually, just through the law of averages, some of it is bound to be entirely positive! Until then feel free to leave any comments or questions you have in the space below. We look forward to hearing from you!
