I can’t speak to whether you’ll need the original or not, but I have found Kickstarter for boardgames to be significantly easier to navigate and find projects I can trust. The ODD developer, Chris Cieslik, and his company Asmadi Games have a several successful Kickstarters and successful games. A couple of cancellations, but I am guessing those were due to lack of backers and not due to a failure to deliver. These smaller companies have a lot to lose if they do not deliver as buzz and word of mouth is their bread and butter and a failure to deliver can obviously kill a company quickly. Any time I find a project I am interested in I either look for previous successes or I choose a game I have actually been able to demo. I have really only done about 6 Kickstarters over the course of a year and so far 2 have been delivered and are excellent and the others I have little worry about them being finished.
Back to Asmadi specifically, I cannot speak to the quality of all of the published games, but ODD is great from a quality and gameplay perspective. Mottainai and Penny Press, among others, are well regarded although I have not played them. I would not let any hesitation over Kickstarter keep you from backing especially if nothing else is giving you pause. The fact that ODD is a known quantity that has proven to sell, should mean you have nothing to worry about.
As far as delivery date goes, tabletop game Kickstarters are generally far better about meeting the given estimates than video games. The design is almost always already finished, so the campaign is just funding manufacture and shipping, both of which are predictable. As an example, a game I backed last fall, Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black, was estimated for a May 2017 delivery window, and is currently on its way to the US via slow boat from China. The publisher expects to be able to start shipping out copies during the last ten days of May, meaning most backers will receive their copies in May or June.
(Now, if it were Victory Point Games, that’d be a different story…)
Yeah, a month or two delay is not uncommon due to unforeseen issues. Ignacy Trezwik who started and runs Polish company Portal Games (Developer and publisher of Imperial Settlers, Neuroshima Hex, Robinson Crusoe, etc.) for example, said the boats are currently backed up in the German port he uses for shipping due to a drought causing delays in getting new games across the ocean according to schedule. A mistake in printing can result in reprinting. Not making a deadline in China when the whole country shuts down for the Chinese New Year can result in a month or more delay as so many print in China as WarpRattler states. Although, board game publishers can certainly miss estimates for hitting all the completion goals they set due to poor administrative and management skills like a videogame developer, anecdotally, I have found there is generally clearer communication and more tangible reason for delays. Maybe the excuses are just better. :)
When a Kickstarter card game that has already been to market is saying they will deliver around August (such as the case of Aeon’s End or One Deck Dungeon), then I am pretty sure they are signaling that they are all done and just are looking for print money to have product ready for Gencon. Backers will get their copies just before or just after Gencon.
FYI, Gloomhaven is down to about 4 days left, so I f anyone is trying to decide, don’t wait too long. They are nearing 3 million in funding from over 30k backers.
And Isaac’s update today basically said if you are worrying about delays due to the large response…don’t. Perfect example of someone who had two successful Kickstarters and you can tell through his communication he knows exactly what he is doing and has his printing and distribution all figured out. He said the factory that is printing is “very. very, very large” and can handle whatever orders he throws at them. And he is promising August deliveries.
EDIT: I seem to be spamming this thread. Forgive me. This is the only thing I know anything about any longer. :)
So I put in an order for Chicago Express with a local retailer recently, and he sent me a message yesterday saying that he doesn’t have it in stock and asked if I wanted a refund. After doing a little research, I switched my order American Rails, since it is supposed to be a similar game (and some say its much better). I was wondering, has anyone here played this? I have played the iphone version of Chicago Express, and so I basically understand how that game works.
So far Clank has been a lot of fun. I really enjoy the deck building plus the board game piece. The randomness of the cube pull though can do wonders or disaster to any said strategy. I haven’t determined how much I like or dislike that. I must say I don’t care for the art style much though. I look forward to trying the expansion just the same.
I like the expansion a lot for how it mixes up movement. In our group, the general feeling is that boots pretty much reign supreme in the core game. With a bunch of boots in your deck, get in, get treasure, get out, win. It is, after all, a racing game.
But with Sunken Treasures’ flooded areas, it’s a little trickier. You sometimes have to push your damage as a risk/reward thing that you can’t just circumvent with swords. There’s also the threat of getting trapped underwater and taking damage. Do you risk it?
For those of you who have played One Deck Dungeon before: it’s marketing itself as a roguelike, but what does that actually mean? Or is it just further erosion of that word?
re: Kickstarter delays for physical games. Colosseum was kickstarted in Apr 2016 with an estimated date of Jan 2017. I got mine Feb/Mar 2017 and the US is getting it now, in April. It’s only a few months delay, but it can totally happen, even though TMG have done 28 kickstarter campaigns. Still, it’s nothing compared to most video games, which often blow their time-budget by 500%
I’ve not seen board games blow it nearly as barely as so many of the video games do. I think a number of KS board games I’ve played though seem to miss some polish, like play balance it issues, unclear instructions or of component problems… But those can be found via traditional channels too.
For my wife’s birthday I got her the Battle for Hogwards card game. It’s a deck builder with some mechanics for semi legacy play. It seems neat, and hope to get it on the table today for some 4 player.
When I found out my sister chose Clank as the game for our short vacation, I sent her the expansion too. We haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds interesting. I like that the concepts are generally easy to understand and the challenge is certainly time in addition to what everyone else is doing which they usually just speed things up anyway, so yeah it’s a race.
So a couple of friends are coming over tonight and we’re going to give Triumph & Tragedy a go. None of us have ever played it before. It’s my game and I’ve watched a few videos and read the rules. I don’t expect we will finish a full game, any tips for first timers?
I would say that it is a pretty good use of the word roguelike, Pod. The enemies, abilities and stuff you get are randomized (from a set pool) each run, and of course there is permadeath. The only thing you set at the beginning of each game is the boss you will face and correspondingly the effects of the dungeon you will be exploring. Everything else is random. Hope this helps.
My wife and son are big Harry Potter fans, so our house rule is that you have to yell out the spell’s name and do the wand motion as if you are a Hogwarts student.
Isn’t this just a Dungeon Crawler, though? Roguelike’s have a lot more stuff to them, e.g. hunger, unknown items that need to be ID’d etc.
Anyway, before I looked up One Deck Dungeon on BGG and noticed it was in the “Video game theme” family. So I clicked that and found out that there’s a Dark Souls board game that was released this year! Who knew about that?
