Kickstarting and Screaming

Games
4062

If it helps at all, the expansions for the first game are mostly going for around $20-25 on Amazon. This is what’s in the first one:

• One 8-page full-color Rules booklet
• 75 cards
• 4 Hero sheets
• 30 thick, two-sided, multi-shaped game pieces (minor assembly required)
• One bright red, 9 1/4" x 5 7/8" Standard cardboard VPG game box
• One beautiful box cover sleeve
• One “Wipes-A-Lot” napkin
• One charcoal dessicant packet

And the others are pretty comparable. It looks like each of the 2nd edition expansions have around 2 and a half 1E expansions worth of heroes and probably around that much more other stuff as well. And they’re going to have significantly higher quality materials. Is that reasonable pricing? I don’t know. I just know it’s too expensive for me as someone who already owns a complete set of the first edition and would want to have everything for 2E as well for it to be an upgrade.

4063

Ive backed the first two VPG kickstarters (Dawn of the Zeds and Nemo’s war, Dawn of the Zeds is crossing the Atlantic as we speak, can’t wait!) based on Tom’s positive writing about the games. I was really looking forward to Darkest Night also since it seemed to have good word of mouth also. But at almost $200 for the full kit I’m kind of hesitant. For those who’ve played it, how is the game both as a solo experience and with co-op? I’m sure I could get the kids to sit down and play, but more often than not, I’d be playing solo.

4064

I’m in the same boat as most of you folks on the Darkest Night kickstarter. I backed the other VPG kickstarters based a lot on talk around here about the two games and was excited to see what they did with the DN second edition. I already own the first edition of Darkest Night though and think it’s pretty much fine as-is, so I was looking forward to seeing what they brought to the new edition but I don’t really need anything in particular. For the most part it looks like more of each type of card (which would be nice), upgraded components, and the miniatures. I’ve backed it so that I could watch the updates, but I’ll probably drop out unless something major comes up in the stretch goals to make it worth the price to upgrade.

They’re still packaging up the darkness and mystery cards as part of the expansions, which feels weird to me - a second edition seems like the time to take whatever optional mechanics from expansions that worked well and make it part of the core game, but keeping them as optional in this edition makes it feel even less distinct from the first edition I already have. Also this might just be me, but one of the stretch goals makes the event cards tarot sized, even bigger than they are now. I have a hard enough time keeping everything set up on a table now at the current sizes so I can’t imagine any of the cards need to be larger. I’d actually rather they made quest and mystery cards smaller, as they’re often placed on map locations and it’s a bit of juggling on the existing board between those, progress tokens, monster counters, and characters. Hell, make the power cards smaller too, since some of them go on the map as well and by the end of a game it’s a pain to juggle a bunch of power cards for each of the four characters in a solo game.

A question for folks who have been saying there’s no kickstarter exclusive content so you might as well wait for retail to save on shipping: One thing they’ve said in their other campaigns is that since they’re not printing these on demand like their other titles, it won’t be readily available beyond what the kickstarter produces. They made it sound like the kickstarter for Nemo’s War might be the only time to get it, and they weren’t expecting to produce many beyond what was needed for the campaign itself. Obviously we haven’t seen how this plays out since their other premium titles haven’t arrived yet, but the logic sort of holds up for me that they won’t be able to sit on a ton of stock and they can’t easily make more, so the campaigns are the time to get a copy (if you don’t already have one). Are you folks worried at all that it will be hard or impossible to get at retail later?

I’ve only played solo, but that works very well (if you ignore the logistical issues I have with all the cards mentioned above). One of the reasons it works so well as a solo game for me is that individual character turns happen quickly - I spend most of my time trying to plan out my overall turn across all the characters than I do actually executing individual moves. I imagine that dynamic could make it less fun in a co-op environment, where individual turns have less meaningful choices than the overall plan for the next few moves. I don’t think any one character seems interesting enough to play on their own that I’d want to sit down and just do that. As a puzzle to coordinate the whole team (especially a random set of four from the 29 currently-available characters), I think it makes a great solo experience though.

4065

The single biggest thing Darkest Night needs is a good way to organize the million billion tokens. One of the 2nd edition questions was “Will there be an organizer?” to which they replied, “…maybe.” Which is not really helpful.

4066

That is an awfully pricey Kickstarter. Seems to be Victory Points MO, though.

As for Darkest Night as a co-op game, it’s horrible. The pacing is all out of whack and the level of engagement is all over the map. Some characters get to do cool stuff while other characters have to basically waste turns resting, waiting, traveling, hiding, or whatever. There’s no reason to play it as a game in which you divide up duties when some of the duties are going to be either tedious or uneventful.

-Tom

4067

I imagine they’ll hit the funding mark eventually but I can’t see a ton of extra stretch goals being made. Just way too expensive.

4068

Darkest Night is also a 6.99 DLC for Tabletop Simulator. For 6.99 I was willing to give it a go. I have not had a chance to do co-op though. My online group is hot and heavy into Don’t Starve Together and Gremlins, Inc. at the moment. I can’t squeeze in simulated board games between those too… yet. I’m not saying Tabletop Simulator is all that but before you drop 200 you could try that version.

4069

Well bugger. VPG titles are hard to get over here and their shipping charges from the US are ridonculous. I’ve loaded a bunch of stuff into their cart on multiple occaisions but bailed on pullung the trigger when the cost doubles due to shipping. Seems like I should have bit on the DN:Necro bundle when I had the chance, because the KS with expansions is damn expensive. Even the shipping is expensive for similar KS’ers.

I backed NW and DoZ kickstarters, they were much more reasonable.

4070

No, but only because I’m quickly turning from “buy everything that interests me” to “hey, here’s all these games you own and haven’t played enough yet”. It’s taken a couple years, but I’m finally at a point where I feel my collection is pretty good, and I need to be more discerning with my purchases. If a game like Darkest Night interests me, but there are turn-offs like the pricing here, I’m ok with missing it. And as I mentioned above I’ve never really been a Kickstarter enthusiast anyway. There are tons of other options out there that are a better cost to value proposition for me.

malkav, thanks for comparing the KS expansions to the 1st edition ones. I didn’t realize they’d basically bundled two into one, so that makes the pricing a little more understandable within VPG’s practices. I still think the pricing doesn’t work out in general for the components compared to other expansions in the market, but as Tom said, that seems to be VPG’s thing.

I’m planning to keep an eye on the KS even though I’m not backing because I’m interested to see if this is going to fund. Part of me thinks VPG might pull this one and relist after rethinking the whole minis + standees + mini stretch goal thing. They’ve already commented that they’re going to consider putting standees in for all the minis no matter what happens with the stretch goals, but that’s only if they can make the costs work.

4071

I’d probably actually consider it if I didn’t already own the first edition. It’s a really great game, and the upgrades do seem nice. I think you’d probably have been able to put together a complete first edition set for a bit less if the base game were still in print, but not a huge amount less and the production values would be lower.

4072

VPG being open on how they determined pricing for the Kickstarter:

http://www.victorypointgames.com/news/darkest-night-pricing/

It sounds like maybe they underestimated in previous campaigns, and may be overcompensating a bit, although they still feel like they’re dancing on the razor’s edge. The post also makes it pretty clear they’re planning to do a wider retail release.

4073

I really do love VPG and I want them to succeed. But I think they’re trying to go from 0 to 60 way too fast.

4074

Hey, I was right for once. They cancelled the Kickstarter and plan to relaunch next week after they make some changes to the campaign.

4075

Oh, that’s great news. Look forward to the relaunch.

4076

Yeah, the DN KS rubbed me the wrong way and right out of backing – not enough there to make me feel like dropping nearly $200 for a game I pretty much only play solo but JUST enough new content to make me resent my first edition for not having it. It’s pretty rare for a second edition to hit that sweet spot of too expensive to justify but good enough to make me not want to play the old version.

4077

From the creator of Omen: Reign of War card game:

Omen is a very good two player card game; can not speak for this new game but in case anyone is interested.

The GearSeed Saga:

4078

I begin to fear deeply for plucky little pixel art Star Trek simulator, [I]Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander[/I]. The Kickstarter was a decent success for developer Massive Damage, netting about 4 times its original (tiny) goal of $40K CAD just over a year ago. In the process of doing so, they tacked on a ton of Stretch Goals and seemed pretty upbeat, as any newfound indie devs who just came into almost 200 Grand would be!

In the intervening year, they’ve [unsurprisingly] blown past their December 2015 launch date and eventually decided to pre-launch as an Early Access title on Steam in January. While the newspost itself made the reason fairly clear, a dev comment solidified it:

Originally posted by Massive Damage:

@Tim we’d like to get extra funding so I can keep the team as full sized (10) as we are now. i know there has been delays already but the game is SO SO MUCH BETTER and FUN today than it was back in November (our original estimated launch date). We want to get the game in your hands as soon as possible but there’s no point in launching something that isn’t good. It won’t help our company and it’s not delivering our promise to make a great game to our backers.

Shades of Space Base 9, anyone?

There was a little grumbling from backers over the proposed EA price (some to-do over changing exchange rates, IIRC), and questions about whether Alpha Backers would actually get access first (they would, by a couple of weeks at best). But for the most part, backers seemed happy to hear the game was coming along and apparently nearing release.

Well, in any case, the Early Access launched last month, featuring the game’s First Act, no ground combat, a simplified Officer progression system, and more than a little test artwork here and there. But, it reviewed well and apparently was decently fun!

The devs are now updating that they’re very pleased with how the launch went (was in top sellers for a time) and happy that people liked it (95% “Liked It” on Steam EA). . . but. . .

Originally posted by Massive Damage:

Despite the initial sales, our daily sales now are much lower than we expected. It’s tough to get people to trust in an Early Access game so we have a ton of people who put us on their Wishlist but have yet to purchase. That’s why your reviews are so important!

. . .

What’s our strategy to maximize our sales and maintain our team? Well, we are not resting on our laurels that’s for sure. We’re going to keep pushing towards the Final Release of the game as soon as possible!

. . .

Once the two major updates are out, we’ll launch the Full Release version of the game. After the Full Release, we’ll work on immediate stuff like Linux version and the stretch goals (as promised!).

Some backer customization rewards will be incorporated before Full Release but some of the other ones will be dependant on the completion of some stretch goals. The physical backer rewards like the Artbook and soundtrack will be finished once the Full Release is stabilized and final content is fully complete. We want the best version of these rewards as possible and we can focus on that much better once the game is complete.

Ah. . . well then.

I remain hopeful that the game comes out and is exactly and cute and fun as I hope it will be (really hoping for a mix of Spacebase DF9, Orion Trail, and FTL myself), but with so much of the game unreleased, sales slowing, talks of staffing cuts more regular, and news that stretch goals and physical backer rewards aren’t even yet on the horizon, I am. . . doubtful :(

4079

It IS way better than what was proposed inititally, and is currently a pretty good game. I doubt there is anything to fear regarding Halcyon 6. Certainly nothing as momentously stupid as the whole Space Base 9 debacle.

4080

I’ve really enjoyed my time with Halcyon 6 so far, if that helps. It feels pretty much exactly like I expected it to. If I may…

4081

Thanks for sharing, y’all. I’m gonna try to watch your video over lunch, Brian :)