Fulfillment of Earlybird pledge rewards started
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 11:57:21 PM

You may not believe it, but the past few weeks we have been working long hours to get everything ready behind the screens. And the hard work is finally starting to pay off: today the first batch of Earlybird pledge rewards has been shipped. Really exciting stuff! We started with the longest distances, hoping that our backers from the USA and Australia will receive their games about the same time as the backers from Europe. Well, apart from the backers living close to our home city of Nijmegen. They were just lucky to live so close by!

Usually, reviewers are asked to preview Kickstarter games before the campaign starts. But we didn't want to make you wait for that. Still, reviews are a good way to learn about a game in advance. And that's why we are very happy with the review by Nox. It's in Dutch, but even without understanding what's being said, it is fun to watch!

We got some nice reviews and ratings on BoardGameGeek as well. So if you're interested, please take a look!

BackerKit surveys will soon be sent
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 05:06:24 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Funds received, summary sheets and German + Spanish rulebook
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 01:21:44 AM

The beauty of Kickstarter is in the way it makes the process of creating and publishing a game very transparent, while not taking away from its magic. As a backer, you simply pledge an amount and wait to receive your reward. In the meantime, the team behind the project performs all the necessary steps to 'make the magic happen'. And that is actually a really nice process in itself. 

For instance: yesterday we received the funds from Kickstarter. As you are probably aware of, credit cards are only actually charged when a campaign finishes successfully. It takes a week to collect the money and some pledges are likely to get dropped. It takes a little more time before Kickstarter is actually able to transfer the funds. The Kickstarter and Stripe fees are deducted first. In this case, of the €5,696 that were pledged, yesterday we received €5,133. And that is great, because it means we can now get to business!

All these languages!

In the weeks since the campaign ended, we mostly spent our time on practical stuff. Getting the pledge manager configured, contacting backers about their pledges and getting production started. We got help from some backers in translating the rule book to both German and Spanish. That is absolutely great!

A fun thing to realize is how different these languages are. We tried hard to make sure the rulebooks would be identical in terms of content. But every language has its own character. It all started with the Dutch rulebook. At 880 words and 5,000 characters, it fits nicely on 8 sheets of A7. Somehow, the English translation is more wordy (950 words), yet more compact (only 4,900 characters). Interesting!

German is quite similar to Dutch and its rulebook takes the same number of words, but somehow has almost 15% more characters. There are indeed a lot of really nice, but big words in the German rulebook. Ans the Spanish book. Well, that one is special. Spanish is a beautiful language. But the Spanish rulebook uses more than 1,000 words. Still, it is more compact than the German translation. Fascinating!

Playing Rollecate for 5 hours straight!

Last Saturday was International Table Top Day. The local board game community in Nijmegen actually had a nice little meetup organized in the city center. 50 tables with board games, demo teams and enthusiastic gamers. Weather was great, too. We were there with Rollecate as well. A great chance to test the game yet another time, but now with unsuspecting 'victims'. The game got hours of playtime. And after 5 hours we were really done.

Conclusions? Rollecate is a really fun game for both young and old. We actually played this game with two ladies that were well in their 70s: and they had fun! And there were some die-hard gamers, too. For them, Rollecate was probably too lightweight, although they still seemed to have fun.

Rule summary sheets

At the very last moment, the 'Rule summary sheets' stretch goal was unlocked. For these sheets, we still had to make the designs. And it turns out that designing rule summary sheets is not an easy task! It took us hours and hours to create a summary of the rulebook that would fit on two sheets of A7 and would be fully language independent.

We will be sending the designs off to the printer tomorrow. So this is your chance to still give us some feedback!

Long time...
almost 5 years ago – Wed, May 29, 2019 at 11:43:06 PM

It's been almost two weeks since the last update. Sorry about that. But honestly, we needed the break. And it's not like nothing has happened. Quite to the contrary. We have been working really hard on all sorts of aspects that you would normally not consider.

Some cool things to mention: the printed decks came in and they look really good. Playing the game with these actual playing cards really makes it more fun. The German rule book translation is almost finished and work has actually begun on a Spanish rule book as well. So there really is no reason for people not to play Rollecate.

The past week, we have played Rollecate a number of times ourselves. 'Of course you did', you might say. But honestly, it wasn't all that obvious. It is quite scary to play a game that cannot be changed anymore. Luckily, we had a blast. The game, in all its simplicity, is still very entertaining and surprising. The miniature helps, too.

Right now, we are working on fulfillment. Backerkit actually convinced us to use their pledge manager. That means that all backers will soon receive an invitation to review their pledges, possibly making changes or adding stuff. Exciting stuff, really. And all very practical as well, as we have received a number of requests from backers to upgrade their pledges.

So, in short: we are still on track and the early-bird backers will receive their Rollecates within the coming few weeks. So stay put!

Funded, Wow!
almost 5 years ago – Sat, May 18, 2019 at 03:03:04 AM

Hi all! Some mixed feelings here. The Kickstarter campaign just ended and it was funded. And not just a little. More than 200%! And we unlocked 4 amazing stretch goals. To us the last two weeks were quite exhilarating. So even though we are really happy with the result, in a way it is sad it is all over now as well.

But! We can now finally start all preparations to get these games shipped to you! Approximately 200 copies of the game have been pledged for. So we'll need more copies of the miniature. We plan on doing all the assembly, packaging and fulfillment ourselves. So that should keep us busy for a while. Luckily, we love doing that kind of stuff.

We won't stop updating you, but it feels like some sort of good bye anyway. That's why we would like to extend a heartfelt 'thank you' for your support. See you later!