Keep your friends close and your flashlight closer in this one-vs-many hidden movement horror game.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Addresses Locking Soon!
6 months ago
– Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 04:39:02 PM
Happy (almost) Halloween! The time has come - fulfillment is on the horizon and we are going to be locking addresses for the majority of backers a week from today! This mini off-cycle update contains important details about fulfillment, so let’s jump right in.
We’ve already locked addresses for Asian and Australian backers, along with backers of the Spanish version of the game. We will be locking addresses for US and Canadian backers next Friday (on November 3rd), and the UK/EU/rest of world backers will be locked beginning Saturday, November 18th.
These dates are incredibly important. If your survey is not completed or your payment has not gone through by those dates, you will not be included in the cutoff for the first (and primary) wave of fulfillment so your game will be delayed!
The good news is that the vast majority of you are ready to roll, but there are still some backers who haven’t completed their surveys or whose payment has failed (and whose games will not be fulfilled in the initial wave if these issues are not corrected soon). We have contacted those backers separately via email, and BackerKit has been sending automated reminder emails on a regular basis as well.
If you’re not sure what the status of your survey is, you can always look up your survey by entering your email address at https://sophcerb.backerkit.com/ or by searching for emails with “The Stifling Dark: A Horror Board Game” in the title to see the emails that BackerKit has sent.
For those of you whose surveys are completed and whose payments have processed, all you have to do is validate that your address is up to date. When we initiate the address lock, you will receive an email from [email protected] with the title “Last call to update your shipping address for The Stifling Dark: A Horror Board Game!” It will include your address and phone number in the email, along with a link to your survey in case you need to update your address. Your address will be locked 48 hours after this email goes out, so make sure you update right away!
For our FLGS / retailer friends - you should have all received an invoice from us at the beginning of October. As long as you pay your invoice by the due date you will be good to go. If you pay late or if you haven’t filled out the intake form yet, your shipment will be delayed.
We’ll still be posting our regularly scheduled update on November 3rd, and it may or may not have information on expected delivery dates to our various fulfillment centers (along with vessel names for those who are interested in tracking along), so keep an eye out for that!
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, constantly hitting F5 on vesselfinder.com even though we don’t have a premium subscription…
October Post-Campaign Update
7 months ago
– Tue, Oct 03, 2023 at 11:59:34 AM
Fall is in the air, and Halloween is just around the corner. What better time than now for some updates on everyone’s favorite spooky game? The past month has been spent on a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and things continue to move along nicely.
We have a lot of great content in this month’s update, ranging from manufacturing updates to soundtrack updates and (gasp) a fulfillment timing update. There is important information relating to fulfillment in this update, so please make sure you read through the development and PSA sections if you want to get your game!
We’ve been mentioning this at conventions lately but haven’t officially announced it until now - we expect to deliver The Stifling Dark at least one month early! We set our delivery estimate to February 2024 on Kickstarter, but our internal goal has always been to fulfill before then and we’re pleased to announce that we are on track to do so.
We should be delivering in January, if not December. Note that this will vary a bit by region - backers in Asia will likely receive their games on the earlier end of the spectrum, whereas backers in Canada will be on the later end of the spectrum. We should have some more precise timing in next month’s update, but we wanted to let the cat out of the bag now since we’re close enough to be confident in that estimate.
The reason we’re comfortable making this announcement is that manufacturing is officially complete! Mass production finished up late last week, and the games will be ready to ship out from our factory later this week / early next week once the Chinese holiday has ended. Keep in mind this is just the freight shipment to our warehouses (which will take multiple weeks). The warehouses still need to receive the product and ship it to each of you after that, so you’re still a couple months out from actually getting your game.
With fulfillment fast approaching, it is essential that you make sure you have filled out your pledge manager (which most of you have) and that you keep your address up to date. We’ll have more details on this in the PSA section, but if you’re not sure you can navigate to https://sophcerb.backerkit.com/ and enter in your email to check your status. Similarly, if you are a retail (FLGS) backer, make sure you check your email for important invoicing details.
In other news, Tabletop Audio has officially completed the soundtrack for The Stifling Dark! You will be receiving a link from BackerKit to download the files shortly, otherwise they should be available for streaming on Tabletop Audio’s website closer to fulfillment. Note that you will only receive an email from BackerKit if you pledged at the base level or higher and have completed your survey.
We’re continuing to work through the how-to-play videos and map editor, and we can’t wait to share those with you once they’re complete! We’ll likely have another sample or two to share in our next campaign update, so keep an eye out for that.
Lastly, as we hinted at last week we were in conversations to get The Stifling Dark into distribution. We’re happy to announce that we will be partnering with Flat River Group (Impressions) to do so, and we can’t wait to see The Stifling Dark in more retailers around the country! We’re still very early on in the setup process, but make sure you put in a good word with your local FLGS!
We moved this section up near the top for this month’s update since you will not get your game if you don’t fill out your survey or if your address is incorrect! Make sure you read this section in its entirety to make sure everything is ready to go.
Now that fulfillment is around the corner, it’s a great time to double-check to make sure you have filled out your survey and that your address is up-to-date. You should have received an email confirmation from BackerKit when you completed your survey, but if you can’t find it or you aren’t sure you can always look up your pledge by going to the below link and entering in the email listed on your Kickstarter profile:
You would’ve also been getting monthly reminder emails from BackerKit with the title “Reminder — Response needed to deliver your reward for The Stifling Dark: A Horror Board Game” if you haven’t filled out your survey yet, with the latest email being sent last week. We also emailed all base and deluxe backers manually last week in case the BackerKit emails weren’t going through.
We will also begin locking addresses soon since fulfillment will be starting soon. We will do this by region as fulfillment is getting close, and we will send a final warning through BackerKit before doing so. You will have three days to go in and make any changes before addresses are locked (meaning they can’t be changed any more). Keep in mind you can update your address at any time, so there’s no need to wait until you get the notification if you need to update anything!
We decided retailers deserved their own header this month since we are approaching invoicing and fulfillment. We sent out emails to all of our retail backers on September 6th, and followed up again on September 26th if we hadn’t heard back yet.
We will be sending invoices out shortly, so please let us know if you don’t receive an invoice or if you have any questions on it. Note that we will not ship your order until the invoice is paid, so please take care of that at your earliest convenience.
Nothing new to share from a media standpoint this month, but we plan on doing another livestream / playthrough soon once things calm down a bit. We’ll announce that on social media once we lock in a date!
As mentioned in last month’s update, we’re all done with conventions for this year but we have quite a few planned for next year. The full list is below:
Protospiel MN: Date TBD, likely in January in the Twin Cities area
Con of the North: February 16-18, Plymouth, MN
GAMA Expo: March 4-7, Louisville, KY
Origins Game Fair: June 19-23, Columbus, OH
Gen Con: August 1-4, Indianapolis, IN
2D Con: August 23-25, Minneapolis, MN
We’ll share booth details for the bigger conventions as soon as we have that information. We hope to see many of you at one (or more) of our conventions next year!
The timeline has finally been updated! Manufacturing is complete, so we’ve updated the timeline accordingly. Next month we’ll be able to set the freight portion to in progress, and shortly after that we’ll be on to warehousing and fulfillment:
We’ll be in touch next month, but as always please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns in the meantime. As a reminder, you can expect our campaign updates to come out around the 3rd of each month.
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, making videos and editing maps…
September Post-Campaign Update
8 months ago
– Sun, Sep 03, 2023 at 03:53:28 PM
August has come and gone, and with that came another Gen Con. We’re glad we decided to post our August update prior to Gen Con since we were way too tired to do anything after a record-breaking attendance at this year’s convention. We managed to make it through though, and we had a blast!
We have lots of exciting news / sneak previews in this month’s update, so make sure you give it a read. We’ll provide updates on manufacturing and a number of other things related to the Kickstarter (including our rulebook, how to play videos, and our soundtrack) before jumping in to a recap of our August conventions.
Not to spoil the convention recaps, but we wanted to start by sharing that The Stifling Dark won Game of the Show at 2D Con (a Minneapolis convention with about 3,500 attendees) last weekend!
For those of you with great memories, we won Best Theme at last year’s show and were thrilled to see that the improvements we’ve made to the game since then paid off. It was great seeing so many people from last year come back and say hi, as was seeing new people that either backed the game or were checking it out for the first time.
With that out of the way, it’s time for an update on all things manufacturing. In other exciting news, we received the mass production sample of the game last weekend as well! This copy of the game is identical to the copies you will be receiving, so it serves as the final quality check before we wrap up production on the rest of the copies.
We planned on posting an unboxing video of the sample, but the Spanish and English shipments got swapped so we ended up with the Spanish sample. Here's what the Spanish version looks like in case you were wondering!
Not to worry though - the English version is on its way as we speak, so we’ll post an unboxing video once we receive it (and share it in our next update). Despite the fact that the sample was in Spanish, the components are all the same so we were still able to validate the quality.
The pre-production samples we received back in June had some slight color consistency issues due to how they were printed, but the mass production samples had consistent colors and looked much better than the pre-production samples so that was great to see. The tokens punched out nicely, the flashlight lines don’t wear off, and overall the components looked great.
We’re happy to report that we did not find any issues with the mass production sample, so we are proceeding with the rest of production!
We did run into a slight hiccup with the card sleeves, as our original provider was unfortunately going to be delivering a little late (which would have delayed the entire fulfillment process). In the interest of not delaying the game, we decided to switch to a different sleeve provider that will be able to deliver on schedule. Don’t worry, the sleeves will still be the same 100-micron premium thickness!
In other development news, we have posted the final version of the rulebook online (complete with hyperlinks and bookmarks for easier navigation). We have also begun creating our how to play videos that correspond with the QR codes in the rulebook. A preview of one such video can be seen below, noting that we haven’t done any of the voiceovers for it yet:
Speaking of audio, our friends over at Tabletop Audio sent us samples of all five of our custom tracks and they were all amazing. In fact, if you watched the sample of the setup video right before this you just listened to the sample track for The Sawmill! Tabletop Audio is working on putting the finishing touches on the tracks, and we’ll include relevant links in a future campaign update once they are finished.
We didn’t end up having many interviews during Gen Con given how crazy it was, but we did find one of our podcast interviews! This interview was with Teachers in the Dungeon, a podcast by educators about D&D, who we chatted with during Trade Day. Listen in around the 9:00 mark to hear the interview!
We’ll keep an eye out for any other interviews that get posted from Gen Con and include them in future updates!
Gen Con felt much busier than last year, and we found out why after the fact - they broke their all-time attendance record with over 70,000 attendees! More attendees meant more traffic at the booth, which was definitely a nice bonus.
As always, it was great meeting backers and seeing old friends from conventions past. Aside from showing off The Stifling Dark at our booth, we also ran nine demos over the course of the week. The demos went well, and (as expected) we didn’t run into any major issues. We did, however, find a couple minor things that we’ll be adding to our online FAQs for clarity’s sake.
We also had meetings with various industry partners, ranging from manufacturers to fellow publishers to distributors. Yes, you read that right - we hope to have more news to share on the distribution front in our next update! We also got some ideas to spice up our booth and have more items to sell at future conventions, so keep an eye out for more news on that in a few months. In the meantime, here are a few other pictures from Gen Con:
We already shared the big news from 2D Con (winning Game of the Show), but we had a great time there last weekend. It was great to see some of our local backers and designer friends while getting in a few demos of The Stifling Dark and Gears of Industry. Perhaps our favorite part about the convention is the arcade hall though, which is where we spent every night after our booth closed!
2D Con was our last convention of the year, which is great timing since we’re neck-deep in manufacturing, fulfillment, and other final tasks related to The Stifling Dark (while simultaneously continuing work on Gears of Industry). We have quite the list of conventions planned for next year though!
Protospiel MN: Date TBD, likely in January in the Twin Cities area
Con of the North: February 16-18, Plymouth, MN
GAMA Expo: March 4-7, Louisville, KY
Origins Game Fair: June 19-23, Columbus, OH
Gen Con: August 1-4, Indianapolis, IN
2D Con: August 23-25, Minneapolis, MN
We’ll be sticking to domestic conventions in 2024, but still hope to get overseas for Essen Spiel and/or UKGE at some point. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to make it happen!
These are the same as last month, so if you have already filled out your survey and you’re not a retailer you can skip this section.
Here’s our monthly reminder to make sure you’ve filled out your pledge manager! You should receive an email confirmation from BackerKit once you’ve completed your survey, but if you can’t find it or you aren’t sure you can always look up your pledge by going to the below link and entering in the email listed on your Kickstarter profile:
Lastly, if you are a retail backer and have not filled out the intake form yet please do so once you get a chance. If you received an email from us on July 15th, it means we have not gotten a response from you yet. If not (or if you already responded), it means you submitted the form and you’re good to go!
This timeline still looks the same as it did last month, but we’re still including it for posterity’s sake!
We’ll be in touch next month, but as always please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns in the meantime. As a reminder, you can expect our campaign updates to come out around the 3rd of each month.
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, listening to spooky soundtracks…
August Post-Campaign Update
9 months ago
– Thu, Aug 03, 2023 at 04:43:51 AM
This month’s update comes to you from the lovely state of Indiana! We officially made it to Indianapolis for Gen Con and are posting this update from our AirBNB before the madness begins. We decided we’d post an update prior to Gen Con rather than delay and try to post it right after the convention since we’ll probably be too exhausted to function.
We have a great update on production to share, along with more info on next steps with the manufacturing process. A number of our interviews from Origins have been posted, so we’ve linked to those along with the livestream we did with Gen Con TV last week. Lastly, we’ll end the update with a preview of Gen Con before signing off and heading to the convention.
We have some exciting news to share - the final files (English and Spanish) have been sent to our manufacturer and approved, so mass production is officially underway! This means our manufacturer is creating our mass production sample as we speak.
This sample will be identical to the final production version of the game, whereas every other prototype/sample we’ve gotten so far was printed differently due to the smaller number of units. Once we receive the sample and approve it, we’ll ship it off for safety testing to ensure we comply with all applicable regulations.
In parallel, LongPack will begin mass production as soon as we approve the sample. We ended up ordering over 7,500 copies of the base game and about 18,000 total units between the base game, Nightfall, and the mini-expansion. In case you’re wondering, that’s about 50,000 pounds’ (22,700 kgs’) worth of Stifling Dark goodness.
Now that manufacturing is in full swing and we’re in a bit of a holding pattern on that front, we’ve been working on the last big-ticket items: the soundtrack, the how-to-play videos, and the good old map editor. More to come on those in future updates!
It seems like all of our Origins interviews dropped around the same time, so we have tons of media to share this month! Before we jump into the Origins interviews though, we were lucky enough to meet one of Gen Con TV’s producers at Origins and were invited to do a livestream with Gen Con TV last week. Here’s the link in case you missed it!
We also had the pleasure of meeting James from the Board Game Binge podcast while we were at Origins. Little did we know he had done interviews with lots of our fellow game designers (including one of our favorite local designers, Seppy)! We hit it off and ended up doing an episode of the show, which you can check out below or download on your favorite podcast app!
Our next interview was with our friends from the Level Up podcast. We actually met Patrick and team at Origins last year but couldn’t get our schedules to align, so we made sure we prioritized that this time around and were able to sneak in a quick interview at our booth. We’re at the 1:02:30 mark, but we strongly suggest listening to the whole episode because there are tons of great interviews peppered throughout the show:
Last but certainly not least, we met Josh from the Tabletop Submarine podcast and got around to talking and taping a brief interview at our booth (at 36:35 in the episode). Their Origins Recap is filled with interviews from other publishers as well, so make sure you check out the full episode!
We should have some more interviews coming out after Gen Con, so keep an eye out for those in our next update!
The official start of Gen Con is mere hours away, so what better time than now to recap all of our plans! We began the convention a tad early by attending the Trade Day mixer last night. Trade Day is a day dedicated to retailers and educators, and it’s capped off by a demo night where publishers (such as ourselves) can network with retailers and educators and demo our games. We had a blast reconnecting with existing retail backers and meeting new ones!
Today is when the true madness starts though - the exhibit hall opens in mere hours! We’ll be holed up in booth 2945 (map below) while also running a number of demos throughout the weekend. Gen Con is by far the busiest convention we attend during the year, but we wouldn’t have it any other way!
We know many of you have messaged asking if there’s still a way to get into a demo this weekend, but unfortunately we are running as many events as we can (accounting for breaks and lunches) so we won’t be adding any more. That said, you’re welcome to stop by booth 2945 and we’d be happy to give you an overview, and you can always stop by at the start of a demo in case someone doesn’t show up. Note that we plan on getting some hired help next year, so we will be able to run more events next time around!
It’s hard to believe it, but our last planned convention for the year is coming up in a matter of weeks. 2D Con is a great way to wrap up the convention season since it’s a smaller local convention, and they have an amazing arcade/gaming hall we always hit up after our booth closes up each day. Stop by Tabletop Terrace and say hi if you’re around!
We’re back to your regularly scheduled PSAs - these are the same as last month, so if you have already filled out your survey and you’re not a retailer you can skip this section.
Here’s our monthly reminder to make sure you’ve filled out your pledge manager! You should receive an email confirmation from BackerKit once you’ve completed your survey, but if you can’t find it or you aren’t sure you can always look up your pledge by going to the below link and entering in the email listed on your Kickstarter profile:
Lastly, if you are a retail backer and have not filled out the intake form yet please do so once you get a chance. If you received an email from us on July 15th, it means we have not gotten a response from you yet. If not (or if you already responded), it means you submitted the form and you’re good to go!
This timeline will look exactly the same for the next couple months, but we’ll still include it for posterity’s sake!
We’ll be in touch next month, but as always please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns in the meantime. As a reminder, you can expect our campaign updates to come out around the 3rd of each month.
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, preparing for the impending craziness…
July Post-Campaign Update
10 months ago
– Mon, Jul 03, 2023 at 05:31:29 PM
Well, we survived our first big convention of the year! It’s hard to believe it’s already been over a week since Origins ended, although that’s probably just because we spent most of last week trying to catch up on sleep and getting our voices back to normal.
In this update, we’ll talk about prototypes and where we are with manufacturing, provide a recap of Origins Game Fair, and share a little more about our next game (which was just announced last week at Origins). Oh, and there will be lots of photos. Let’s get to it!
We received our revised prototypes less than a week before Origins, so they arrived just in the nick of time! We were incredibly excited for these prototypes since they contained all the stretch goals and new content we’ve created over the past year, and they are effectively the final version of the game.
Perhaps the two coolest things out of the prototypes were the fact that we actually had a physical copy of the Nightfall expansion for the first time, plus we had the upgraded player screen. The player screen used to be a thin piece of cardstock that only had printing on one side, but now it’s cardboard and double-sided. That was definitely one of our favorite stretch goals we unlocked!
Of course, this prototype also included our first “real” copy of The Amusement Park map, The Insatiable Horror, and The Cultists. It also has our new custom insert, which looked great (and yes, it fits all of the cards sleeved). The insert fits all content from the game and both expansions (Nightfall and mini-expansion) inside so you can consolidate everything into a single box if you want to free up some shelf space.
Overall the prototypes looked great, and there was only one main issue - the large flashlights were way too dark, to the point that you can barely see the spaces on the board underneath them. They were supposed to be light gray but ended up being almost black, and after talking with our factory about color options we’ll be going with clear acrylic (still with the printed lines for line of sight, of course).
Other than that, we had a small issue with the insert where one of the flashlight stacks would move slightly out of position, so we worked with our insert designer to add some additional guides to the lid to hold that stack in place. Even though they’re a fairly tight fit (as seen in the picture above), the tokens, dice, and standees all fit within their designated spaces in the insert. The cards have plenty of room, even if they are all sleeved (even more so if they aren’t sleeved).
From a manufacturing standpoint, we received the first batch of Spanish files and will be receiving the rest of the files by the end of this week. We can officially place our final order as soon as we get those files, so we’re pleased to say that our final order will be placed by the end of this week - right on schedule!
As we mentioned in the last update, once that order is placed it’s largely just a waiting game for manufacturing to finish. We’ve had our freight and fulfillment partners lined up for quite some time already, so we’re good on that front. We will be focusing on the how to play videos, the soundtrack, and the map editor next, so keep an eye out for more news on those to come in future updates!
It seems like it was just yesterday, but Origins Game Fair officially wrapped up last Sunday (6/25). We spent 8 days in Columbus, then spent most of last week recovering from the madness. The convention went very well, and it was great to meet so many of you! Huge thanks to everyone that stopped by our booth to say hi and/or played in one of our playthroughs - interacting with you is our favorite part of going to conventions and makes this all worth it.
In addition to seeing a lot of our backers, we also saw quite a bit of board game media/content creators! We were invited to the Origins First Look event, where members of the media got a sneak peek at the hot games at Origins prior to the official start of the convention. We also had some members of the media stop by our booth to interview us:
Most of the interviews haven’t been posted yet, so we’ll share those in a future update once they’re posted (or once we find where they are). We did find the very first livestream we appeared in at the First Look event though, and we’ve included a link below for your viewing pleasure! The Stifling Dark is featured at 29:40, and Gears of Industry (our newly announced game) is shown at 31:10:
We ran 12 playthroughs of The Stifling Dark throughout the convention, which served as one final gut check on both the components and the overall game before we lock things in with our manufacturer. Not that we expected anything, but there were no major issues so that was great to see. We did have a couple small things pop up, so we updated those in the final version that will be sent to our manufacturer.
Lastly, we wanted to end our Origins section with some pictures for those of you who weren’t able to attend:
It’s hard to believe, but Gen Con is officially only one month away. Gen Con is definitely our favorite big convention since it’s so busy and there’s so much to see and do, and we hope to see even more of you at Gen Con than we did at Origins. Don’t forget to stop by booth 2945 and say hi!
As we not-so-subtly teased in the ending of our previous campaign update, our next game is called Gears of Industry (working title). Gears of Industry, from local designer and friend Ananda Guneratne, has been in development for about two years. We first played it back in January of 2022 at a game designer convention called Protospiel (where we just happened to be testing The Stifling Dark), and we were hooked on it ever since that first playthrough.
Our company’s vision is to produce games with unique yet functional components that are integral to gameplay. You saw that come true with the flashlights in The Stifling Dark, and the gears in Gears of Industry serve the same purpose.
It was amazing to see the reaction to Gears of Industry that people had at Origins - it was eerily similar to how people reacted to The Stifling Dark when we unveiled it at Origins last year. We had people walking by and doing double-takes when they saw the gears, and we had quite a few people stop by one day and come back with their friends or family the next day to show it off.
These are both things that happened with The Stifling Dark when we first revealed it, so that gave us confidence that we are headed in the right direction. We’ll share more about Gears of Industry on social media (@sophcerb) as we get artwork and continue to make progress on it, so keep an eye out there if you’re interested in learning more about it!
We’re back to your regularly scheduled PSAs - these are the same as last month, so if you have already filled out your survey and you’re not a retailer you can skip this section.
Here’s our monthly reminder to make sure you’ve filled out your pledge manager! You should receive an email confirmation from BackerKit once you’ve completed your survey, but if you can’t find it or you aren’t sure you can always look up your pledge by going to the below link and entering in the email listed on your Kickstarter profile:
Lastly, if you are a retail backer and have not filled out the intake form yet please do so once you get a chance. If you received an email from us on April 1st, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke - it means we have not gotten a response from you yet. If not (or if you already responded), it means you submitted the form and you’re good to go!
This timeline will look exactly the same for the next couple months, but we’ll still include it for posterity’s sake!
We’ll be in touch next month, but as always please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns in the meantime. As a reminder, you can expect our campaign updates to come out around the 3rd of each month.
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, (safely) playing with fireworks…
