Keep your friends close and your flashlight closer in this one-vs-many hidden movement horror game.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Fulfillment Update!
about 1 year ago
– Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 04:38:26 PM
It’s official: the first copies of The Stifling Dark are out in the wild! Backers in China and Hong Kong received their games at the end of last week, multiple months ahead of schedule. As you’ll read in this update, things are progressing well and we’re thrilled to see how smoothly things have been going.
Now that copies are beginning to ship out, we’ll update your BackerKit pledge with the tracking number as soon as we receive it from our fulfillment partner. Note that it will almost certainly be after the fulfillment partner has already sent it to you, so make sure you keep an eye on your email (and your spam) for your tracking details!
We’ve included estimated timing for most of the regions below, but keep in mind these dates could change if we run into any hiccups between now and then. We’ll include tighter timelines in our next update, which we currently plan on sending out per our usual cadence on December 3rd (unless we have significant fulfillment updates before then).
United States (Gamerati)
The US shipment arrived as scheduled on November 10th and was received and unloaded by Gamerati yesterday. The local pickup pallets were shipped out today (local pickup details are a little later in the update), and the Canadian pallets have been packed up and will be shipped out shortly.
Here’s the craziest news of all - the US orders are in the process of being shipped as we speak! We weren’t expecting them to go out for another 2-3 weeks, but Gamerati has been incredibly quick to receive the games and is already printing out shipping labels and packing slips. They plan to begin shipping copies out tomorrow!
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Gamerati with the tracking number. Please reach out to [email protected] with any issues relating to the game or shipping and we’ll work with Gamerati as/if needed.
Canada (Pick & Pack)
We expect the Canadian shipment from Gamerati to arrive at Pick & Pack in 1-2 weeks, then Pick & Pack will need time to receive it and prep for shipment. We’ll provide more specific timing on delivery once we get a bit closer!
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Pick & Pack with the tracking number. Please review the details on Pick & Pack’s website for any issues related to shipping and submit a contact form if necessary. You can email [email protected] with any issues related to the game itself.
EU/UK/Rest of World (Spiral Galaxy)
The EU/UK/ROW shipment is aboard the APL Lion City, which departed from China on October 14th and is now expected to arrive at port on November 20th (four days earlier than originally expected). We expect it to take about a week to get to our fulfillment warehouse (Spiral Galaxy) and then another week to receive and sort the inventory, once again assuming there aren’t any hiccups or delays. We’ll provide more specific timing on delivery once we get a bit closer!
Keep in mind that we will be initiating the address lock for UK/EU/ROW backers in two days (on November 18), and you will have 48 hours to make any last changes to your address before your survey is locked down. Make sure your address is updated before then if you need to make a change!
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Spiral Galaxy with the tracking number. You can email [email protected] for any issues related to shipping, and you can email [email protected] with any issues related to the game itself.
Australia / New Zealand (Armarlo)
The Australian shipment arrived as scheduled on November 4th and has been unloaded at Armarlo’s warehouse. They are actively working on getting the games shipped out and expect to have the shipments out by the end of the week.
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Armarlo with the tracking number. You can email [email protected] with any issues relating to the game or shipping and we’ll work with Armarlo as/if needed.
Asia (VFI)
As mentioned at the beginning of the update, backers in China and Hong Kong have received their games. The games for multiple other countries have been shipped to their local hubs, and we have updated the table below with the latest status. As with last time, the estimated arrival date is the arrival to VFI's hub in that region - not the estimated arrival to backers:
Note that you can always check VFI’s website to see the status of each hub once it ships out from VFI. Most hubs will also have an email address you can use to contact them in case there are any issues with shipping.
Once your game ships out from its hub, you will receive an email from the hub with the tracking number. You can email [email protected] (or the associated hub) for any issues related to shipping once your game has shipped, and you can email [email protected] with any issues related to the game itself.
Spanish Version (Maldito)
Maldito will be responsible for fulfilling the Spanish version of the game to all regions. The Spanish version of the game has been manufactured and is being consolidated in a single shipment from China with some of Maldito’s other games. We’ll provide more updates on timing once we have them!
Local Pickup (Minnesota and Wisconsin)
The local pickup events have been locked in! See below for details for each region:
Addresses for each location are below for reference:
Games By James (Saturday 12/2 from 1-5 PM)
Ridgedale Center, Suite 2245
12731 Wayzata Blvd
Minnetonka, MN 55305
Boardlandia (Sunday 12/3 from 1-5 PM)
2701 N Oneida St B
Appleton, WI 54911
For those who aren’t able to make the main events, we have scheduled smaller pickup events for the following weekend at the same locations:
Minnesota (Games by James): Sunday 12/10 from 2-4 PM
Wisconsin (Boardlandia): Saturday 12/9 from 2-4 PM
If you aren’t able to make either of the events in your area, we’ll arrange alternate pickup options on a one-off basis. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at the events!
The how to play videos are now live on our website! Note that we will be filming an updated playthrough when we’re all together at the beginning of December for the local pickup events, and we’ll post that on YouTube / our website as well once we’re done editing it.
Now that the videos are done, the map editor is our last remaining to-do. We’ve been hard at work and hope to have it live by mid-December (approximately a month from today), but we’ll keep everyone posted once it’s ready to go!
We’ll still be posting our regularly scheduled update on December 3rd (or possibly a couple days sooner if we have major fulfillment news before then).
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, (im)patiently waiting for the local pickup pallets to get here…
November Post-Campaign Update
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 09:04:09 AM
We’re back with our regularly scheduled update! We got our first snowfall of the season, a good 2-3 inches on the day before Halloween (great timing, Mother Nature). Despite that, we hope everyone had a spooky Halloween and that nobody ate too much candy, if there is such a thing.
As mentioned in our update last week, we will be initiating the address lock for many backers right after sending out this update. We’ll provide lots of juicy details on fulfillment in this update, including boat names and rough warehouse delivery timing for each region along with what to expect once your game ships. Let’s get to it!
The address lock will be initiated for US and Canadian backers right after this update is sent out (along with a second wave for Asia, Australia/New Zealand, and the Spanish version of the game). EU/UK/rest of world backers will have their address lock initiated on Saturday, November 18th.
Once 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!
We mentioned this last month, but it is worth repeating: 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! This means that any US or Canadian backers who haven't finalized their survey yet have missed the cutoff and will be included in the second wave.
It’s time to get into the fun fulfillment details by region! Note that we’ve provided approximate delivery dates for Asian backers since their orders have landed in VFI’s warehouse and will be fulfilling fairly soon, but we will send out one-off campaign updates with more specific dates for the US, Canada, UK/EU/ROW, and Australia/New Zealand backers closer to fulfillment since a lot can happen between now and when the product lands in our partners’ warehouses. Without further ado:
United States (Gamerati)
The US shipment is aboard the Humen Bridge, which we think is a very fitting name for a ship carrying a horror board game. It departed from China on October 18th and is expected to arrive at port on November 10th. It will take about a week to get to our fulfillment warehouse (Gamerati), assuming the ship arrives on time and our games aren’t delayed at customs.
We expect it to take about a week for Gamerati to receive and sort everything. They will ship the Canadian orders up to Pick & Pack and the local pickup orders (more details on this a bit later in the update) to us before they begin shipping out the “normal” US orders to try and time things as equitably as possible.
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Gamerati with the tracking number. Please reach out to [email protected] with any issues relating to the game or shipping and we’ll work with Gamerati as/if needed. We’ll provide more specific timing on delivery once we get a bit closer!
Canada (Pick & Pack)
As you likely read right before this, the Canadian shipment is combined with the US shipment and is expected to arrive in the US on November 10th. We expect it to take around 3 weeks to get from the port to Gamerati to Pick & Pack, then Pick & Pack will need a week or so to receive and sort everything.
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Pick & Pack with the tracking number. Please review the details on Pick & Pack’s website for any issues related to shipping and submit a contact form if necessary. You can email [email protected] with any issues related to the game itself. We’ll provide more specific timing on delivery once we get a bit closer!
EU/UK/Rest of World (Spiral Galaxy)
The EU/UK/ROW shipment is aboard the APL Lion City, which departed from China on October 14th and is expected to arrive at port on November 24th. As with the US shipment, we expect it to take about a week to get to our fulfillment warehouse (Spiral Galaxy) and then another week to receive and sort the inventory, once again assuming there aren’t any hiccups or delays.
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Spiral Galaxy with the tracking number. You can email [email protected] for any issues related to shipping, and you can email [email protected] with any issues related to the game itself. We’ll provide more specific timing on delivery once we get a bit closer!
Australia / New Zealand (Armarlo)
The Australian shipment is aboard the Cosco Hong Kong, which departed from China on October 16th and is expected to arrive at port on November 4th. As with the US shipment, we expect it to take about a week to get to our fulfillment warehouse (Armarlo) and then another week to receive and sort the inventory, once again assuming there aren’t any hiccups or delays.
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from Armarlo with the tracking number. You can email [email protected] with any issues relating to the game or shipping and we’ll work with Armarlo as/if needed. We’ll provide more specific timing on delivery once we get a bit closer!
Asia (VFI)
The Asian shipment has been received at VFI, they have invoiced us for the parcel shipment, and we have paid for it. As such, shipping from VFI is imminent and Chinese backers will likely be receiving their games within the next two weeks. Here is the estimated timing for the various countries we are shipping to from VFI, noting that the estimated arrival date is the arrival to VFI's hub in that region - not the estimated arrival to backers:
Once your game ships, you will receive an email from VFI (or their shipping hub) with the tracking number. You can email [email protected] for any issues related to shipping once your game has shipped, and you can email [email protected] with any issues related to the game itself.
Spanish Version (Maldito)
Maldito will be responsible for fulfilling the Spanish version of the game to all regions. The Spanish version of the game has been manufactured and is being consolidated in a single shipment from China with some of Maldito’s other games. We’ll provide more updates on timing once we have them!
Local Pickup (Minnesota and Wisconsin)
We’re excited to announce that we will be hosting our Minneapolis local pickup event at Games by James in the Ridgedale Center (Minnetonka, MN), and our Appleton local pickup event will be at Boardlandia (Appleton, WI)! Aside from being fantastic game stores, both of these locations are backers and supporters of our game, and we are also regular patrons of these stores.
The current plan is to book a 4-ish hour window at each store where backers can pick up their game and even break it out to give it a whirl! You’re still welcome to come even if you didn’t select local pickup (or even if you aren’t a backer) and we’d be happy to hang out and chat with you. Both stores will have games available for purchase too!
We’ll be posting on social media and emailing all local pickup backers with the specific date and time of their event (along with other details) once we’re able to lock that in. Please keep in mind it will be fairly short notice since we want to get you your game as quickly as possible, but we can’t book the date until we’re confident in the date that we’ll be receiving the games.
For those who aren’t able to make the main event, we will schedule a smaller pickup event approximately a week later. If you still aren’t able to make that event, we’ll arrange alternate pickup options on a one-off basis. We can’t wait to meet even more of you at these events!
Whew! That was a lot of fulfillment info, so we’ll keep this section relatively short. We’re thrilled that the game is delivering 2-3 months early, but that also means we had 2-3 less months to finish the videos and map editor than we were expecting! Not to fear - the videos are done being rendered and just need voice-overs before we upload them, and we continue to make good progress on the map editor.
Also, we wanted to share some resources in case you have any questions about the game once you get it. We have posted an official FAQ thread on BoardGameGeek, which will be the primary place for people to ask questions about the game.
There are also QR codes throughout the rulebook that will take you to the rules page on our website, which will have short videos explaining each section (along with a living FAQ document). Keep in mind the videos haven’t been uploaded yet, but they will be soon!
As always, you can also post on Discord, in our Facebook group, comment on Kickstarter, or email us at [email protected] with any questions or concerns. We’re here to help and want to make sure you enjoy the game!
Invoices were due yesterday, so if you haven’t paid your invoice yet (or if you haven’t filled out the intake) your shipment will be delayed. If you paid your invoice by the due date you will be included in the upcoming round of fulfillment, so you’re all set!
We have followed up with all retailers whose payments we’ve received to this point, but If you’re not sure you can email us at [email protected] and we’ll let you know for sure.
We have a special treat for everyone - our manufacturer (LongPack) just sent us this amazing video showcasing the production of The Stifling Dark, which is from about a month and a half ago. We still owe everyone an unboxing video (which we'll get to soon, we promise), but we think this is just a tad cooler!
Lastly, we still 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!
We’re all done with conventions for this year but we have quite a few planned for next year, including a brand new Protospiel convention that is being organized by friend and fellow designer Eric! If you’re in the Twin Cities area we definitely suggest checking out Protospiel Twin Cities this summer. The full list is below:
Protospiel MN: February 2-4, Bloomington, MN
Con of the North: February 16-18, Plymouth, MN
GAMA Expo: March 4-7, Louisville, KY
Protospiel Twin Cities: May 31-June 2nd, Roseville, MN
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 once again been updated! Both freight and warehousing have been moved to in-progress status. We expect freight to be fully completed by next month’s update, and fulfillment will very much be in progress by that point!
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, channeling our inner Morgan Freeman…
Addresses Locking Soon!
about 1 year 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
about 1 year 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
about 1 year 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…
