Keep your friends close and your flashlight closer in this one-vs-many hidden movement horror game.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
August Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year 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
over 1 year 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…
June Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Jun 03, 2023 at 06:33:07 PM
To some people’s chagrin and other people’s delight, this update will be slightly shorter than normal! We took a much-needed break after the mad rush to get the files sent off to our manufacturer and are getting back into the swing of things while we (im)patiently wait for the prototypes to arrive.
We’ll go through a quick development update, talk about our big upcoming conventions (Origins and Gen Con), share some exciting news about the future of Sophisticated Cerberus Games, and end with our usual PSA and timeline sections.
For starters, we still have close to 100 base and deluxe backers who have not filled out their surveys. Please do this as soon as you’re able to because we need to know where you live in order to get your game sent to you! If you don’t fill out your survey you won’t end up getting a game, and if you fill it out late it may incur additional shipping charges if we end up having to ship it from a different country.
Moving on, we’re pleased to report that we got the prototypes ordered and files sent to our Spanish friends on schedule, so things are still looking good from a timing perspective. We expect to have revised prototypes in-hand prior to Origins, and we should receive the translated Spanish files right after we get back from Origins.
Once we have both of those things, we will place our final order with our manufacturer and mass production will officially begin! While it will mostly be a waiting game at that point, we still have a couple to-do’s (such as finalizing the soundtrack, creating how-to-play videos, and putting the finishing touches on a little thing known as the map editor) so we’ll still be hard at work ensuring everything is going smoothly and ready for launch.
We are also in the process of updating our Tabletop Simulator (TTS) and Tabletop Playground (TTPG) versions of the game to include all the new content, and we’ll be looking for playtesters once those are all updated. Keep an eye out on social media (@sophcerb) or our Discord if you’re interested in giving it a shot once things are updated!
We are now less than a month away from Origins and only 2 months away from Gen Con, which is crazy to think about. It seems like we were just there a few months ago, and we can’t wait to dive headfirst back into the craziness!
As we mentioned in last month’s update, all of our Origins events sold out pretty quickly and remain full. For those of you who weren’t able to get in, keep an eye on tabletop.events since people drop from time to time and you might be able to sneak in. Tabletop.events has a handy “Notify Me” feature you can click on to get an alert if a spot opens up, so make sure you hit that button if you’re wanting to get in to a specific session!
You can always stop by at the start of a game to see if we have no-shows (which we frequently do) since you might be able to get into a game that way. Feel free to stop by our booth as well to see if we are planning any one-off events! We can’t promise anything since we’ll only have two or three helpers, but if we have the capacity we’ll try to fit in an extra game or two. Speaking of our booth, we’ll basically be right in the middle of the exhibit hall in booth 925! See below for a map of where we’re at:
Gen Con is a similar story - our events sold out very quickly and we’ve heard from a number of people that they weren’t able to get into a game. As with Origins, keep checking back on Gen Con’s site to see if people have dropped, and feel free to stop by at the beginning of events or check in at our booth to see if we have anything extra planned.
We’ll be in booth 2945 at Gen Con, eerily close to where we were last year. Gen Con apparently likes sticking us in the back right corner of the exhibit hall :) See below for the map so you can come find us!
Our only other planned convention for this year is 2D Con, for our local friends in and around Minneapolis. It takes place from 8/25 through 8/27, and we’re excited to return for our second year!
Now that we’ve wrapped up the design and development portion of The Stifling Dark, it’s time to shift our eyes to the future of our fledgling company. We’ve had many debates about what our next step should be - do we continue designing our own games, do we start publishing games from other designers, or do we do a combination of those things?
We love designing games and have a blast doing it, but the reality is that it’s a long and tedious process. Our ideal long-term goal would be to turn this company into full-time jobs for the three of us, but that’s not going to be possible if we only release a game every three years.
That led us to discuss publishing other designers’ games as a natural next step now that we’ve established ourselves. We’ve met a ton of local designers with fantastic games, so there’s no shortage of publish-worthy designs out there.
With that, we are pleased to announce that we’ve decided that publishing someone else’s design will be our next step as a company! We haven’t signed anything so nothing is official and we can’t share any details yet, but if all goes well we plan on announcing the game while we’re at Origins later this month. We even plan on having a demo available for people to check out at our booth!
We do still plan on continuing to design our own games since we have a wealth of ideas for future designs, but publishing will provide us with a much quicker turnaround for our next game compared to designing it from scratch. Don’t worry - expansions and new content for The Stifling Dark are included in that massive list of ideas and are on our roadmap!
We want to end this note with a very important callout: while this is all super exciting, we still have a commitment to deliver The Stifling Dark. The Stifling Dark will remain our number one priority, not only because it’s the right thing to do but also because future games mean nothing if we can’t deliver on our first one.
We also want to acknowledge that many backers have been burned by companies moving too quickly to their next game before their first one has been shipped, especially recently. Hopefully it has been evident through our communication and planning, but we have done (and will continue doing) our due diligence when it comes to budgeting and roadmapping.
We are in a financial position where we have enough money reserved for manufacturing, shipping, and all the other remaining expenses for The Stifling Dark (including a sizable reserve fund) that we have set aside and will only be used for The Stifling Dark.
Not budgeting properly or (more commonly) taking money that was already marked for a previous campaign is where many other companies have gotten into trouble, and we have taken the necessary steps to prevent that from happening. We are extremely grateful for the trust you have placed in us and we take our responsibility to deliver on our promises very seriously.
Keep an eye out for more info on our next game in the coming months!
PSA time, and it’s different again this month! As mentioned last month, our Kickstarter pricing for late pledges ended on June 1. Our preorder store has also been updated to simplify the number of offerings and lock prices in at MSRP pricing that we've begun the manufacturing process. A link to our late pledge store is below:
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!
Now that the pre-production samples have been ordered, the production process has officially begun and we can move the factory step to in-progress! Don’t get too excited though - it’s going to stay in this stage for a while since this is a long and multi-faceted step. We are still on track to deliver by our promise date of February 2024, and will hopefully be delivering sooner than that if all goes well!
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, churning those gears…
May Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year ago
– Wed, May 03, 2023 at 03:13:18 PM
Spring is officially in the air! After raining for about 4 days straight (and then snowing in some areas this weekend) temperatures are supposed to be in the 60s and 70s for the foreseeable future. We probably just jinxed ourselves by saying that, but oh well. We’re not here to talk about the weather though, so onto the game we go!
In this update we’ll talk about the locking of the pledge manager, give a comprehensive component count update, go over a development update (including sneak peeks at some of our revised components, like the double-sided player screen), share some raving new reviews, provide some info about Origins Game Fair (including our booth number), and wrap things up with a timeline update.
As everyone should hopefully be aware of, we locked orders and charged credit cards on Monday. The charge should appear on your statements as SOPH CERB GAMES for the amount that you owed for shipping, taxes (if applicable), and any incremental add-ons you may have selected. If your payment went through, your job here is done! Now you can sit back, relax, and (if you’re like us) be surprised when the game shows up on your doorstep because you back way too many games and lose track of them.
If, on the other hand, your credit card was declined, fear not! It's typically just your bank being overly cautious. In most cases you just have to call your bank to let them know it's legitimate and they'll remove the hold so it will go through the next time the charge is made (which we have to process manually on our end).
Per BackerKit's suggestion to reduce the number of manual one-offs we have to reprocess, we will be re-trying all failed cards once a week for the next four weeks to give people time to call their banks and remove the holds. Note that if your payment failed because you need to switch to a different card, you can do that by clicking on the "update your payment information" link in the email and it will automatically re-try the charge.
If you have any questions or concerns about the payment or anything about the pledge manager, please feel free to leave a comment, send us a message on Kickstarter, or email us at [email protected]. The below article from BackerKit also provides some additional information about the various payment issues that may occur:
For anyone who fills out their survey from this point onward: your order will lock and your card will be charged immediately. Make sure you triple-check everything on your order before submitting, because once the order locks you won’t be able to change the items on your order or modify your pledge.
All backers will be able to update their addresses up until we start shipping the game out, so you don’t have to worry if you plan on moving between now and then - just make sure you keep your address up to date! As we did with the order lock, we will be sure to communicate well in advance of that deadline to remind everyone to double-check their addresses.
As a continuation of our component update in our April update, we wanted to provide a full list showing you how the components changed over the course of the Kickstarter. The left column shows the component count as of when we launched on Kickstarter, the middle column shows the component count as of the end of the campaign, and the right column shows the current (and mostly finalized) component count.
The "Current" column is conditionally formatted to highlight where components have increased (green), decreased (red), or stayed the same (gray). The vast majority of the reductions are on the mini cards and tokens, although we also have the evidence cards and mini-sleeves that we mentioned in our previous update. Also, we apologize that this is just a screenshot of a spreadsheet. We planned on making something fancy-looking but realized our time was probably better spent doing more proofreading.
We discussed the biggest changes in previous updates, so most of the other changes you’ll see here are pretty small. There may still be a couple minor component count changes between now and the final production copy (such as the addition or removal of a couple cards or tokens), but all the big stuff is officially out of the way.
We are mere days away from officially beginning the manufacturing process by ordering our pre-production samples, right on track with our initial estimate of beginning production in the middle of May. We’ve spent the past month doing tons of playtests, proofreading, and overall graphic work to bring all the components up to their final versions (and then we did even more proofreading).
As most of the past month was spent playtesting and proofreading, we don’t have a whole lot of crazy new development things to share, but we do have something we think all the adversary players will like - the newly-designed back of the player screen! The screen will be tri-fold, with each adversary taking up a full panel:
In case you forgot, this was one of the stretch goals we unlocked that all the “ones” in one-vs-many games were super excited about. Not only was the player screen upgraded from cardstock to cardboard, we also made it double-sided and are including player guides for each adversary on the back to help reduce how often you need to reference the rulebook.
Speaking of the rulebook, the back cover of each rulebook will contain quick-reference guides for the investigators and adversaries, respectively. Rather than use the last page for credits and all that fun stuff, we stuck that inside the back cover and used the prime real estate on the back cover for helpful information.
We also got the final versions of both the Nightfall box and the mini-expansion foil pack, which you can feast your eyes upon below:
In terms of next steps, once we receive the pre-production sample and approve all of the components (and get the Spanish version back from Maldito), we will begin production and await the receipt of the mass production sample. The pre-production sample is manufactured differently than the final product will be, so even though it’s close it won’t be exactly the same as the mass production version of the game.
That’s where the mass production sample comes in! This sample will be the same as the final production copy of the game, so that’s our final checkpoint to see how everything will look when manufacturing is completed. Once that is approved, mass production begins and we have to (im)patiently wait for it to complete.
Once manufacturing is done, we will ship the games to each of our fulfillment partners, who will then ship the game to each of you!
It sounds so easy when we write it like that, but as we’ve all seen, there are bound to be little things that pop up here and there. We added extra time for both manufacturing and shipping into our timelines to account for things like that, but we will keep everyone posted if anything pops up along the way.
We have not one, but two new written (p)reviews to share this month! The first is a review from Josh at PopHorror, a website we only recently discovered (but wish we had discovered sooner). It’s a site dedicated to, you guessed it, all things horror! We were thrilled when Josh reached out expressing interest to do a review, and the review is now officially live at the below link:
We wanted to include a small quote from this review, but we couldn’t just pull a single line or two. Instead, we just went ahead and included the entire end of the review below since this is a perfect summation of what we wanted this game to be, and we are beyond ecstatic that reviewers are seeing that come to life:
Admittedly, in a time where at least the videogame market is seeing some fatigue in asymmetrical horror games, with almost every one of them being accused of being a clone of another (rightfully or not), The Stifling Dark may sound like a less accessible clone of those games. Not everyone wants to bother setting up a board game, especially if there’s any complexity to it when they can just boot up a videogame right?
Here’s the thing. We had more fun with The Stifling Dark than any of those video games. Where the videogames lose the horror and tension after a few playthroughs, The Stifling Dark didn’t. You can’t see a huge chunk of the board no matter how you arrange your flashlights, with nothing more than maybe some noise tokens as the killer crunches in the dark brings far more tension than its videogame contemporaries. There is no increased heartbeat volume to let you know you’re in danger, there is no, keeping an eye out over the whole map for each other as one of you works at an action. There are no updates or patches that throw the balance out of wack. The Stifling Dark is a game that always feels how the other games only feel the first few times you play them.
The Stifling Dark is one of the most immersive horror board games I’ve played, between the lighting and sound mechanics, the mystery and hidden movement, and the strategy. It’s a little bit on the complex side and may take some time to fully understand, but it’s worth the effort. I strongly suggest that you don’t write this off as another clone.
Our other new preview comes to us from Bert! We found him in a Facebook group for board game reviewers and were excited to work with him to get some more written content. It just so happens we had two written pieces launch in the same month! See below for Bert’s preview:
We won’t post half of the article in here again, but this small section also does an excellent job of illustrating the feeling we want the game to evoke:
The flashlight made the players feel as if they were right there in a horror film, especially when you turn it on to find the adversary standing right in front of you. It’s the closest to a jump scare in a board game that I have experienced.
We’re close to wrapping up all the reviewer content we had lined up at the beginning of the Kickstarter, but you can expect new content to start popping up again once the game is released!
Convention season is quickly approaching! Origins is less than 2 months away, and all 12 of our events sold out within about an hour of registration opening, which was pretty crazy to see. We’re always trying to see if we can add more events so more people can play, but since we also have to staff our booth (and take time to eat) we can usually only run one event at any given time.
We also received our Origins booth number, and we’re pretty pleased with where we ended up. We’ll be in booth 925, which is a corner booth almost directly in the middle of the hall. We’re by Elf Creek Games and Restoration Games, and just one aisle over from our good friend Dave with Paverson Games (Distilled, anyone?) We'll share a map of the exhibit hall once that information is public.
As a reminder, here’s what we have planned for the rest of the year:
PSA time, and this time it’s slightly different! We are still matching Kickstarter pricing on late pledges through the end of May. Late Pledge (preorder) pricing will increase to MSRP at the beginning of June, so if you know anyone that’s on the fence tell them to hop over pretty quickly or they’ll miss out on a good deal! A link to our late pledge store is below:
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!
The last of our Testing and Art placeholders have been filled in, which means we are ready to send files off to the factory to get our pre-production sample going!
We expect to send files over within the next week, at which point we’ll be in about a 45-day waiting period until we receive the sample. We’ll be sitting with the factory at “In Progress” status for a couple months, beginning in next month’s update.
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, ready to take a sliiiight break once these files are sent…
Charging Credit Cards Soon!
almost 2 years ago
– Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 04:31:59 PM
Only one week until surveys lock and credit cards are charged! One week from today (on May 1st), we will lock surveys (which means you will no longer be able to add or remove items from your order) and charge credit cards (so you will see a charge come through from SOPH CERB GAMES or SOPH CERB).
If you are a Kickstarter backer you will also get an alert from BackerKit 2 days ahead of time (on April 29th). Note for preorder / late pledge backers: your orders will lock on April 29th due to how BackerKit handles late pledges vs. Kickstarter pledges, but you still won’t be charged until May 1st.
As a reminder, last month we announced that we signed a Spanish deal with Maldito Games. If you wanted to switch to the Spanish version, now is the time to do it! Leave a comment, send us a message, or email us at [email protected] to get switched over.
If you have already completed your survey there’s nothing you have to do, this is just an FYI so you know that your cards are about to be charged. If you’re waiting to fill out your survey until after we charge cards, your order will lock and your card will be charged as soon as you submit your survey (as long as you do it after May 1st). You will still be able to edit your order before finalizing your survey if you'd like to.
For anyone who ordered multiple copies of the game and qualified for the free mini-expansion, we will be adding as many free mini-expansions as you have copies of the base game. If you already paid for an extra mini-expansion we’ll take that off your order and replace it with a free one.
Lastly, you will still be able to edit your address even though we locked orders (up until be begin fulfillment). Just make sure you update your address if you move prior to when we start fulfillment, otherwise your game is going to go to your old address!
That’s it for this update! We’ll be back on/around May 3rd for our regularly scheduled monthly update. Talk to you soon!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, too busy proofreading the rulebook to think of a clever ending for this update...
