Keep your friends close and your flashlight closer in this one-vs-many hidden movement horror game.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
IMPORTANT: Pledge Manager is Live!
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 06:04:30 AM
Today’s the day! We finished getting everything ready and will officially be launching the pledge manager today, so keep an eye on your email. We’re happy to report that there were no increases in the shipping estimates from our Kickstarter page, and as a matter of fact our friends over in the UK will actually have their shipping costs reduced slightly! See the fulfillment section later on for more details on how that happened (and some other fulfillment updates). This update ended up longer than we expected, so make sure you have your coffee in hand!
A small subset of backers will receive their invite shortly after this campaign update is posted, which will allow us to quickly catch any potential issues with setup before unleashing it upon the other couple thousand of you. Everyone else should receive their pledge manager within 24 hours of this campaign update.
Retail backers: you will not receive a pledge manager invite since we’ll be invoicing you much later (likely around September) through a separate process. More details to come!
Please fill out your survey as soon as you are able to. That way you can get it over with, and as an added bonus you won’t get BackerKit’s automated reminder emails. You will not be charged until we lock orders (tentatively May 1st), so there’s no need to wait if you were worried about having to pay as soon as you fill out your survey.
As a reminder, we have complete step-by-step instructions on how to fill out the pledge manager on our website (https://sophcerb.com/tsd_pm). You can also check the FAQs in the pledge manager for common questions. We’ll include a repeat of the high-level instructions at the end of this update, although it will just be a copy from our previous campaign update so if you read that already you’re good to go!
If you haven’t received your pledge manager invite after 24 hours, make sure you check your spam folder. If you still can’t find it, you’ll be able to look it up at this link by entering the email address associated with your Kickstarter account. If all else fails, send us a message and we’ll get things sorted out!
We currently plan to close the pledge manager on May 1st, at which point we will also charge your credit cards. We will follow up about a week before doing this to ensure everyone is aware and can get in and make any last-minute changes they need to. Once the pledge manager locks you will not be able to add or remove items from your order - all you’ll be able to do is change your address.
Before we get into the other details, please note that we don’t plan on posting our regularly scheduled monthly update (which normally would’ve come out in 3 days) until a week from today so we don’t spam you with updates. This will also allow us to see how the pledge manager is progressing and address any potential questions or concerns that have arisen.
If you were eligible to receive the free mini-expansion it will show up under your pledge level items on the right side of the Add-Ons page. You’ll have to hit “Get Started!” on the landing page in order to see that.
As a reminder, the requirements to qualify for the free mini-expansion were two-fold: be subscribed to our mailing list at the conclusion of the campaign and back at least the base pledge ($50) level.
If you backed at a $1 level, did a late pledge (preorder), unsubscribed prior to the end of the campaign, had your payment fail, or cancelled your pledge you will unfortunately not be eligible for the free mini-expansion so you won’t see it in your pledge. You can still purchase it at a 10% discount ($4.50) if you would like.
Time for some fulfillment updates! We’ve been hard at work getting updated shipping costs and freight estimates to finalize the pledge manager setup and ensure we’re still in good shape. With that work came a few updates that we wanted to share in order to keep everyone in the loop.
First things first: the UK shipping decrease is because we added a new fulfillment partner (Spiral Galaxy) in the UK due to the volume of backers we have there. We were initially planning on shipping to the UK from inside the EU (which is more expensive), but with this change our shipping costs dropped and we wanted to pass those savings on. Shipping rates did go up a bit more than we had budgeted in other regions, but we’re able to absorb those increases thanks to how well our Kickstarter did.
In other fulfillment news, we will now be shipping to Australia and New Zealand from VFI Asia since we didn’t have enough backers there to justify the expense of an additional freight shipment and fulfillment partner in Australia. Even though this means our parcel shipping cost to those backers will increase significantly, the savings on freight and fulfillment expenses helped to mostly offset that increase.
Lastly, we have not been able to get in contact with the EU fulfillment partner we originally planned to work with despite numerous attempts, so we have officially switched to working with Happyshops out of Germany. They have been very responsive and we look forward to working with them!
A quick blurb for anyone interested in the Chinese version of the game from Game Harbor - we have confirmed that they will be translating the game into Traditional Chinese. If you are interested in switching to the Chinese version we’ll need to do that outside of the pledge manager, so please send us a message or leave a comment on this update and we’ll reach out to you.
If we end up getting other languages added during (or after) the pledge manager we’ll keep everyone posted and communicate how to go about changing your language. Keep an eye out for potential future communication on that front!
We’ll end the update with a repeat of an overview of the pledge manager process. If you already know how the process works, you’ve reached the end of the update! For those who aren’t familiar with what a pledge manager is, you’ll want to keep reading. A pledge manager is a tool that many crowdfunding creators use to collect shipping addresses, shipping fees, and taxes from their backers.
The form you fill out in the pledge manager is called a survey, and if you do not fill out your survey you will not receive your copy of the game since we’ll have no idea where to ship it. It is essential that you fill out the pledge manager as soon as possible after we send it out so you can get it over with and not accidentally forget about it.
We put together a step-by-step guide on our website to walk you through the pledge manager in case this is your first time backing a campaign that used a pledge manager. This example was created to represent the process for someone who backed at the $70 deluxe level since that covers the vast majority of our backers, but the process is very similar regardless of your pledge level.
At a high level, you’ll receive an email from [email protected] (which will show up as Sophisticated Cerberus Games) with the subject "Response Needed - Get your reward for The Stifling Dark: A Horror Board Game". You can click on the link in the email to access and fill out your survey. An example of what the email will look like is below for reference:
If you don’t see the email within 24 hours of when we launch the pledge manager, make sure you check your spam / junk email folder. If you still don’t see it, you’ll always be able to look it up using your Kickstarter email at this link (once the pledge manager is open): https://sophcerb.backerkit.com/.
Once you fill everything out, you’ll enter in your credit card to pay for shipping and any applicable taxes before confirming your order. Note that your credit card will not be charged right away. We currently plan on locking orders and charging credit cards on May 1st, so you should have a little over two months to fill out your survey. We’ll send out an alert before we charge cards to make sure everyone is aware.
If you have any questions on the process please feel free to leave a comment on this update or send us a message and we’ll be happy to help.
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, dreading tax season…
February Post-Campaign Update
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Feb 03, 2023 at 06:36:43 PM
It’s about that time again, and it’s almost time for everyone’s favorite part of a campaign - the pledge manager! This is going to be a pretty beefy update since we have lots to report on, so buckle up and get ready for a ride.
We’re going to switch the order up a bit this time and start with the most important thing - information about the pledge manager. For those who aren’t familiar with what a pledge manager is, it’s a tool that many crowdfunding creators use to collect shipping addresses, shipping fees, and taxes from their backers.
The form you fill out in the pledge manager is called a survey, and if you do not fill out your survey you will not receive your copy of the game since we’ll have no idea where to ship it. It is essential that you fill out the pledge manager as soon as possible after we send it out so you can get it over with and not accidentally forget about it.
The pledge manager is mostly set up and ready to launch, we’re just waiting on a couple final pieces before we can hit that “go” button. We will post a separate campaign update once we launch, which we expect to occur on schedule within the next 2-4 weeks.
We put together a step-by-step guide on our website (https://sophcerb.com/tsd_pm) to walk you through the pledge manager in case this is your first time backing a campaign that used a pledge manager. This example was created to represent the process for someone who backed at the $70 deluxe level since that covers the vast majority of our backers, but the process is very similar regardless of your pledge level.
At a high level, you’ll receive an email from [email protected] (which will show up as Sophisticated Cerberus Games) with the subject "Response Needed - Get your reward for The Stifling Dark: A Horror Board Game". You can click on the link in the email to access and fill out your survey. An example of what the email will look like is below for reference:
If you don’t see the email within 24 hours of when we launch the pledge manager, make sure you check your spam / junk email folder. If you still don’t see it, you’ll always be able to look it up using your Kickstarter email at this link (once the pledge manager is open): https://sophcerb.backerkit.com/.
Once you fill everything out, you’ll enter in your credit card to pay for shipping and any applicable taxes before confirming your order. Note that your credit card will not be charged right away. We currently plan on locking orders and charging credit cards on May 1st, so you should have a little over two months to fill out your survey. We’ll send out an alert before we charge cards to make sure everyone is aware.
If you have any questions on the process please feel free to leave a comment on this update or send us a message and we’ll be happy to help.
Back to our regularly scheduled program, it’s time for a deep-dive on your friendly neighborhood Cult! As we mentioned in our last update, games with the Cult are always quite entertaining since you’re dealing with four little minions running around trying to stab you. What more could you ask for?
The Cult starts the game as you’d expect, with all cultists adjacent to each other in one of the buildings. The cultists need blood from the investigators to summon their demon Mor’gonnod, so they will typically split up to increase their odds of finding an unprotected investigator. Don’t worry though - they only do one damage per attack and only one cultist can attack per round, so they can’t just swarm one investigator and insta-kill them.
Each time the cultists damage an investigator, Mor’gonnod comes one step closer to being summoned. As the cultists draw more blood, Mor’gonnod is slowly able to start unlocking his abilities. That’s when the investigators really need to start worrying.
One of our favorite abilities of his allows Mor’gonnod to possess an investigator, turning them into a ticking time bomb. On any future activation, the adversary may temporarily turn that investigator into a cultist and use them to attack another investigator. Once the investigator does this they are no longer possessed, so Mor’gonnod would have to possess another investigator before he could do that again.
Once the cultists are able to deal 5 damage they must once again form a group to perform the final sacrifice and summon Mor’gonnod. At this point, the cultists are removed from the game and Mor’gonnod is placed on the main board for all to see. Mor’gonnod is able to move 10 spaces and can move through flashlights (albeit at the cost of 2 movement per space), so it’s only a matter of time before he’s able to eliminate any remaining investigators.
The Cultists win once all investigators have been eliminated. Any investigators that are killed are not out of the game, at least not until all investigators are dead. Eliminated investigators become spirits that can help their fellow investigators in their effort to escape with their lives. Each spirit remains on the board and moves around like an investigator would, able to use their abilities to either hinder the adversary or assist the remaining investigators.
With the Cult being our most advanced adversary, the investigators need to work together quickly and efficiently while watching each other’s backs or their situation will deteriorate quite rapidly. We do not recommend playing the Cult if there are first-time players in the game, and our first-time setup rules will make that clear. That said, it’s a great step up if the players want a more challenging and high-stakes game.
In other news, Cory (our fantastic artist) is making great progress on the amusement park, and we just had to share a snippet of the work-in-progress run-down carousel. Those poor horses!
Speaking of art, we’ve also been working on revised card templates since we heard the feedback that the existing card fronts left a bit to be desired. Our current plan is to create a more uniform and cleaner front and include a staggered border that has a different color for each card type. A sneak peek of what those could end up looking like is below for your viewing pleasure:
We’ll be making changes to the player boards as well, so we’ll share those in a future update once they’re ready for prime time. The Insatiable Horror will be the focus of next month’s deep dive, so keep an eye out for that. That wraps up this month’s development update!
We don’t have any new announcements yet, as we’re waiting to hear back from the overseas publisher we just shipped a copy to. Fingers crossed we’ll have another language to announce in one of the next couple updates!
We have a couple new pieces of media to share! The first is from our good friend Ryan over at One Board Family. As far as we’re aware, Ryan has the distinction of being the first reviewer to ever play The Stifling Dark. The game he played when we met him 2ish years ago was quite different from the one we have today, but he has stuck with us throughout the process so we were thrilled he was able to do a writeup on the game. Check out the article below!
Our other new content for this month comes to us from a content creator that astonishes us. Justin, better known as The Meeple’s Champion, is on a mission to review a game every single day for a year straight. The Stifling Dark fell right in the middle of this year-long journey, coming in at day 188. Check out Justin’s thoughts on The Stifling Dark below, and follow along on his board game journey!
We have officially completed our first convention of the year, and it’s always one of our absolute favorites. Protospiel is a mini-convention centered around game designers and prototype games, and we’re lucky enough to have an annual meetup right down the road. We’ve met so many amazing local designers and played tons of epic games during our time at Protospiel - the only downside is it’s too short and only comes around once a year!
Anyways, Protospiel marked the first physical playtest of the Amusement Park, The Cult, The Insatiable Horror, and all our other new content, and it was also one of our first public playtests with all the new content. We managed to sneak in four playtests over the weekend while still having time to play other designers’ games and catch up with old friends.
We learned a lot about our new developments and what was working well vs. what could use some tweaking (looking at you, mirror maze). The good news is we didn’t uncover anything completely game-breaking, and most of the feedback related to minor quality-of-life enhancements. Overall, we received tons of good feedback and have already incorporated most of the changes.
We now have our sights set on our next convention, which is already only two weeks away. Con of the North is another local convention, albeit much bigger than Protospiel. We have six scheduled playtests, all of which are “sold out”. We’ll try to host a pickup game or two in the open gaming area if time allows, although we’ll be doing split duty between our booth and our playtests so we can’t make any promises. Make sure you swing by our booth and say hi if you’ll be there!
Here’s the updated list of our remaining conventions for the year. One down, four to go!
PSA time! These are the same as last month, so feel free to skip if they don’t apply to you. We are still matching Kickstarter pricing on late pledges for a limited time (likely until we place our order with our manufacturer in May), at which point those will increase to MSRP. A link to our late pledge store is below:
Also, if you signed up for Kickstarter using an Apple account please check your messages on Kickstarter to see if we tried to contact you. This can sometimes result in a “fake” email being generated that doesn’t play well with BackerKit. We’ve seen this cause issues in multiple campaigns that we’ve backed, so we’re trying to get ahead of it. If you don’t have a message from us (or if you already responded) you’re all set!
Similarly, 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 a message from us on January 28th 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!
Time for an updated status chart! We have a number of new milestones / updates to report, as represented by the icons with a white outline.
Of note, we’ve officially completed development on everything except the rulebook (which has to go last for obvious reasons), and we’ve now started work on every single piece needed to get us to that ever-important manufacturing milestone:
We’ll be in touch a month from now, 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.
With that, we'll leave you with a closing question fitting of this morning's weather in Minneapolis (-15 F / -26 C): what is your favorite way to keep warm on a chilly winter evening? Let us know in the comments!
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, trying not to freeze to death…
January Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jan 04, 2023 at 01:12:37 AM
Well, well well… 2022 has come and gone! This year has absolutely flown by, and we’re excited to see what 2023 has in store for us. We hope everyone had safe and enjoyable holidays and are getting back into the swing of things moving into the new year.
We’ve been hard at work on all fronts over the past month to get the Amusement Park, Cult of Hunlow, and Insatiable Horror ready for our first convention (which is just over two weeks away at this point). We are happy to report that the Amusement Park has officially been sent over to our artist to work his magic, and we can’t wait to see the final result!
The Amusement Park map will feature everything you’d expect at a typical amusement park: a ferris wheel, hall of mirrors, game booths, concessions, and a tunnel of love among other things. The initial objective is to collect tickets (this map’s version of the evidence tokens) and then turn them in at the various ticket booths scattered around the map before attempting your escape.
The escape routes will involve one of the rides, such as launching a flare off the top of the ferris wheel and waiting for the police to come rescue you. You have to make sure you watch your back though - the adversary might be on the ferris wheel with you! Alternatively, you can cut open one of the service tunnel doors and sneak out that way. The adventurous groups can still opt to take the fight to the adversary, as always.
The Park is meant to be a more advanced / involved map, and as such introduces a couple of new mechanics / interactions. One of our personal favorites are the game booths, where you can interact to play a quick mini-game for a chance at winning an item. Curtains are another new mechanic, which block line of sight but not movement. This is in addition to the low obstacles (orange outlines) that exist in both maps, which block movement but not line of sight.
We’re very happy with how the map is shaping up, and we’ll be sure to share the artwork in a future update once it’s ready!
We’ve also been making great progress on the two new adversaries as well. We’ll provide a deeper dive on the Cult in our next update and will follow that up in March with a deep-dive on The Insatiable Horror. Speaking of Mr. Insatiable, we just had to include this lovely image for those of you who don’t follow us on social media or didn’t see the post:
Getting back to the Cult, let’s just say that Mor’gonnod is a beast. Games with the Cult are quite frantic, with four little cultists running around the board stabbing people left and right to gain the blood necessary to summon Mor’gonnod. They only do one damage when they attack, but you never know when one of those pesky little buggers is going to pop up.
Once Mor’gonnod shows up the investigators have very little time to finish their objectives before they’re all wiped out, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Make sure you check back in next month for a deeper dive into everyone’s favorite cult!
We need your help investigators of the dark! We are now ready to begin external playtesting of The Cult. Please join our Discord or Facebook group and let us know when you can play! We are ready to refine them and make them scarier than ever.
We don’t have any new partnerships to announce at this time, but we just shipped another prototype overseas for a publisher to check out and have another that we’re currently showing the game to. Fingers crossed we’ll have another language to announce in one of the next couple updates!
As mentioned last month, we had the pleasure of talking with Matt again for our follow-up Kicksaga interview. The interview, which talks a lot about the Kickstarter and the lessons we learned, can be viewed at the following link!
Our friends over at WiscoDice invited us back for a follow-up interview for their podcast, which was released just over a week ago! This is their year-end highlight podcast, so the focus of our interview was all about 2022 in review: the best game we played, the biggest surprise, and what we’re excited for in 2023 (among other things). Check out the podcast below!
It’s about that time again! We’ll be hitting up a number of conventions later this year, and we hope to meet many of you while we’re there! See below for our current list of confirmed conventions:
We currently plan on having a booth at every convention except Protospiel (since there are no booths there), and we’ll have Stifling Dark t-shirts for sale so make sure you stop by and check those out if you’re interested. Even if you don’t want a shirt, please stop by and say hi - we’d love to meet more of you and give you a personal overview of the game!
There’s a chance we might slip one or two more conventions in there, and we’ll be sure to post on social media and include it in a future update if we decide to attend any others. We had a blast at each of these conventions last year and can’t wait to attend them all again!
We’re back with another round of PSAs! These are the same as last month, so feel free to skip if they don’t apply to you. We are still matching Kickstarter pricing on late pledges for a limited time (likely until we place our order with our manufacturer in May), at which point those will increase to MSRP. A link to our late pledge store is below:
Also, if you signed up for Kickstarter using an Apple account please check your messages on Kickstarter to see if we tried to contact you. This can sometimes result in a “fake” email being generated that doesn’t play well with BackerKit. We’ve seen this cause issues in multiple campaigns that we’ve backed, so we’re trying to get ahead of it. If you don’t have a message from us (or if you already responded) you’re all set!
Similarly, 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 a message from us on November 20th 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! We’ll be sending another round of messages a bit later to follow up with the remaining retailers we haven’t heard from yet.
Time for an updated status chart! We have a number of new milestones / updates to report, as represented by the icons with a white outline:
The pledge manager will be opening in less than two months! We’ll still post our regular February update around the 3rd of the month, which will include more detailed instructions about the pledge manager and what to expect. We will follow up with a one-off update once the pledge manager is actually live (which will likely be in mid to late February) to make sure everyone sees it and so we can address any potential last-minute changes.
We are still feeling good with our initial timelines, which we’ve included belief or your reference:
We’ll be in touch a month from now, 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.
With that, we'll leave you with a closing question: what was your favorite board game you played in 2022, and what game are you most looking forward to playing in 2023? Let us know in the comments!
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, getting stuck at the top of the ferris wheel…
December Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Dec 03, 2022 at 03:33:06 AM
Don’t worry - we’re still here in cold, snowy Minnesota! We decided not to abscond to a tropical paradise, as tempting as that was. In fact, after taking a week off to decompress after the campaign ended we’ve been hard at work on a number of things to continue marching towards that ever-important date next year where we need to send all the files to our manufacturer.
As you probably guessed, one of our main focuses has been the creation of the amusement park map. We have a semi-finalized version of the layout and have done a number of preliminary tests to lock in the layout and overall flow before we send our rough draft over to our fantastic artist so he can make it look pretty. Look for more specifics on the map in our next monthly update!
We’ve also been ironing out details for our additional adversaries that were unlocked during the campaign and are excited to see how they’re working out so far. The Cult’s friendly neighborhood demon is in the process of getting its artwork created as we speak, and we’ll be sure to share the results once we have them!
Speaking of artwork, we received a fresh batch of art for the new items from our wonderful card artist, Allan! We'll scatter a few of the new images in throughout the update for your viewing pleasure:
In other news, we’re working on some of the feedback we received on parts of the game. One of the main things we heard was that the card templates could use some work, so we’re in the process of revamping those to be more appealing as we speak. Those of you who are in our Discord and/or Facebook Group got a sneak peek at what the fronts might end up looking like, and we’ll post the outcome in a future update once we’re done with those revisions.
We’re also changing the backs on the cards to be more user-friendly. Right now the back text on certain cards (such as Storm cards) say the name of the map or adversary they’re associated with (i.e. Sawmill) instead of the type of card that they are (which is what the icon below the text was for).
This turned out to be rather confusing, so the back text will now say the type of card (i.e. Storm) and the map or adversary (which is currently the text on the back of the card) will change to an icon so you can still quickly identify which cards belong with which map or adversary. An example of this change is below, but please note that the placement of the new icon is not finalized:
Another thing we’re working to improve is the overall number of tokens/pieces in the game to make things flow more smoothly. Right now we have a token for every single item in the game (which is a lot if we’re being honest). We will be changing it so that item tokens you pick up will all be the same, with the exception of the one cursed item of course. That means you’ll just grab the same ten generic item tokens for setup each game instead of needing to randomly draw them.
Also, rather than having to search through the item deck to find the matching icon from the item token, you just draw a random item card from the top of the deck. Less tokens and less searching = more time playing! Note that certain items that require being placed on the board (such as the glowsticks or lantern) will still have a separate token for that purpose.
As a final update on items, we are tossing around the idea of consolidating where the items are located on the map from 10 spaces down to 5 points of interest. We’ve found that investigators don’t tend to go out of their way to search for items, as they can only find 1 at a time and it takes time away from completing objectives. With this change, each point of interest will have a stack of 2 items or a cursed item nearby, making them more tempting to search.
We are also considering replacing the evidence deck with a choose-your-reward mechanic instead. Instead of drawing an evidence card and revealing an item each time you pick up an evidence token, you will just choose from a few possible rewards.
Similarly, when you pick up your final piece of evidence and choose your escape route you will no longer need to remember to place a dim token and major ability tokens. The evidence rewards will be balanced to make up for this. This will take away some of the randomness with drawing from a deck as well as streamline the process a bit.
We’ve also been continuing to work with our friends over at M.O.B. Vanguard to find localization partners, and we are pleased to announce that we have officially signed our first localization deal! We’ll be partnering with Game Harbor to produce The Stifling Dark in Chinese, and we’re also in conversations with a couple other publishers for other regions. We’ll post on social media as we sign new deals, and we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop with these updates as well.
On the media front, the folks over at PopHorror.com reached out to us and asked to do an interview a while back and we happily obliged. That interview is now live on their website at the following link, so make sure you check it out if you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the game!
We have also posted our long-overdue Halloween livestream on YouTube! Spoiler alert: despite Ethan and Jeremy’s best efforts, Matt finally got his revenge.
Lastly, we just got done filming our follow-up interview with Matt from KickSaga, so we’ll share that link once it gets posted.
Now for everyone’s favorite - a few public service announcements! We’d be remiss not to mention the fact that late pledges are now available. If you know of someone that was interested in backing the game but missed out, make sure you send them a link to our late pledges! We will be matching Kickstarter pricing for a limited time (likely until we place our order with our manufacturer), at which point those will increase to MSRP:
Also, if you signed up for Kickstarter using an Apple account please check your messages on Kickstarter to see if we tried to contact you. This can sometimes result in a “fake” email being generated that doesn’t play well with BackerKit. We’ve seen this cause issues in multiple campaigns that we’ve backed, so we’re trying to get ahead of it. If you don’t have a message from us you’re all set!
Similarly, 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 a message from us on November 20th it means we have not gotten a response from you yet. If not, it means you submitted the form and you’re good to go!
Long story short: make sure you log in to check your Kickstarter messages from time to time! We'll be using them to communicate with you for various things that may pop up from time to time.
Lastly, we wanted to end with a graphical status update and upcoming dates for when you can expect things to happen. We'll be updating this each month as we begin working on things and finalize other things.
In terms of upcoming dates, the next big date will be the pledge manager opening in February of 2023. We’ll provide more info on what to expect as we get closer to that date, but for now you can all sit back, relax, and enjoy the upcoming holidays :)
We’ll be in touch a month from now, but as always please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns in the meantime. You can expect our campaign updates to come out around the 3rd of each month.
With that, we'll leave you with a closing question: if you could have any one board game for Christmas, which one would it be and why? Let us know in the comments!
Thank you once again for your support in helping us make The Stifling Dark a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, stalking in the shadows…
A True Photo Finish
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Nov 04, 2022 at 06:38:18 AM
We don’t quite know how to start this, so we’ll just start with this: thank you. When we hit that launch button back on October 4th we had no idea how this would go, nor did we imagine it would go this well. You have all been incredibly supportive over the past month, and it’s been amazing seeing all of your ideas and passion for the game. Even though the campaign is over, this is just the beginning of the next chapter for The Stifling Dark.
We have lots of good info in this update, starting with the results of the social stretch goal poll! The full results are at the very end of the update if you're curious, but here are the winning ideas for each card type:
Cursed Item (1): Move through map hazards as if they were normal
Items (3): Stronger Batteries, Black Cloak / Treehouse, and Metal Detector
Wounds (2): Roll a sprint die to affect movement and lose movement if the adversary is revealed
Storms (2): Fog and either Downed Tree or Eerie Calm (we had a tie for second place!)
Mitigation (1): Tie for first! Adversary can move through a bright space and having the lowest roller gain Mauled
We technically only unlocked nine cards through the social stretch goals, but since we had some ties we’ll add either a third storm card or a second mitigation to bring us up to a nice even ten social cards. Keep in mind we may make some minor tweaks to the winning ideas for balancing purposes, but the cards will stay true to their original intent. Thanks to everyone who voted on the poll and provided ideas for the cards!
So...what’s this we heard about a map editor being unlocked literally at the last minute?
We wanted to provide some more details on what to expect with the map editor to satiate your appetite until it is deployed! The map editor will be a web application where you can start with a blank slate and add/remove things as you see fit to create your own map! You’ll be able to remove spaces to block off certain areas, add in adversary, door, and objective spaces, and customize the map to your heart’s content!
Once you’re finished customizing your map, you’ll be able to download it as a PNG or PDF that you can then print off at home or at your FLPS (friendly local print store). Note that we will likely release the editor in waves and iterate on it from there, so the very first version will not be fully-featured. We are also going to prioritize the stretch goals that are going in the game first, at least until we’ve sent the game files to our manufacturer, so we do not expect it to be released until late 2023 or very early 2024. Either way, we’ll have the first version out by the time you receive your copy of The Stifling Dark.
We did a minor rebranding of our social media accounts to make it much easier to find us! For whatever reason, when we first set up our social media accounts three years ago we used different usernames across virtually every platform. We decided it was time to be a little more consistent, so our handle is now sophcerb on every major platform. That way you’ll be thinking of ice cream every time you visit our page. You’re welcome.
Lastly, we wanted to provide some guidance on what to expect going forward. Your pledge should be in the process of being collected by Kickstarter as we write this, so that’s the first step. From there your next to-do will be to fill out the pledge manager, which we expect to open in February of 2023 and is where you will pay for shipping and taxes and have the option to modify your pledge. After that you can sit back and relax until you receive your very own copy of the game!
As for us, we will be taking a week off once we finish all the remaining to-dos now that our Kickstarter has finished. Don’t worry - we’ll be right back at it after that! Even though we prepared as well as we could, running this campaign was exhausting so we need a bit of a break to recharge after all the stress and excitement.
Once we get back, we’ll be hard at work finalizing the new additions to the game (such as the adversaries and the amusement park map) and making minor tweaks to existing parts of the game. We’ll keep everyone posted on the work we’ve been doing with monthly updates on Kickstarter, and you can always reach out to us on social media or via email if you have any questions or comments.
We’ll continue hosting regular playtests, which you can find on our Discord server. We’ll do our best to cross-post those to our Facebook group as well, but Discord will be the official source of our playtest schedule. Be sure to keep an eye on those if you want to be some of the first people to test out new things as we develop them!
That’s all we have for now, and we wanted to end with one last sincere thank you to everyone who has helped us over the past three years. It’s been quite the journey, and we still have lots more ahead of us!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, getting ready to enter a stifling slumber
