Keep your friends close and your flashlight closer in this one-vs-many hidden movement horror game.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
April Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Apr 03, 2023 at 06:55:30 PM
We were planning to start this update with something along the lines of “spring is in the air”, but we just got eight inches of snow this weekend so we decided to rescind that statement and save it for the next update. Oh well, we suppose that means more time indoors for board games!
Anyways, onto the good stuff. As usual, we have quite a few important updates to share this month so please read through the update when you get a chance (preferably at least the first three sections). We’ll start off with some exciting localization news, give an update on pledge manager and credit card charge timing, provide some insights into how the components have changed since November, and then round out with the usual sections.
Onto the big news: The Stifling Dark will officially be available in Spanish! For those of you who missed the announcement on social media, we’re partnering with Maldito Games to bring The Stifling Dark to our Spanish-speaking friends.
If you are an existing backer that has already filled out your survey and would like to switch to the Spanish version, please leave a comment on our Kickstarter, send us a message on Kickstarter, or email us at [email protected]. Since we’re already halfway through the pledge manager we’ll have to switch you to the Spanish version manually so we don’t mess up the other 3,000 backers that have already completed their surveys.
If you are an existing backer that has not yet filled out your survey and would like to switch to Spanish, you’ll be able to switch your pledge level to the Spanish version on the welcome screen (the very first page you land on after you click your survey invite).
For anyone that may be reading this and worrying that it will slow down our timelines, fear not - we planned ahead for this! Maldito will need around 40 days to translate the game, but while they are translating the files we will have already started the manufacturing process by ordering pre-production samples (which will also take 30-45 days).
This way we’ll be able to work out any kinks with artwork or components while Maldito is translating the game and then proceed to mass production immediately once the translation and pre-production samples are complete. Gotta love parallel workstreams!
We don’t have any other languages to announce yet, but we are still working diligently with our friends over at M.O.B. Vanguard to find other foreign publishers and will keep everyone posted if/when we find other partners.
Time for everyone’s favorite topic - the pledge manager! We’ve had about 3,000 people fill out the survey so far, so we’re 80% of the way through all the backers. About 400 of the 800 remaining backers are dollar backers, so after accounting for that we’re closer to 90% completed. Things are looking good!
We still plan on locking the pledge manager and charging credit cards on May 1st. We will publish a brief campaign update 7 days ahead of time (on April 24th) to remind everyone, and 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 soon as orders lock on May 1st, we’ll proceed to charge credit cards. The charge will show up as either SOPH CERB GAMES or SOPHCERB on your credit cards depending on whether your credit card company uses the long or short form of the statement descriptor:
Don’t be surprised if you see what you believe to be a random charge come through from SOPH CERB on May 1st - that’s us, Sophisticated Cerberus Games! We love our name, but realized a little too late that it might just be a little too long.
As a reminder, you can add/remove items up until we lock the surveys, but once we lock them you will not be able to change the items on your order. You will still be able to update your address until we start fulfillment later this year, so no worries if you plan to move between now and when we fulfill!
Lastly, we will be completing the audit we mentioned in last month’s update within the next couple hours. We’ll be looking to identify backers that may have accidentally added something to their cart when they were already getting it. As an example, we’ll be flagging people who added the Nightfall expansion to a Deluxe pledge or purchased the mini expansion when they already had it for free.
We will send you an email from [email protected] if we notice duplicate items in your cart, and there’s a chance it could go to spam so make sure you check that too. Unless we hear back from you stating otherwise, we will remove the duplicate items for you (which will also reduce the amount you will be charged). We want to make sure you don’t accidentally order too much, not that you could ever have too much Stifling Dark in your life, of course.
Now that we’ve locked in most of our components we wanted to provide an update so everyone is aware of what has changed since the Kickstarter. There are two reductions and a couple additions we wanted to call your attention to.
The first reduction involves the removal of two decks: the evidence deck (full-size cards) and the mitigation deck (mini cards). We received feedback that there was too much going on in the game and too many things to remember, which led us to take a step back and evaluate what was truly necessary and what could be removed to streamline gameplay.
The evidence deck was a prime example: each time you picked up an evidence token you had to draw a card, then reveal an item, then decide if/when you wanted to play your evidence card. Now all you have to do is pick up the token, and you get a reward of your choice once you turn it in. Not only did this eliminate the clunkiness surrounding evidence, it also gave the investigators a strategic choice in selecting a reward that was immediately useful to them instead of relying on random chance.
The same was true for the mitigation deck: every time you gained a face-up wound you had to check if it had a mitigation. If it did, you had to draw a mitigation and then do something to resolve the mitigation to flip the wound face-down. We liked the variability this created, but sometimes the mitigations were impossible to resolve, and other times they immediately resolved so they had no effect.
As such, and in the interest of streamlining the game, we decided to remove them and replace them with medkits. Now all you have to do is go to a medkit space and pick it up if you need to flip a wound face-down. Of course, this means there is a scarcity element to flipping wounds face-down now. Investigators will need to keep that in mind when they decide which wounds need to be flipped down, and which they are willing to “push through the pain” with.
The removal of the mitigation deck, combined with the streamlining of some conditions and wounds, led us to our second reduction. We were left with 57 mini cards in the game, and there are 55 mini card sleeves in a pack. Rather than ship a full pack of 55 sleeves for the 2 leftover cards, we decided to eliminate 2 wounds so we could reduce how many packs of mini sleeves we needed. Note that the wounds we removed often had little or no impact on the game, so we felt it was justified not only from an environmental perspective to eliminate unnecessary plastic, but from the perspective of making the game more fun as well.
To be very clear: the deluxe pledge will now come with 3 packs of full-size sleeves (165 sleeves) and 1 pack of mini sleeves (55 sleeves), as opposed to our final Kickstarter component list of 3 packs of full sleeves and 2 packs of mini sleeves. Note that we added a free pack of full-size sleeves to the deluxe pledge during the campaign (it initially only came with two full-size packs) due to all the additional cards we added, and that will still be included.
Now that we covered the reductions, it’s time to cover the stuff we added! All of these additions will be included in all versions of the game at no extra cost. The one we’re most excited about is a custom-designed insert (complete with a lid) to keep your components organized and spill-free. Here’s a preliminary draft (minus the lid), although we’re still in the process of moving some things around to ensure all the cards and tokens fit:
We initially planned to include a very basic insert without a lid, whereas a custom insert with a lid was a potential stretch goal we had pretty far down the list. Since the campaign did so well we decided to splurge for the custom insert anyway, and we hired an insert designer to create it for us!
Another notable addition comes in the form of custom-designed standee holders to ensure the flashlights are able to rotate smoothly around the investigator standees. We had initially planned on using generic standee holders, but none of them worked well with the flashlights. Since that’s such a central aspect of the game, we decided it’d be best to use custom standee bases.
Lastly, we’ll be upgrading the cards to a linen finish and upgrading to more durable flashlight lines to ensure the lines on the flashlight last virtually forever.
We wanted to make sure we addressed all these changes so everyone knows what to expect when they receive their very own copy of The Stifling Dark. We’ll include a comprehensive breakdown of all the component changes in a future update, but the remainder of the changes are much less impactful than these.
We covered a lot of development updates in the component section, so we’ll keep this section pretty short this time. We finalized our new card layouts and thought it would be a fun idea to showcase the history of the cards in The Stifling Dark, from the very first card we ever made (which is super pixelated for some reason) to the current version. V5 was certainly our longest-lasting iteration, but we have to say V6 is our favorite:
Lastly, as we hinted at last month, we were putting in some major work on our rulebook! We were thrilled to be able to hire Jonathan Bobal, who has been involved with games such as The Dark Quarter, The Witcher: Old World, Euthia: Torment of Resurrection, and (for our hidden movement fans) Sniper Elite, to do our rulebook layout and graphic design.
Jonathan has done a fantastic job of taking our massive unformatted Google Doc and converting it into an actual comprehensible rulebook, which is still weird to see (in a good way). We’re working on updating example images and making a few other changes, but we are very pleased with how the rulebook turned out. Here’s a low-res sneak peek of the investigator turn spread:
Once we’re done with all our updates and order our pre-production samples, we’ll be doing a massive update on TTS and TTPG to bring the virtual versions of the game up to date with our physical version of the game (complete with the revised rulebook).
Back when we were earlier on in development, we were tracking a list of playtesters so we could acknowledge their contributions in the rulebook. Now that we’re getting close to manufacturing, we wanted to do a review of the list and ensure everyone that expected to be listed is indeed listed.
If you playtested our game with us (most likely at a convention) and want to be listed in the credits, make sure you take a minute to check out the list on our website and ensure your name is listed.
The names are listed in alphabetical order based on last name, and anyone who didn’t provide a last name is listed at the end. If you don’t see your name, fill out the form at the bottom of the page with your name (as you’d like it to appear in the credits) and where you playtested with us and we’ll get you added! The deadline to add your name is May 1st. Those of you who have reached out already have all been added, thanks for letting us know!
We have a new playthrough to share this month, thanks to our friend Derrick over at Canje Studios! We met Derrick at Gen Con last year and had to send him a prototype since he was so enthusiastic and friendly, as you’ll see in the playthrough. Before you watch, it’s important to point out that these prototypes are approaching a year old at this point so they do not have any of the new enhancements or changes we’ve been working on since the Kickstarter.
Derrick and Steve brought up some of the exact same things we’ve heard from playtesters and other reviewers since those prototypes were made, and the good news is basically everything they mentioned has already been fixed! With that in mind, we hope you enjoy their playthrough!
One thing we forgot to mention in last month’s Con of the North recap is that we met a local vendor named Big SoftD who makes, well, big soft dice! The dice were super fun to play with, so we decided we had to have her make some big soft sprint dice for us! Here’s one of them making an appearance in our April Fool’s post about a big box version about The Stifling Dark:
Make sure you stop by our booth at one of our upcoming conventions to check the dice out. If you’re lucky, we may even use them in some of our playtests!
Speaking of upcoming conventions, here’s what we have planned for the rest of the year:
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 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!
As promised, we have some juicy updates on our timeline. Artwork is wrapped up for everything except the rulebook and the Nightfall expansion, both of which will be completed shortly. We’re in the final stages of testing for the remainder of the components before we get our pre-production samples ordered and begin the Spanish translation:
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, practicing our Spanish…
March Post-Campaign Update
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 08:33:23 PM
We’re back again, this time with our “normal” monthly update! First off, thanks to the 2,500 of you that have filled out your surveys so far. We’re about 2/3 of the way through the pledge manager after a week, and we’re quite happy with how far along we are. That said, 1/3 of you still have to fill out your surveys, so don't forget!
In this month’s update, we’ll provide information on the pledge manager, do a deep-dive on everyone’s favorite Horror, share a recent developer playthrough, recap our most recent convention, and end with a couple PSAs.
As we stated in the intro, the pledge manager has been moving along nicely! One of the things we were interested in seeing was where in the world our backers are from, so we threw together a couple quick graphics for our fellow data nerds. The darker the color, the more backers there are:
Since half of our backers are from the US, we decided to do a breakout within the US to show which states had the most backers (based on those who have filled out the pledge manager so far). This is obviously largely influenced by the population within each state, but it also makes sense that we saw spikes in Minnesota and Wisconsin seeing as we're from there:
We did a quick exercise to compare the population rank of each state against the backer count rank by state to see where we over-indexed and under-indexed (relatively speaking). The three states with the biggest positive variance between their rankings (meaning we over-indexed) were Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Idaho. The two states with the biggest negative variance (meaning we under-indexed) were Mississippi and South Carolina. The more you know!
In total, we had backers across 6 continents and over 50 countries. We had a bit of a moment after seeing these visuals since it's crazy to think our game will be traveling to this many places throughout the world. That said, does anyone know someone that's currently in Antarctica? :)
Anyways, that's enough geeking out for now. Onto the actual details! Overall the pledge manager has been going smoothly and we haven’t encountered any major issues. Thanks to those of you that have reached out with questions or comments throughout the process, since that helps tell us what may have been confusing or not communicated well enough. Don't forget that we have step-by-step instructions on our website for those who aren't familiar with pledge managers.
By far, the main question we’ve gotten was around the free mini-expansion eligibility. In order to be eligible, you had to be subscribed to our mailing list at the end of the campaign and back at least the $50 level. It was not included by default in the Deluxe pledge.
If you met the eligibility requirements, the mini-expansion will already be in your cart for $0 and will be listed along with the rest of your pledge on the right-hand side of the Add-Ons screen:
If you don’t see it listed, that means we didn’t find your email in the mailing list snapshot we took at the end of the campaign. In all but two of the scenarios that we’ve looked into, it was because the email wasn’t subscribed to our list. In one scenario, someone used a different email on our mailing list than on Kickstarter and in the other scenario an email got dropped somehow, but other than that the matching has worked correctly.
All that said, if you thought you joined the mailing list but don’t see the mini-expansion please don’t hesitate to reach out and we’ll be happy to look into it for you! And even if you know you were not eligible to receive it for free, you can still add it to your order for $4.50.
The other issue we’ve seen is related to local pickup for our MN and WI friends. Unfortunately, the way local pickup works within BackerKit is that you have to select it right off the bat on the landing page where it asks for your country. Rather than asking on the shipping screen like you’d expect, you have to change the country from United States to Local Pickup:
We’ve already provided feedback to BackerKit that this process is quite confusing, so hopefully they’ll change that in a future update. If you missed the option and want to go back and change to local pickup, send us a message or leave a comment and we’ll get it taken care of!
The last thing we wanted to mention regarding the pledge manager entries is that we’re seeing some backers double order things (potentially by mistake). For example, if you backed at the Deluxe level you’re already getting the Nightfall expansion, but we’re seeing people purchase the Nightfall expansion add-on (without getting a second copy of the game).
If they’re buying it for someone else that only purchased the base game that makes perfect sense, but if not they’re going to end up with two copies. We’ve reviewed a number of potential scenarios like this (such as ordering the mini-expansion add-on when they were already getting it for free) and will be contacting the backers in question to make sure they don’t accidentally order duplicates of anything. Make sure you keep an eye on your email and/or Kickstarter messages!
As for timing, we still plan on leaving the pledge manager open until May 1st, at which point we will lock orders and charge credit cards. You can add/remove items up until we lock the surveys, but once we lock them you will not be able to add or remove items. We’ll send an update out a week before then to make sure everyone is aware, and BackerKit will also send out an alert around that time as well. You will still be able to update your address until we start fulfillment later this year.
This month’s deep-dive is all about The Insatiable Horror. The Horror’s main objective is to feast upon the investigators to prepare its next brood. It does this by setting up an ambush and then reeling investigators in with its proboscis to attack them, as shown in the lovely illustration below:
The ambush ability requires thoughtful planning and anticipation of the investigators’ next moves - you have to position yourself close enough that you can still reach them on your next activation, but if you stay too close and get revealed your ambush is foiled. The investigators will have a general idea of where you are, so they will have the choice of running away or trying to find you before it’s too late.
If the ambush is successful, The Horror can pull the investigator(s) to it and give them some pretty nasty effects. One of our favorites allows The Horror to spawn a hatchling, which can move around the board and pester the investigators. Not to worry though, the investigators can stomp on it to remove it from the board.
Flashlights also work differently with The Horror since it is tunneling around beneath the map. If The Horror moves through a flashlight on its turn it does not get revealed, but the investigators will see every space it moves through since the ground is rumbling beneath their feet. However, if it ends in a bright space or the investigators reveal it with a flashlight during their activation, then The Horror is revealed and punished accordingly.
The Horror wins once it is able to eliminate two investigators, as that is all the nourishment it needs to lay its next brood. The investigators, being the monsters that they are, can banish The Horror and win the game by destroying its eggs. Not exactly super thoughtful of them, but you gotta do what you gotta do to survive!
This is our last planned deep-dive, but if there is another topic you’d like us to go in-depth on just let us know in the comments!
In other development news, our artist is close to wrapping up artwork on the Amusement Park and we’ve officially signed on a rulebook designer. We’re especially excited with who we were able to hire for our rulebook, and we’ll have a lot more to share on that in our next campaign update.
We don’t have any new announcements yet, but we suggest keeping an eye out since we may have some news to share on this front by the time the next update comes around :)
We partnered with one of our FLGS backers to host a developer playthrough on TTS with a couple of their regulars back on February 25th, and it was a super close game. The recording is below in case you want to check it out:
We want to give a special thank you to Game Kastle College Park over in Maryland for organizing the event - both Boyd and Keegan were great partners, and we appreciate Aaron for joining us to play as well. If you’re near the College Park, MD area make sure you stop by and show them some love!
Back when we were earlier on in development, we were tracking a list of playtesters so we could acknowledge their contributions in the rulebook. Now that we’re getting close to manufacturing, we wanted to do a review of the list and ensure everyone that expected to be listed is indeed listed.
If you playtested our game with us (most likely at a convention) and want to be listed in the credits, make sure you take a minute to check out the list on our website and ensure your name is listed.
The names are listed in alphabetical order based on last name, and anyone who didn’t provide a last name is listed at the end. If you don’t see your name, fill out the form at the bottom of the page with your name (as you’d like it to appear in the credits) and where you playtested with us and we’ll get you added!
It feels like it was just this weekend, but we wrapped up our second in-person and third overall Con of the North a couple weeks ago. This was our first time with a booth, and it was great meeting some of you and running into others who played The Stifling Dark at previous Con of the Norths (whether in-person or online).
Our favorites were some of the people who played online at Con of the North back in 2021, when the game was still quite early on in its development. We reminisced about the way the game used to work, and it was crazy to see how far it had progressed since that point. For those of you who’ve been following along for a while, that was back when the first phase involved interacting with the spark spaces to power up the office.
Anyways, we had six playtests with about 30 players throughout the course of the weekend where we tested both The Cult and The Horror. We got some good feedback on a couple minor things we could tweak to improve gameplay and balance, which we’ve already incorporated and continue to iterate on.
Here’s the updated list of our remaining conventions for the year. Two down, three 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 only have one new update to report (as represented by the icon with a white outline), but it’s a big one.
We have now finished development / rough layout of the rulebook, and we have hired a professional rulebook designer to bring it to life. They will begin work on the rulebook shortly, while we finish up final testing on a couple of things. We expect a fairly sizable update to this chart in next month’s update as we wrap up testing and artwork on most of the assets.
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.
With that, we'll leave you with another weather-related question since this is something we’re all dreaming of: what are you most looking forward to this spring? 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, reading through thousands of surveys…
IMPORTANT: Pledge Manager is Live!
over 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
almost 2 years 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
almost 2 years 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…
