Final Map Poll and New Investigator Artwork!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Oct 21, 2022 at 06:55:46 PM
The first round of the map poll has finished up! We are very excited by the results of the top 5, which are:
- Abandoned Amusement Park
- Cemetery / Catacombs / Graveyard
- Haunted Mansion
- Chernobyl Style Location
- Summer Camp
Make your selection here: https://forms.gle/6yzrE8GRrKNLDwXa6
Since there are only 5 maps to pick from this time, we will keep the polls open for 5 days (until 10 PM CDT on 10/25/22). We will then announce the winner of the 2nd map and get to work!
We've included the full results of the previous poll below for those of you who may be curious how the other maps did:
Our investigator artist has also been hard at work! We have the two investigators included in the Nightfall expansion ready to show you! Here’s the fantastic looking Winston Pitts and Kya Prosser.
We are now well on our way to the Cultists unlock! With less than $10,000 to go, we are very excited to see them in the game. I heard they were trying to summon some type of demon…
Thank you everyone for all of the support so far. Getting our game to include 3 adversaries is not something we expected to happen, but we are incredibly glad that it did!
As a reminder, we have another livestream tomorrow (10/21) at 7 PM CDT. This time it will be hosted in Tabletop Playground instead of Tabletop Simulator. We will be streaming on Twitch, and we hope to see you all there! For those who are local, make sure you stop by the Minnetonka Games by James store at noon on Saturday the 22nd!
Lastly, we are currently consolidating all of the amazing card suggestions we've received for the social stretch goals and will be posting that poll in a future update. We also had someone suggest doing an update with more detail on each of the adversaries, so keep your eyes peeled for that!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, hiding under a decrepit rollercoaster…
Over 2,000 Backers, Plus Another Stretch Goal!
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 08:24:34 PM
We just broke the 2,000 backer mark! If you had told any of us we’d have 1,000 (much less 2,000) backers prior to the campaign we probably would’ve told you that you were crazy, but here we are! Thanks once again to everyone who has supported us to this point, we’re thrilled with how the campaign has gone so far and are excited to see how the rest of it unfolds! (see what we did there?)
In addition to breaking 2,000 backers, we’ve surpassed $125,000 so with that comes another stretch goal! At long last, the adversary player can look at some nice art on their side of the darkness. Instead of a blank screen on their side, they will now have full art showcasing the different adversaries along with some rules and references. Oh, and did we mention that it's being upgraded from cardstock to cardboard? Color us impressed!
We’re incredibly excited that the next stretch goal in line is another adversary! We’re only $20,000 away from having another adversary included in the base game, which will bring us up to three total adversaries. Make sure you help spread the word and get us to that ever-important $145,000 mark!
We continue moving through our social stretch goals, so don’t forget to post your item, wound, mitigation, and storm card ideas in the comments! We’ve gotten a number of awesome suggestions so far, and we’ll continue taking suggestions for a few more days before putting out a poll to vote for the actual cards we’ll incorporate as part of the social stretch goals.
For those of you who are local to the Minneapolis area, make sure you stop by the Minnetonka Games by James store this coming Saturday (10/22) at noon since we’ll be hosting in-person demos of the game with our factory prototypes.
For everyone else, we have another livestream on Friday (10/21) at 7 PM CDT. We’ll be showcasing our Tabletop Playground implementation for the first time, so it should be quite interesting!
Lastly, remember that our map poll is open through tomorrow night (we’ll say 10 PM Central Daylight Time for our overseas friends), so make sure you head on over and vote if you haven’t already! We’ll tally the votes the next day and post an update with the final vote shortly thereafter. There are a pretty clear set of finalists right now, and they're all awesome ideas!
Once again, we want to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who has made this possible. Don’t forget to leave your new card ideas in the comments, and we’ll talk soon!
This is Matt, Jeremy, and Ethan, totally getting inked with our company logo…
New Map Unlocked - Vote For Your Favorite Now!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Oct 11, 2022 at 11:24:50 PM
You crazy investigators and adversaries did it - we have hit $100,000 and unlocked a new map! The board will now be double-sided so that you can choose a different scenario to play, complete with new objectives.
Thanks to everyone who posted ideas for the map in the comments! We saw tons of great ideas in there, so now it’s time to let your voice be heard. We’ve created a poll with the potential options below, so please go in and pick your favorites! https://forms.gle/LjYQYm5cuNez9iwz7
Note that we had almost 40 ideas, so we’ll be splitting voting into two phases. We will leave the first phase open for 7 days to select the finalists and then create one final poll for people to vote on the winner. Be on the lookout for another poll next week!
Speaking of polls, we had over 60 people vote in our player board direction poll. The overwhelming majority voted that the tracks should both move in the same direction, but the direction in which they should move was much more divisive:
Right-to-lefters rejoice, you narrowly beat out the left-to-right crowd! The people have spoken, so we will be adjusting the direction of the player board tracks accordingly.
You’ll notice that a new stretch goal has been revealed, and it’s another new adversary! The Cult of Hunlow has been in development for a while now and plays quite differently than The Butcher or The Insatiable Horror. We won’t spoil too much of the fun just yet, but keep an eye on our funding progress since we’ll be providing more details once we hit that target!
We are blowing through our social stretch goals, which has been amazing to see! Thanks to everyone that has liked/followed us on our various social media platforms, we have already unlocked one social goal and are super close on a few others. Keep an eye out for new targets to be added as we unlock existing goals! These new goals will introduce additional backer-selected cards into the game.
More cards also means we want more of your ideas! Please comment below with your ideas for new items, wounds, mitigations, and event cards. We’ll take these responses and set up a poll where you can vote for your favorites in a future update, and those cards will become the social stretch goal unlocks and be added to the game.
Note that because the cards will add a mechanical component to the game, we may need to do some selection / modification before including them to ensure they don’t break or repeat any other mechanics. In the end, we need to make sure they still jive with everything else that’s in the game and are appropriately balanced!
Our live playthrough has now been uploaded to YouTube and added to our main Kickstarter page, so feel free to check it out if you want to see how the developers play! As a reminder, our next playthrough will be on Friday 10/21 at 7 PM Central Daylight Time (UTC -5).
For those of you who are local to the Minneapolis area, we have an in-person playtesting opportunity for you! We’ll be at the Minnetonka Games by James store (inside the Ridgedale Center) on Saturday, 10/22 at noon, so feel free to stop on in to play a game or just say hi!
Thanks again for all the support so far - we’re officially one week into the campaign now and only have a couple weeks left to go, so let’s make sure we finish strong! What ideas do you have for new cards?
This is Matt, Jeremy and Ethan, gathering up supplies…
Double-Sided Board, Anyone?
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Oct 11, 2022 at 04:04:35 PM
Yep, you read that right! We heard your requests, did some number crunching, and reshuffled our stretch goals a bit to make a second map the next stretch goal! We’re less than $20k away from adding a second map to the game, complete with new objectives to go along with it.
We’ve seen your awesome ideas for new maps in the comments and have been jotting them down, and we want to see more! The next map will be decided by you, the backers. Please list your map ideas in the comments of this update, and we’ll consolidate them prior to our next update and create a poll to vote for the best option.
An astute backer pointed out that batteries typically drain from right to left, whereas our player boards show them moving from left to right. This is something we’ve gone back and forth on many times, so we want to hear your thoughts! Let us know what you think in the survey below, and we’ll switch things up based on what you say: https://forms.gle/tQ79AQcmEnn32ZSc8
Things are getting pretty scary out here in The Dark. Fortunately, we’ve just unlocked two more occult treasures, ready to ward off evil! Our newest cursed items are the Witching Bells and the Lorgnette. These harrowed pieces of equipment help you locate the adversary and make your flashlight more powerful, at the cost of harming your fellow investigators. Use them wisely…if you dare.
Social stretch goals are now live, and we’ve already seen some great progress even though we sneakily added them to the page. Links to each of the social platforms are below for easy access in case you’d like to go ahead and get us one step closer to unlocking some new cards:
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/sophisticatedcerberusgames
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thestiflingdark
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sophisticatedcerberusgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scerberusgames
Discord: https://discord.gg/5mA4xRhYVM
Thanks to everyone that joined us on our very first livestream - the investigators were victorious! We’ll be posting the playthrough on YouTube and will provide a link once it’s ready so those of you who weren’t able to watch it. Join us again in two weeks (Friday 10/21) at 7 PM Central Daylight Time (UTC -5) to see if the adversary will get their revenge!
That’s all the goodies we have for today. Thank you once again for helping to make The Stifling Dark become a reality - we quite literally couldn't do this without you!
With that, we’ll leave you with a very important question: what map do you want to see added to the game? Leave your answer in the comments below and you could see your idea become a reality!
This is Matt, Jeremy and Ethan, making deals with dark forces…
$60k And Climbing - So Many Goals!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 11:32:16 AM
We continue to be amazed at the support we’re receiving and how well the campaign has been going! We know you’re probably sick of us saying thank you, but we’re going to keep doing it anyways since you’re helping us make our dream a reality.
As for today's update, we have quite a few goodies to share! We’ve surpassed $60,000, which means we are now over 300% funded. We are also approaching 1,000 backers, which is definitely not a number we expected to see. We’ll start by highlighting all the stretch goals we unlocked so far before jumping into a couple announcements at the end. Without further ado:
The darkness just got quite a bit more spooky. The Insatiable Horror has been unlocked! This creature lurks deep within the earth, typically popping up in remote regions to prey on local fauna. It only exists in local legend, as its ability to burrow and move great distances make it difficult to prove true. The investigators must now face this new writhing beast as it tries to ensnare them with its venomous barbs.
In order to help combat The Insatiable Horror, we have two more lost souls joining us in The Dark! The Nun and the Olympian are our two newest investigators. You’ll need to have faith and be strong to survive out there, and these folks have both of those things in spades!
As the Nun, you’ll use your knowledge of dark spirits to lay down supernatural barriers to keep them away from you and your friends. The Olympian, on the other hand, keeps their eye on the goal and will do anything to keep going for the gold. Our artist is already hard at work creating the art, which we will share in a later update once it is ready for primetime.
But wait - there’s more! Our first item pack has been unlocked, adding 5 new items to the game! This includes the Stray Mutt, Crystal Amulet, Spare Tools, New Bulb, and Whistle. We won’t spoil all the fun quite yet, but these items introduce new abilities such as retrieving items and giving your fellow investigators a bit of a friendly push.
Last but not least: we all know the pains of sharing dice. Not anymore! You all have unlocked extra sprint dice to add to the game. This means every player now gets their very own die. Take care of it, tuck it into bed, and tell it a story so the monsters don’t bite. That’s how you roll consistent 4’s on the sprint dice. Thank you all so much - this definitely makes the game flow more easily without constantly reaching over the table to pass dice around (at least until someone somehow ends up with all the dice by their player board *cough* Ethan *cough*).
That’s all for traditional stretch goals, but you asked and we’ve answered: social stretch goals will be coming soon! We’ll be tracking the number of followers/members on our social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) and Discord, and once we hit our goal for any given platform we’ll be adding a new card to the game. These won’t just be any cards though, they’ll be voted on by you, the backers!
We also have a bit of a scavenger hunt in the works, so keep an eye on the comments / project updates for when that is announced!
Lastly, as a reminder we have a few livestream events planned so you can watch the developers play and ask us questions. Our first livestream will be tomorrow night (10/7) at 7 PM Central Daylight Time (UTC -5), and we’ll share a link on all social media platforms and post a comment on our Kickstarter page prior to going live. Here is the complete schedule:
Playthroughs: 10/7 (TTS), 10/21 (TTPG), Halloween (10/31, in-person)
Q&A: 10/25 (Virtual)
Once again, we can’t thank everyone enough for all the support so far. This has already surpassed our expectations, and we’re just getting started!
Oh - and since so many people have asked about this, we strongly suggest keeping an eye on the stretch goals after we unlock the cursed items. The next one to be revealed is a BIG one. We’re looking forward to seeing what the next few days bring!
This is Matt, Jeremy and Ethan, hiding in the crevices of a cave…
