Gerrymander berries on a cake in this 2 player strategy game
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Thankfully we have made it safely to April 1st. We encourage everyone to stay home if you're able, stay safe, wash your hands a lot, and avoid social gatherings. We were planning on demoing Berrymandering at both Origins and Gencon and honestly I'm just not sure those events will end up happen until we have a vaccine.
Production: Other than the chaos of every-day lift shifting beneath us, April has been a very productive month for us. MagiCraft has delivered their mass-production prototype and we checked over it. The box, punchouts, and rules all looked good and we approved them. MagiCraft expects final production to complete by April 8th.
Shipping: We are talking with our shipping and fulfillment partners. Midwest Transatlantic Lines will be moving our pallet from China via ocean to Ohio. And from there, Ferian Enterprises will be doing fulfillment. We will post tracking information for the shipment when we receive it.
Print and Play: Last week we released the print and play to the public to help entertain people stuck at home. If you know a board gaming family that would enjoy a game that is easy for their 8-year-old to learn but complex enough that even older board game lovers will enjoy it, please share the PnP with them. You can download the Print and Play from Berrymandering.com and we have a walkthrough video explaining how to make the best PnP copy with all those shipping boxes sitting in your living room.
Unboxing Video: If you want to see our reactions to unboxing the prototype, checkout our latest video.
As always, please stay safe, play games with whoever is stuck at home with you, and take care of each other.
-Eliot & Justin
Hello everyone. In the last few weeks the world has changed quite a bit thanks to COVID-19. People are being asked to practice social distancing. In some places, there is an outright quarantine going on. Eliot and I sincerely hope you're all safe and healthy at home!
When you're stuck in the house, board games are a great way to pass the time. Since there are so many people stuck in the house, we figured we should offer up the print & play for free to anyone who wants to build their own copy.
Download the files here, then follow the instructions on the video to build your very own copy, months before the official production copies are ready!
Our manufacturing partner already has initial version of the game ready. They sent us a picture of it! Its a real thing now!
Hello folks! We're hear to bring you your monthly update on Berrymandering.
Over the past month we have been trading proofs back and forth with our Chinese partner Magicraft. Additionally, we have been doing more blind play testing to make sure everything in the manual is as clear as possible. Plus we have an updated pnp with the final rules! Last but not the least surveys and preorders are open for anyone who missed the Kickstarter but still wants a copy.
Eliot spent some time trying to figure out how to put a divider or organizer into the box. It turns out that there isn't enough space in the box unless we have all the chipboard pieces punched out too. We didn't want pieces to be damaged or scratched in transit from rattling around, so we opted to go with a simple plastic bags option. Each game will have a few bags that you can package up the pieces in after playing to keep everything organized until the next time you play.
After we looking through the final proof multiple times, we gave Magicraft the go-ahead to start production on February 23rd. Now we are waiting 30-40 days (March 26 - April 5th +/- a few days for shipping) to receive a mass production sample. This will allow us to check to make sure everything came out perfectly and no re-work is required. After seeing that, we'll give the final go-ahead for full production. Everything is on-schedule.
You probably noticed the strike-through on the "digital proof" in the todo list. Weird as it may be, a "digital proof" means a pre-production hard copy. We opted not to get the pre-production hard-copy because the proof files they gave us were enough for us to be confident. Any minor issues can be rectified after we see the mass-production sample later.
Cheers!
-Eliot & Justin
We released the PnP to everyone last week via a backers-only update. If you haven't got a chance to download it and check it out we encourage you to do that soon! If you notice any errors in the rules or artwork let us know. We will have to lock both of those down shortly.
We finalizing the last details with Backerkit, and the backer surveys will start to go out on February 3rd!
We have started coordinating with our printer/ manufacturer, MagiCraft. This is the same company that produced Obelisk for us and they also have produced games for our friends at Academy games. We have been iterating with them layouts for the punchboards of the tiles, candles, and player carts. Here is where we are now:
This large sheet would be folded in half around a punchboard core which gives the tiles some thickness. Each of the light blue lines represents where the die will cut. There are a total of 10 large tiles that are each 3.25x5.25". Each of these larger pieces would fit in our 3.5x5.5" box. The artwork on each pieces runs 3mm over the actual cut line, so that if the die shifts a bit when cutting, the piece still comes out looking good. There is actually a mistake on this image. 1000 internet points to the first person to find it an post in the comments!
On January 31st - February 2nd we will be blind playtesting Berrymandering at Protospiel Cleveland. We are hoping this will expose any additional holes in the rules that we haven't found in our previous 6 months of playtesting.
We also did some box artwork revamping this past month. We wanted to highlight the Berry part of Berrymandering so we swapped the blueberries and the strawberries. We have sent this artwork off to MagiCraft and we're waiting for them to finish up Chinese new year celebrations and then they'll produce a proof of the box for us.
Send us some comments if you have any questions!