PANDEMONIUM: fantasy survival horror & miniatures

Quick update #3
over 7 years ago – Sun, Jan 29, 2017 at 11:32:29 PM

Hope you enjoyed a good weekend. We’re back with some more info about the game.

Firs of all I want to announce that I’ll be updating kickstarter every 15 days, because we don’t want to bore you with too many news that have nothing to do with production (some backers told it could be annoying).
As we are waiting for the games to be shipped and the manufacturer to come back from Chinese holidays, there’s few content I can show you right now. If we space the updates a little more, they will be more interesting for everybody.
If there’s any important news that you need to know, I’ll do a special update when necessary.

We received two painted miniatures from backer Tziliar, who painted them in his spare time and for free. So we want to thank him very much for his good job and his help.

I wanted to show you an example of one of the chapters in the game. This is chapter 7: Comeback.
After defeating the Evil of the place, you find out that there is an ancient power far worse than the one you just defeated. Will you try to destroy it or use it for your dark purposes?

Players appear in the “Little China” map tile and must go to the “Abandoned Lab” map tile, pick up the Dagger and Old Book tokens and place them in the centre of the “Xenoverse” map tile. This must be done before dawn (round 8).
Once the dagger and book are placed together, the Xeno is summoned and players need to eliminate him. If Xeno is destroyed, players win. If all players are dead in the same round, Evil wins.

Difficulties of this chapter are that the Blob is protecting the lab map tile and he’s hard to beat. Also, you need to cross the “Catacombs” map tile to reach the laboratory, and there’re four portals in there, which means that anytime a round starts, if there’s any character inside that map tile, four new creatures will appear.
The Xenoverse map tile only has one entry door and you only have 7 rounds to summon the Xeno boss, so players must collaborate and prepare a good strategy to succeed.

Xeno is a hard boss. If you haven’t destroyed the Blob before summoning the Xeno, fighting both of them at the same time is quite challenging. It can be very difficult, but really rewarding if you manage to beat them and survive.

The Blob has 3 areas you must destroy in order to kill him. Xeno has 2 areas to destroy.
The attack of the boss depends on the area you’re attacking. This adds some variety to the boss fights and makes them more dangerous when they are wounded.

Different bosses have different abilities. For example, the Dimensional God is immortal and immediately kills any characters on its space. Sharknators don’t move, but they attack all characters in their map tile with Fury 7 (really dangerous to stay there, as we only have 6 Life points). And Jonathan Crow has a complete chapter focused on him.

You don’t need to play chapters in order, but first ones are easier than last ones.
Each chapter is easier or harder depending on the team of characters chosen to play it.
Characters with more defense or attack, with more actions, maybe a mix of them, a wise combination of their abilities… 

The Mechanic character, for example, is a great character for the Horde chapter that we explained in our lat update, because she has a good defense value and she can place barricades and traps for free.
The soldier, with his high attack value is great for a chapter like the one described today, because he can kill the bosses easier, but gets too exposed when there’re a lot of creatures on the board.
The Stripper is good to reach far places, because she moves two spaces, the Lovers are great to store items and distribute between players, etc…

The Items you find and the events you trigger will be very important in the resolution of each chapter.
When the game arrive to backers, we'll publish "how to play" videos to help everyone to start playing the fastest and easiest possible.

Thank you for your support.
See you in 15 days.

Manufacturer's Official Shipping Date.
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 06:16:15 PM

We visited the manufacturer last week. They had assured us that the packages would leave China mid-January, because it was important to finish production before Chinese new year started. Unfortunately, this has been impossible.
They explained us the reasons why and, while this is a major inconvenient for us, we understand that they have done the better they could and we are confident that their new production plan can be executed without more delays.

They provided us with a new delivery time and insisted that we could announce it as an official date, because they were really sure that the process is under control and they could deliver with no problem at all. They convinced us, but remember, this is just an information from the manufacturer, we can’t assure you 100% a shipping date until the games ship from China.

The plan is that all games will leave China the 10th of March, which means that end April we could start sending the games worldwide and you will receive them during May and June. Almost one year later than our initial kickstarter estimation, which is sad, but at least we’re happy that this adventure approaches its end.

Trying to accelerate this process, we’re negotiating right now the possibility to send directly from China to EU, USA and Australia. This way all backers worldwide would receive the games at the same time. I’m working on it these last weeks, so I’ll inform you as soon as we can close a deal.

Also, talking to the manufacturer, I tried to find some way to thank you all your patience adding a new free component that will not add time to the production. That means it had to be a printing component that could be introduced in the process that they were working right now, without any time impact. We determined it could be a good idea to add a 60 cm poster inside each game box. And so we send them what will be the last addition to the kickstater core box.
I hope you like it; there’s nothing we can do right now, except reward your patience and thank you for your support:

They also confirmed us that the miniatures production is completely closed. We saw the photos from the manufacturer and they send us some bags with the complete set of miniatures from China.

They look good and we like the new characters color better that the chocolate brown.

There’re a lot of miniatures inside the game for a $75 game. The big volume of miniatures and all the components that were unlocked gather in a 30x30x13 cm box that almost weights 5 kg. That’s way more than we planned, and shipping costs will be a killer, but that’s another lesson we’ve learned the hard way.

Meanwhile, we’ve been playing some Pandemonium rounds with fans and friends and will continue doing so in the next few weeks, as we’ve been invited to some events. The idea was to take photos of the finished components, but unfortunately we are still mixing finished and prototype components. The game is fun anyway, but I hope that we receive the much desired final box as soon as Chinese new year ends.

As I told you in our last update, we expected to show you the printing components finished, as the manufacturer had promised us to bring some boxes from the Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair that was celebrated two weeks ago, but obviously this didn’t happen.
All the printing process is quite fast, but the calibration and adjustments done before starting, seems to be tricky. They had a hard time with cards production and this is mainly the main reason of their last delay. But we’ve seen the proofs and they look good.
All printing process is half done and could be finished soon, but it’s a shame we couldn’t accelerate production to evade Chinese new year, which means all Chinese manufacturers stop working for 2 to 3 weeks.
It’s not the end of the world, but quite frustrating…

I took some photos of one of the last games we played with friends some weeks ago. Before we can record full plays with the final components and upload them to our youtube channel, maybe these help you to better understand some of the game chapters.

This is chapter 4, the horde mode that you can play whenever you feel in need to kill lots of creatures. The main rules are that there’s no limit of spawned creatures in the game and that dead players don’t use Pact cards: they need to be rescued by other players (so, if all players are dead at the same time, they lose the game).

After you try to escape the place, the Evil Lord gets mad at you and sends his hordes. You need to survive the 5 night rounds. Any player alive when sun rises, wins the game :)

I was playing with the Huntress and decided to go outside, searching for Items and adventure. Which didn’t work too well, as at the beginning of third round she was surrounded and almost dead. Luckily, my character was in a space with a Portal, which let her teleport with a dimensional card to a safer place on the board and save her ass.

Ana, who was playing with the Mechanic, wasn’t so lucky and was massacred in an isolated area of the board. Now all those creatures would come chasing us and we’d need to try to find a way to rescue her before the end of the last night round. Meanwhile, on the Hotel map tile, the Huntress was happy after recovering her Life bar with a Health kit, and the Soldier and the Fury are in trouble trying to survive their respective turns.
The Soldier, controlled by Daniel, has only 1 Life point, but we managed to protect him until next round, when he could get the last Health kit on the board.

At the end of the last round this was the situation. The Huntress managed to run and jump through windows and rescue the Mechanic. Then, both of them protected their space with traps and barricades and finally survived the creature’s attacks. In part thanks to the Mechanic, who has the ability to place traps and barricades for free.

We used two allies as human shields to escape the hotel. We’re not proud of our behavior, but, what the hell, the creatures were hungry…

The Fury reached a safe place and protected herself with a trap and a barricade. Most of the creatures were in the Hotel and the Outpost, so she was quite sure to survive until dawn.
The poor Soldier did worse. He tried to follow the Fury, but ended in a lonely space with only two Life points. He had to resolve a nasty Event and died. With no characters to help him in this round, there’s no hope for him.

So, happy end for the female characters and a tragic end for the poor old soldier. He was close, but added some drama to the game.

The game lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes. There were four deaths and appeared a maximum of 20 creatures on the board.

Next week I’ll explain some other chapters of the Survival Diary and show you more content. Three new painted miniatures are on their way, so expect images from them also.

See you soon.
Thanks for your support!

The end is nigh!
over 7 years ago – Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 09:14:18 PM

Hello, we're back with more news.
This week we're visiting the manufacturer to see how everything advances. I hope they have finished printing, as promised, and can send the packages soon.

Meanwhile, we're playing some rounds with local backers, combining finished and prototype components. This is a preview of the Pandemonium game board during a standard play:

Some backers have started to send us photos of their painted miniatures. This is the work of lord.eltharion (http://lafrikiroom.blogspot.com.es) and we thank him for his great efford.

We're about to receive two more painted miniatures and Obenji is finishing the Evil Lord, that we'll send to Andres Aguilar as part of his "design your own miniature" pledge. I'm really excited to see the final look of it.

Now that we have all components and the final box is defined, we have been able to determine all the final costs of shipping and production. I must admit that we were too optimistic in some calculations during kickstarter and most things have been more expensive than expected. However, the learning experience has been very positive, although exhausting.
The good news is there have been also some components that turned out to be a bit cheaper than expected and we wanted to reward your support with an improvement on that add-on packs.
One is the Evil Die and another is the Drink Coasters. So we have decided to add 12 drink coasters instead of 10 and add 5 Evil Dice instead of 1.
I hope you enjoy these additions.

Now that we finally have received a good amount of miniatures, we can take a first look at the enemy army inside a core Pandemonium box.
They are ready to wreak havoc across our dimension.

There are 11 breed and 6 bosses. All creatures' skills and characteristics are described inside the manual, but you can download a quick reference guide of the creatures' characteristics here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8DeHH5DtArdLW1CUjUxZ3ZFbVk

Next week I'll inform you of the manufacturer advances and show you more material.
Stay tuned!

A matter of heart.
over 7 years ago – Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 09:45:41 PM

Just a quick update, because I’ll update again this Sunday with more news and game images.

First I want to show you the wooden hearts we unlocked during the campaign. These can be used as Life tokens. Each map tile has one First aid kit, represented by a heart, that characters can use to replenish their Life bars. We recommend the wooden hearts to substitute the cardboard tokens available.

This is a representation of the Pandemonium box that you’ll receive at home. I’m quite proud of the bottom box sides, with a representation of the 15 main characters of the game. We’re eager to receive the final boxes and see how they look.

Now, I want to talk about some incredible projects that are now on kickstarter. Don’t worry, I’ll give you more Pandemonium information on Sunday, but I must confess that I’m very happy to see how the Spanish board game creators keep launching interesting and ambitious projects using this platform.
For the first time, there are 5 successful board game projects live on kickstarter, with very different approaches, visuals and mechanics. Let me recommend you some of them:

Alchemical Crystal Quest: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994972978/alchemical-crystal-quest-0
Our main illustrator, Borja Pindado, did a complete revamp of the game art. Take a look to see the versatility of Borja. Great game, fun concept and a fresh look.

Iron League:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ironleague/iron-league-black-stadium
Borja also did some of the illustration of this game. And the mech robot miniatures are awesome. They need a last push, so help them if you like what you see.

Day Night Z  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1170305761/day-night-z
They started to work on this kickstarter when we finished ours. And it looks fantastic: solid game mechanics, great atmosphere, incredible art and amazing miniatures. Our “no zombies” policy doesn’t apply here :D

Sector 6
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dracoideas/sector-6-compete-today-breathe-tomorrow
These guys are good. Their project Onus was running when we launched our kickstarter. Since then, they launched a new project and now this one. Science fiction with miniatures and an unbeatable price.

Tao Long
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gonab/tao-long
I didn’t know this one and it was a great surprise. Great art and great concept. A must have, starting at only 17€.

Good luck to all of them. And again, thanks for supporting us, for your help and patience. See you on Sunday.

Happy new year!
over 7 years ago – Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 09:40:46 PM

2016 is coming to an end and so is Pandemonium, at last.

We've approved all the component and print proofs. After several iteractions EU-China we're really happy with the final quality of the game.
Last week we received the blank boxes/components and had to take some last decisions. Now all this is mass producing and assembling.

In two weeks, our manufacturer is traveling to HongKong and he will bring back some complete finished games with him. Then, we'll be able to record some unboxing of the final product and send some copies to selected reviewers or board game clubs, depending on the units we receive.

Let me show you some shots of the game components and box structure (next update I'll show you some printing proofs):

Paper and cardboard quality is really good.
All cards, character sheets, round counter, dice, platic cubes, wooden hearts and tokens (once extracted from their cardboard holes), will be stored in the interior box layout, especially designed to fit all these components.

One of our manufacturer's specialty is creating boxes for perfumery which gives them a lot of experience in this field. We had seen samples from their work, but I'm really impressed by the robust feel of Pandemonium box and its quality. I really believe that it will look better than some commercial big boys out there.

After much discussion we had to discard the plastic tray option for the miniatures. It forced us to create a bigger rectangular box which posed us some additional complications in terms of design, weight and shipping.
Although it looked great, we prefer to maximize usability and work with a much standard size and structure.
The final box have a custom interior box storing all the miniatures and featuring the game logo, so you can keep your miniatures inside perfectly preserved and save.

Some users asked for a few miniatures to paint them, so I hope to show you pictures of several Pandemonium characters and creatures in wonderful color soon; you know, it takes time :D

The manufacturer assured us that on mid January all games should be traveling to EU and first days of February could be in their warehouse, where we'd add the add-ons and ship worldwide.
This is an information from the manufacturer and there's nothing we can do to help accomplish it, but I think this time the planning will be accurate. I'll keep informing you each week, as always.

See you in 2017 with more news.
Enjoy a happy new year and eternal thanks to support this project.