PANDEMONIUM: fantasy survival horror & miniatures

Halloween Update
over 7 years ago – Wed, Nov 02, 2016 at 12:18:03 AM

I hope you enjoyed a happy Halloween. We’ve been quite busy these days, but after all the celebrations have ended I can finally launch a new update, as promised.

First of all, I need to remember that today we’ve closed the Pandemonium pre-order page and all pledge manager options. You can still edit your shipping addresses until end of November. So, no more backers will be allowed and we’ll be able to focus on the future fulfillment of all your packages.

I want to show you all the new content we’ve received. Everything is properly packed, waiting for the rest of components to arrive.

To accelerate shipping, all games will come preassembled from China, so we only have to mix add-ons and send to backers. This process is done in the manufacturer’s warehouses in EU in less than a week. We’ve already hired those services and met the experienced people in charge.

These last two weeks we’ve visited several times the manufacturer’s offices trying to understand the current production status and define a realistic and definitive shipping planning. These meetings have been very productive and I can say that everything is under control, but advancing slowly.
Our inexperience has let the project to suffer some important delays during production. Sometimes we were too much careful taking some steps, because we were afraid of encountering financial, production or distribution problems. Kickstarter is a great responsibility and the project grew a lot during the campaign.
However, I can say with some relief that we achieved to avoid important problems with Pandemonium, but we’ve been terrible wrong with our timetable. Maybe, we were overoptimistic; this is a big project for a small team.

Where are we now? The manufacturer finally showed us all the miniatures, we even have some photos from the production molds.
Take a look and try to guess what miniatures were created with these molds:

They assured us that all miniatures are finished and several complete packs are leaving China to our home, so we can take pictures, record videos, paint them and show everything to you. We’ve been waiting for this since a long time ago. I hope you like what you’ll see.

As printing components will take several reviews until we’re happy with the results, I can’t promise you a 2016 release anymore. It seems that January 2017 could be our most realistic estimate, but I won’t fix a date right now, because I feel stupid every time I need to announce a production delay.
However, I can commit to update every Sunday night until the game is released showing you all our progress and news. This way, I’m sure you’ll be able to see that the game develops and that all components are arriving and look cool. Production is advancing as fast as we can, we’re putting all our efforts into this project.

When talking with the manufacturer, we discussed some ways to reward your patience and add new or improved components to the core game. We achieved some additions that I’m sure will please you (and most important, they won’t add any production time):

1.) The game will add 35 more cards, for a total of 150 cards. New weapons and magic objects and some new events have been added to the game.

2.) The box cover will feature a mix between matte and glossy areas to highlight the logo, characters, etc. The effect helps to popup the cover a lot and I think it looks much more impressive.

3.) A new plastic inlay will be added to the core box, containing all the miniatures. That’s similar to the Zombicide black plague. Now, when you open the box, all miniatures will show first, perfectly organized. That’s a great improvement, as we can avoid to collect all miniatures in zipped bags, as originally planned.

4.) We obtained a new improved paper for the manuals and booklets.

5.) All miniature add-ons will be packed in boxes with the game logo.

That’s all for now. We’ll try to get some new deals, but our priority is that anything we negotiate adds zero time to the production plan.

I really wish we could have delivered the game this Halloween, as we first envisioned after the campaign ended, but it has been impossible.
With all our limitations and inexperience, we’re quite proud to be so close to finish a gigantic project that took us three years to achieve.

Once again, I must thank you all for your help, effort, support and patience. We’re all proud to be part of the amazing kickstarter community and we’re very grateful for the interest showed.
Pandemonium needs one last push. It is very close.

See you next Sunday!

Quick update #2
over 7 years ago – Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 12:06:21 AM

We wanted to update before Essen, but we have few news right now. I suspect it's the calm before the storm, because we have to receive a lot of content in the next weeks.
The manufacturer promised us, after several delays, that this week we'll receive the final miniatures, so I hope to be able to show them to you, record some videos and paint a few of them.
I've asked for some pictures from the mass production before they send them to EU. I'll publish them as soon as we receive them.

Miniatures and printing components will ship separately and final packaging will be completed in the manufacturer's warehouse in Barcelona.

We've received the engraved dice. We're now happy with the final look.

Calendars needed some printing corrections, but I'd be able to show them this wednesday. Borja's art looks incredible on it's pages, you'll have a hard time deciding your favourite month of 2017 :)

Modular Terrain confirmed that the deck trays are also shipping this week. We already have the skulls and dice trays packed and ready to send.
The only add-on left is the artbook, because we need to create the painting guide of the Fallen Lord before sending to print. However, as I commented before, the scheduled printing time for the artbook is 15 days, so no worries here.

Just remember that on 31 October we'll close the backerkit pre-order page and some days later we'll lock the shipping adresses to be able to collect them and prepare the future fulfillment to EU, USA and the rest of countries.

As always, just wanted to thank you again for your invaluable patience and support. I'm sure I'll have some great images to show you very soon.

Quick update!
over 7 years ago – Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 07:34:04 PM

Hello again, just a quick update to mantain you informed.

The manufacturer has said that a first bunch of miniatures will be send home at the beginning of October, so we can take photos and show them to you. We're very interested in receiving this package, because we want to paint some miniatures to create the painting guides that will be included in the artbook. Also, we have to paint the "Fallen Lord" exclusive miniature that will be included in the $1500 pledge (and we'll use it as a painting guide, also).

Dice arrived, but we didn't like the results. The engraved skulls didn't look as they should, so we needed to redesign the skulls and create the moulds again.
We'll receive the final dice soon and create a video. Here you have the new designs:

All drink coasters arrived last week. We've bought protecting bags to pack them (it takes a while, believe me). They look great:

We also have the dice trays. Now, I need to create a mounting video, but they all come with an intuitive Ikea-like guide that Modular Terrain created for us:

There is one map I haven't showed you before. It was the last one to unlock and you voted for it. Our "little China" map is very important in the last chapters of Pandemonium's Survival Book (aka the adventures book):

More news soon. Deck trays and calendars are coming and the artbook will be ready to print once we get the miniatures.
I hope to be able to show game proofs really soon.

See you next week!

The gates are opening (but they are heavier than expected).
over 7 years ago – Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 09:06:16 PM

Summer time is over and we hope you’ve enjoyed your holidays and are ready to follow Pandemonium again. It’s been an intense summer and we’ve worked hard to have everything ready in time. Unfortunately, some things are advancing slower than expected and the manufacturer will need some more time to finish them.
Although a bit frustrating, we understand that this is quite usual, because the project is really big right now and any little detail can slow down the production chain.
We try to focus on the quality of the product and we’re very happy with everything we’ve seen so far. We’ll receive a complete game proof soon and I’ll make and unboxing for you to see and comment.

I’ll talk more in depth about this in a moment, but let’s introduce some good news, because after a long intense year the project is coming to an end. And we’re very excited about that.

First of all, here you can download the free templates to create your own characters, cards and maps and “fine tune” everything you want. Feel free to be creative and share your work with the community.
Mega: https://mega.nz/#!GZc1hZAA!X3qvAtii_jxJfkvqV2TPPC7tQ8i6uUtJsaIWLt-sMdk
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzsgWiPueXDlZzkxNHRmWWpvUzQ

Have some fun with them:

We’re receiving almost all of the add-ons. We have all the skull packs and the dice trays. The deck trays are being finished as we speak and next week we’ll receive all the drink coasters (there’re traveling home right now).

The calendars are also being produced and will arrive at the end of September. The artbooks are complete, but can’t be printed until we add the painting guides (estimated time to print and receive them all is 15 days, so this won’t be a problem).

All the scenery packs will arrive with the rest of miniatures; end of September is scheduled for finishing the miniatures mass production and the dice.

We’re receiving a lot of new material during these next weeks, so expect more updates in a weekly basis. We’re eager to show you every little piece of the game.

Let me add some images of the new templates and components added after kickstarter and thanks to backerkit funds. These are some of the unlocked and improved contents achieved:

+10 red cubes (souls).
Added a new Souls mechanic to the game.
Better engraved dice.
“The crow” inspired miniature.
1 new adventure for “the crow” inspired miniature.
The Furmungus miniatures.
1/3 bigger boss miniatures: Dimensional god + Fallen Lord.
Added 2 new Skill Trees: retribution and survival (now you have four possible combinations).
Two different colors for characters and creatures miniatures.
Bigger box size and better box inlay (needed for all the new miniatures).
New card layouts.
Some new illustrations.

We also could change to a new more reliable manufacturer (but more expensive) and maintained shipping costs relatively low (we cover part of the shipping in most cases).

Backerkit gathered some $58.000 for the project, but right now almost everything is used for production and future shipping of the game; so no much space for special fireworks here, all efforts are focused on the good amount of components already being produced. And we expect to release a really good looking game this fall.

Regarding game shipping, we’ll close Pandemonium pre-order at the end of October and finalize addresses at the same time. On Halloween the games should be traveling to our warehouse and we’ll pack them all and send to the specified addresses. So make sure that your address info is correct by then (I’ll contact you all when time comes, don’t worry).

The manufacturer is working hard and we’ve a lot of confidence that everything will be finished soon and will look great.
Translations of the game also took longer that promised, due to summertime. We should have solved that before July, but it was impossible because we made a lot of changes and corrections to cards and manuals after the kickstarter.
This unexpected issue has had a large impact in the last delay in manufacturing, but now everything is finished and we feel relieved: an important part of the journey is over and we’re closer than ever to our goal.

If everything goes as expected all games should arrive on December to EU and on January to USA, Canada and Australia.
Halloween was a special date to us and we’d have loved to be able to release the game then, but Christmas holidays are also a good time to have some play with friends and family.
Our main goal is to release the game as soon as possible, so if we can speed up the process you’ll be the first to know.

As I told you before, a lot of components and game proofs are arriving these next weeks, so don’t worry, I’ll be showing you everything via updates and through our facebook, twitter and forum channels.
Remember that Pandemonium is a kickstarter exclusive project, it won’t be distributed through retailer stores or external distributors, it’s only available through kickstarter and backerkit and exists thanks to our loyal fans and followers. So, thanks again for your patience and support.

Some Spanish fellows have a promising kickstarter project running right now.
Take a look and help them if you like funny old good videogames: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/321726829/dawn-of-the-devs

They are heeeeere!
almost 8 years ago – Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 12:07:31 AM

Last week we received the miniature masters from China. We’d already seen photos (they’re being used to create molds by our manufacturer), but now we have a copy in our hands. We’re really happy with the work done by Only Co., there were some really complex sculpts in Pandemonium and they’ve managed to recreate them successfully.

As you know, many kickstarter projects with a lot more money than Pandemonium have had terrible problems with their miniatures and we were aware of that. Our main goal was to avoid mistakes during the production process. We’ve been very careful with every step we took after the kickstarter campaign and sometimes this means that we need more time to make decisions or close contracts, which leads to unwanted delays in production.
Remember that this is our first commercial game, but all this knowledge and contacts will allow us to move a lot faster in the future and be much more efficient in other projects.

However, Pandemonium advances as planned, we’re happy with our manufacturer and with the proofs that they are sending us. After a long time focusing on miniatures, this August they are starting mass production and we’re centering on the printing components (cards, maps and tokens).

As you’ll see in the following pictures, the final miniatures have a really good quality for a 98K game. Details are there, their structure is solid and they look great.
Pandemonium has 15 different characters, 17 different creatures and 5 different scenery & extra miniatures, with a total of 77 miniatures in every game and 103 miniatures including add-ons. I believe they’ll look amazing once painted and we're excited to see what you can do with them.

Don’t expect Bloodrage quality here, as we don’t even play in the same league, but if you look at the comparative pictures, we’re not that far away from Zombicide BP, Descent or similar games.

By the way, all the miniatures will be standard grey (the white material is used in the masters, but this is not the final material).

As a side note, these pictures were taken the day we received the miniatures. I know we can improve their quality with a better camera and illumination. Also we need to prim the miniatures and maybe give them a base color to highlight the details better. We’re doing it right now, so expect better photos during summer, but we wanted to share the news with you as soon as possible.

I know that not everyone liked our approximation to miniatures in Pandemonium, but at the end of the day I think we’ve managed to bring something a little bit different and fresh and I’m very proud of it.
Enjoy:

Evolution:

Early painted proofs:

The Fallen Lord:

Characters:

Creatures:

I hope you liked what you’ve seen. We’ll update soon with more news, don’t worry. This will be a busy summer :D
Thanks again for your feedback and support.

 

And talking of support, the people of Draco Ideas, who launched their kickstarter at the same time than Pandemonium, have launched their second kickstarter some days ago and they have already funded it. Give the project a look, because it's a great game: