Status Report - 2020 - 1 - 23 - Dev & Production Updates, PAX South Images, New Live Stream
about 4 years ago
– Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 02:14:22 AM
Thirsty for news from the development side of Dice Throne Adventures? Then this is the update for you! The Dice Throne team has been hard at work creating, developing, testing, balancing, adjusting, and polishing, and here's the latest update on what has been accomplished behind the scenes:
Splitting Scenarios
In the original design (which you can see in any of the playthrough videos on the campaign page), Dice Throne Adventures originally took players through a series of 4 scenarios. Each scenario consisted of a dungeon crawl, where players battle minions and explore the Mad King's universe, followed by an epic boss battle.
While this design worked awesomely, a huge challenge was the time required to play the game. Our intention was for each scenario to be about 1.5 hours long at a maximum, but after thorough testing, we realized there was just too much gameplay to pack into 1.5 hours. So we've split each of these scenarios into two separate and distinct ones: the Portal Crawl, and the Boss Battle.
This decision has brought a huge amount of positives:
• Each Portal Crawl now clocks in at a run time of about ~1 hour, depending on how much your group wants to explore (completionists, we got you covered). Each Boss Battle will also take ~1 hour to successfully complete... or less, if the boss just stomps you!
• The campaign for Dice Throne Adventures is now carried out over 8 scenarios of reasonable length, instead of 4 huge ones. If you only have an hour with your game group, you can knock out a scenario or a boss battle. If you are looking for an epic night of gaming, you can play through the Portal Crawl AND fight the Boss in one session.
• You still gain Loot after every scenario, which means you will be able to play with the Loot you've gained sooner.
• We are able to make each scenario slightly longer, to ensure that the journey of your team develops nicely.
• Certain heroes, such as the Cursed Pirate, were extremely difficult to keep alive in the old version. Other heroes, such as the Shadow Thief, just get too powerful. Now that we have brought the length of each scenario down, DTA works very well with all hero classes.
The response to DTA playtests at PAX South were incredibly positive!
Boss Loot Table
You now visit our shop keeper Rosella immediately after the Portal Crawl concludes. But after you defeat a boss, you get to roll 3x on the Boss Loot Table to receive cards that are immediately added to your deck:
Campaign Scoring
We've implemented campaign scoring! Points are gained for each victory, unspent Salves/gold, etc. Points are lost upon defeat. At the end of the campaign, you'll add up all your scenario scores to get your overall campaign score, which we hope you'll share with the Dice Throne community for bragging rights!
Season One Rerolled - Ongoing Balancing
We have full preproduction samples that we have been playtesting at shows (such as PAX). We have also been playtesting on Tabletop Simulator with our amazing beta test crew. Everything is ready for production in Rerolled; we're now simply stress-testing the Treant / Ninja to ensure that they are balanced and incredibly fun to play.
Miniatures - All mini designs have been approved and molds are now complete. We are currently waiting on color samples from the factory. Once these are approved, we'll post pics and the minis will begin production.
Vac Tray - Work continues on the vac tray. We are now on the third iteration of the vac tray designs. We should be receiving a new sample soon. We will show images and video of how it works once the design is nailed down.
Dice Trays - We have been through several revisions and have approved a sample for production. They look and feel awesome. Best part is, it fits perfectly in a battle chest!
Season One Rerolled: Battle Chest - We have completed the design of the battle chest and all the artwork. Everything is ready for production in rerolled, and we are now simply stress testing the Treant / Ninja. Once complete, we will begin production on these Battle Chests.
Dice - Colors and designs are approved, and ready for production. In fact, many of the Season One Rerolled dice are already in the process of being manufactured. Dice for Dice Throne Adventures will begin soon.
New Playmats - Approved for production. Proofs look great as always!
Card Sleeves - Sleeves for the new heroes and bosses have all been approved for production.
Rulebook - Once all development and game balance is nailed down, we will revise the rulebook with new changes and finish the layout.
Dice Throne Adventures - We are about 90% done. All Loot cards and environment illustrations are complete. There is a massive amount of illustration in this game, and we are so thankful for Manny's continued efforts on this! We have a bit more balancing and polishing with Dice Throne Adventures and 18 illustrations remaining. Once this is all complete, the project will begin production.
Once again, Dice Throne was one of the Ultimate attractions at PAX South... It was great to see a lot of you back again after having met you in years past, and we loved the opportunity to see a lot of new faces as well! We are continuously humbled by the number of people who offer to work at the booth with us. All of our volunteers were amazing, and we would not have been able to have a successful convention without each and every one of them. THANK YOU!
We are working hard on some new surprises for our upcoming conventions that we can't wait to share with you! #staytuned
Knight Watch Games hosted an amazing tournament the day before PAX began. If you live in the San Antonio area, make sure you check them out! We are quite jealous that you have such an AMAZING game store in your area!
Not only does Knight Watch Games love Dice Throne, but so does PAX South!
Oh, and we had MANY Pax South tournaments!
Click below to see the winners!
We love PAX South and can't wait to do this again!
We'd like to thank each and every one of you who reached out to us in response to the previous update to double-check your order or to request changes. Paul & Nish have answered hundreds of your messages over the last couple of weeks, and are continuing to do so; but we thought we'd provide answers to some of the more Frequently Asked Questions here for you, to try to streamline the process:
Q. If I place a Preorder now, will it still ship at the same time as regular backers? Will I still get Rosella's Gifts and everything else that the KS Deluxe version includes?
A. Yes.
Q. I still don't have my survey link. Help! I don't want to miss out!
A. If you've checked your spam/bulk folder and you still can't find it, please email [email protected] to check-in; please be sure to include your full name, email address, and Kickstarter username (this has happened to a couple of people who changed email addresses, and it can be hard for us to locate you). We can still send you your link now, and you will still be treated as a regular backer.
(*Note*: if you did not pledge for at least the Treant/Ninja pledge level, then as per the descriptions on the pledge levels on the campaign page, you were not sent a survey link. You can, however, place a Preorder now, and as above, you won't miss out on first wave shipping, Rosella's Gifts, or any of the Kickstarter content and components. We will credit your pledge towards such a Preorder.)
Q. I need to update my shipping address (or to double-check to make sure it's correct).
A. You should be able to double-check it (and may be able to change it yourself) via your original survey link from BackerKit. If this doesn't work (or you can't find it), please message the correct address to [email protected] and we can do it for you.
Q. My order's locked down, but I want to make a change. How do I do this?
A. To add something to your order, message [email protected]; if you specify what you want and authorize us to add it to your card on file, we should be able to process it immediately without any further back-and-forth. This is also how to request a change that doesn't affect the dollar value of your pledge (example - switching playmats). For any change that involves a partial refund, there may be an extra step or two involved; please message [email protected] with the details. (Note that for any cancellation at this stage, Roxley is still required to pay Kickstarter and BackerKit a percentage of the pledge, so we will only be able to issue a partial refund).
Q. I emailed [email protected] (or messaged via Kickstarter) X days ago, but I haven't heard back yet. How long should I wait before worrying?
A. You're almost certainly fine. The truth is, we are further behind than we want to be, and we apologize for having to ask you to be patient. Paul & Nish have responded to hundreds of messages in the last two weeks, and we are prioritizing Kickstarter customer service, but there are hundreds more to answer. Paul's goal is to get that queue below four days' worth by the weekend, so if your message is a week or more old on Monday, something might have happened to it; please double-check by emailing [email protected]. (We process emails slightly faster than Kickstarter DMs, and a LOT faster than things like Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Q. I have a question not covered here.
A. Please send it to [email protected].
As always, we thank everyone in the community, for helping each other out with your questions and requests whenever you can.
Our next update is scheduled for Thursday, February 6th, 2020.
Keep Rollin' Sixes,
Gavan, Nate, Manny & Team Roxley
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