PRE PRO PAPER
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 03:05:43 AM

Hello everyone-

Exciting news this month! After much toiling and back and forth with the manufacturer we are finally at a point where the paper/cardboard assets have been approved and moved to MASS PRODUCTION! What you see below are in most ways, what the game will look like when you get your own copies. Here and there the gloss/matte finishes are not totally accurate, the hot foil is missing, etc... but mostly, this is it! Let's start with a little look at the boxes. Below is Kickin' Asphalt (Level 1) on the right and Rush 'n Scare (Level 2) on the left.

 The boxes feel nice and heavy since we used high quality and heavy thickness board for everything. Here is a spread of the street backs for Kickin' Asphalt, which you can tell because there is a city street and not snowy, military bunker:

 Here is a slightly overexposed (sorry) gif of the two street types:

 Some Hero and Baddie dashboards on nice, thick chipboard:

... and Telekinetikid!

Here is a little spread of the card packs that will come with some of the games, including the Kickstarter Exclusive pack including the Prototype Hoverboard card.

A little flip through some punchboards. Here you can see the new punchboard First Player TOken as well as a little gift from us to you on the punchboards... a "proof of purchase" token that you can bring to us at conventions and get discounts on our stuff!

And progress on the trays, which will have custom molded beds for each mini (this is just one layer of a 2 layer system). Please note that Purely Pixels levels do not contain the minis or their trays... but have space for them should backers choose to eventually upgrade.

 Phew. OK, that is a good look pretty much all of the remaining assets. It has been a difficult month or two with manufacturing, but this is feeling good. 

It remains our goal to bring games to PAX Unplugged to fulfill to backers that are attending the show and then ship the remainder as soon as we receive the shipment from the seafaring boxes shortly after. In order to make the most of our investment in the PAX Unplugged booth, we must sell SOS there. It was certainly not our plan to be selling that small number of games to non-backers before all backers get their copies, but we hope that everyone here appreciates how important it is for my tiny company to make income at the few big shows that we can attend. We certainly planned on shipping games to backers in advance of PAX Unplugged, but as the manufacture slipped, our plans need to be agile. I hope you can understand my perspective and need. My goal with Wild Power has always been to make the best games, and these extra sales will allow that to happen. Thank you so much for being part of this journey... we are in the home stretch! Cannot wait for you all to play!

TIMELINE AND SAMPLE INFO
over 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 08, 2019 at 05:00:19 PM

Happy August everyone. 

Let dig in, shall we?

PAPERSTUFFS

These assets have long been delivered and we expect printed pre-production samples any day. Regarding the deliveries. most of them were non-controversial but occasionally we have heard from the manufacturer that something needs to be shifted a few pixels, or an icon needs enlarging. Nothing scary. We alter those items quickly and shoot them back usually within 1 business day.

MINIS

These are also long approved at this point, and should be in production. Pantone colors have been delivered and all samples approved.

BOX & VACUUM TRAY

The boxes have been designed for a long time as you know, since we shared it before. This too should be showing up soon in physical cardboard form. We have not yet seen our vactray design in 3d, but look forward to it. A design was delivered to the manufacturer and we are excited to see it in action.

So, as you can see, we are anxiously awaiting print samples for approval. Once we get them, it will take a couple days to proofread everything and check the part and paper quality. We will continue to keep you informed as new info arrives and of course, show you pics of everything! 

TIMELINE AND DELAYS

In an effort to get a commitment on dates from the manufacturer, we requested specific deliverables and timelines from them in order to get the game as soon as possible. Specifically, we want to be able to have them on hand for PAX Unplugged where we could do in-person Kickstarter Fulfillment, since many of you will be attending. Here is the timeline that they committed to:

You will note that the first deadline that they supplied to us was Aug 5th, 2 days ago. We have not yet received any samples. This is concerning, and we have reached out to the manufacturer to see what we can do to ensure delivery by Nov. It is worth noting though, that small companies like Wild Power have very little muscle when it comes to pushing manufacturers in China. 

The delays do not make us feel great, for sure. We wanted this game shipped by now, but it has not gone down as we expected. There are lots of reasons that things are going more slowly than anticipated. 

- The manufacturer is slower than expected

- the success of the KS stretch goals meant lots of new art needed to be made from scratch (more on this in a sec)

- revisions have been requested from the manufacturer for the sake of mass production

- the developers made some mistakes during asset creation. 

Regarding the Stretch Goal asset production note above, the core game was basically ready to send to production when the campaign began, but the stretch goals put us in a spot where we had to make art that did not yet exist, In fact, Rush'N Scare was going to be an entirely separate Kickstarter campaign, originally. However, we thought that it would be awesome to let people get in on more gameplay for a super-reduced price by piggy-backing the main KS, making the second box even cheaper than the first for backers. Unlike some of the well funded mega-companies using Kickstarter as a pre-order engine for their new releases, who pay for boatloads of art assets before the Kickstarter campaign even begins, we needed the funding from the campaign to pay artists to make assets that were now needed. 

Since Wild Power Games is teeny little company, we do not have a large cohort of developers in a corporate office that can all attack a major productivity push (yet). We are a grass roots company made up of folks that have day jobs... you know... at least until Wild Power Games takes over the world :) .

We hope that this info helps illuminate where we are, how we got here, and how close we are to completion. We are as excited as you to get this game in our hands and playable with our pals and will continue to get you info as we have it.

Until then, bye for now!

Wild Power Games

FIRST MINIS IN FROM MANUFACTURER!
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 12:01:12 AM

Hey there everyone. 

Some exciting news! We received the first shots for the minis and wanted to share them with you. The video linked here is literally an unboxing video where Ryan shows closeups of every mini and talks a bit about each one. 

As you may know, the production of minis is the most difficult part of the process so to have casts of them that have been put through the process of splitting and recombining (for mass production) is a big jump forward. After the video shoot, a couple of us went over the minis with a fine-toothed comb. Luckily, most of them look amazing and are approved. A couple of them have tiny issues, none of which should slow down progress as they seem like simple "glue that dude to the base here and not here" kind of issues. Frankly, the minis look amazing.

We have posted the video to our fledgling YouTube Channel, here:

https://youtu.be/9e7Wc60Bpv8

More as it comes...

Enjoy!

1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY UPDATE
almost 5 years ago – Sat, Jun 08, 2019 at 03:19:46 PM

Good morning and happy Saturday!

It has been about a month since we last spoke, and if you have been anxiously looking at your calendars, like we have, you know we are at our 1 year anniversary of funding. Things are moving forward with manufacturing, though admittedly, slower than we hoped. Progress is good though, so put down your morning paper and enjoy our quick update during your Saturday morning reading.

FULFILLMENT PARTNERS LOCKED AND LOADED

Unlike our past 3 Kickstarters, where we fulfilled ourselves, we have contracted with the fine folks at Blackbox to ensure that you get your games as fast as possible once they hit the states. Blackbox has a good reputation for quality packing and getting games to backers safe and sound. Deposits have been paid and plans begun.

SCHEDULE AND DATES

In an effort to get things moving faster, we are working on a "guaranteed schedule" with the manufacturer to see that new deadlines are met. 

PAX UNPLUGGED

For those of you that are in the Philly area, you will be able to hang with us and play games at PAX Unplugged.

SLIGHT TWEAKS TO BE COOL

One positive that comes out of the fact that the game is not completely manufactured is that we were able to improve the art on the Quarters (both cardboard and metal) by putting Mayor Van Dammage on them instead of the potentially controversial and/or obscure reference that was on the quarters before. Let's be honest... who better to act as a shining beacon of awesomeness in the world of SOS than the badass Mayor who's "hands-on leadership style" is ushering in a new era of peace in Steel City?

Here is a little preview of the new art, as well as some behind-the-scenes "making of" images for the Mayor's Dashboard art.

That's all for now. Have a great weekend and we will be back soon when we have more news for you all.

Cheers!

NEW TITLES AND A MANUFACTURING UPDATE
about 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 09:59:53 PM

Hi there!

We hope that you have had a great weekend. 

MANUFACTURING UPDATE TL:DR

If everything continues moving smoothly, we are about 1-2 months from kicking off full production. Once we know a more definitive timeline, we will let everyone know and lock it in.

MINIS

So far, we have not received any change requests from the manufacturer for the sculpts, so we are taking that as ‘no gnus is good gnus” (weird ref for the 80’s kids out there). More if we hear anything.

PAPERSTUFFS

We did hear back from the manufacturer that they want basically all of our paper components prepared differently than what we delivered. We followed the protocol from our High Heavens manufacturer but it seems that was an assumption that should not have been made. We have been chugging on those re-exports all week and should be done by the time you read this update. It‘s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.

NEW NAMES

Oh! It occurred to us that many of you may not know that we changed the names of the two core sets a while ago. We were letting people in on it at PAX East, but just so we are all up to date, they are no longer entitled STREETS OF STEEL: LEVEL 1 and STREETS OF STEEL: LEVEL 2. There was concern that for those that see these on shelves, they may think that LEVEL 1 was “old”. Instead, we went with some classic arcade-style subtitles, and we are pretty psyched about them. The games are now STREETS OF STEEL: KICKIN’ ASPHALT and STREETS OF STEEL: RUSH ‘N SCARE!

That is all that we have got for today! For those that have been on a Kickstarter ride before, you know that things can be a bit quiet for a while. Have no fear, the train is still movin’.

Have a little lore for the road… this comes from the rulebook for Kickin’ Asphalt:

Thanks everyone for being part of this project!

Wild Power Games