Explainer Video, Replacement Games etc
almost 5 years ago – Sat, Jan 04, 2020 at 02:20:52 AM

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

Backer friends! A few items of business:

QR CODE VIDEO

We had pre-production/sample copies of the game, but we wanted to use the finished version for the explainer video, which we actually received around the same time you did. We're working on the video (we'll be doing some filming tomorrow) and we'll announce once that link is ready!

HELP THE FB & KS PAGE BE A FUN PLACE!!!

Until now we haven't done a good job creating a clear way for backers with damaged boxes/pieces to report them. So without that direction it's completely understandable that many have reported their issues on the Facebook/Kickstarter page. But we'd love to change that and keep these pages focused on conversations around gameplay, ideas for future games, and mostly things that are fun!

PROCESS FOR DAMAGED BOXES/BROKEN PIECES

First off, we apologize to any of you who received damaged boxes/broken minis. But know that we are eager to make it right and get you replacements for any issues you have.

So here's a quick step by step on how we can get you taken care of if you have issues:

1- To make sure nothing gets missed, we've consolidate all of these requests to [email protected]

2-Send Gabby a message with a picture of the damaged items. This will help us hold our Manufacturer/shippers accountable.

3- Send us your address

4- Tell gabby thanks cuz she's awesome :) And she'll get your replacement units right out to you.

BROKEN PIECES OVERVIEW

There have been far more broken pieces than should have been the case and we apologize once again to those who have received damaged units. However, it's understandable that we're all more likely to report things that have gone wrong. So just keep in mind that of the 3,000+ orders, only about 25ish boxes and 25ish minis have been reported damaged. That's far more than we are ok with, but just keep in mind that's still a very low percentage of total orders. This will also help avoid panicking by those who are only seeing posts of damaged items.

PACKAGE TRACKING QUESTIONS

Reach out to [email protected]

CUSTOMS

We've had a few backers understandably concerned about customs charges. We tried to make it clear on the KS page that we don't pay customs but we also understand that it's difficult to communicate to everyone when there's so much information on a Kickstarter page. KS's that pay for customs generally say "EU friendly". But they usually charge more for the game or elsewhere to compensate. It cost us around $23 usd for shipping out to the EU (more for some other locations) and we only charged $12 for most EU destinations. The game itself cost us around $9. Add on Kickstarter's cut and marketing and other expenses and we actually squeaked out with a barely profitable campaign.

So we tried to subsidize what we could but we deliberately decided not to make a lot of profit on this 1st Kickstarter game because our goal for this campaign was to keep the price as low as possible to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. Now that we have a little more scale, we may have other options available for our next campaign that will help significantly cut down on customs.

If you need to know how to collect your game from customs, maybe a few of our international friends that have answered questions in the past can respond in the comments (we're not as familiar with the process). Note: If you did have a damaged item, don't worry, we will cover all costs associated with return shipping (even customs if applicable)

Other

We understand that a large number of backers didn't receive their games before Christmas, but we did decide to pay extra to get the majority of your games to your doorsteps before Christmas. For those of you who've played the game already, we'd love to hear your thoughts/feedback in the comments!

Thanks and let us know if you have any further questions,

Much Love, Brad and Wes

Bad News Bear
almost 5 years ago – Sat, Dec 07, 2019 at 01:54:53 AM

Backers,

The “bear of bad news” has arrived🐻… and he’s waiting at the port once again😢. But as we’ve always done, we wanted to send an update as soon as we found out… even though it stinks.

Bad News Bear

We were told by our now frenemy Bian (our manufacturer) that ETA was on track for 12/5… what he didn’t tell us was that was the port arrival date. We’ll be having a very frank conversation with him soon: We paid extra to expedite the shipment so we could deliver to you on time, but the timeline we paid for did not match the timeline we were told by the freight forwarder once we got in touch with them.

And now our new friend Kevin the forwarder is telling us that it will take 12 days to go from the port in New York to our fulfillment center in NJ… 🤔🤯 This isn’t our 1st rodeo, we’ve never seen it take that long or had so many issues with a shipment so we’re still trying to understand why it will take so long and whether or not we can expedite the process.

If it’s helpful, here’s a visual of how head scratching this process has been🙉:

In summary, this will push our deadlines from the last update back almost 2 weeks. Which means it is unlikely your games will arrive before Christmas😭😭😭... for which we are very very sorry.

Sam’s Club

Which brings us to another item of business: Three of our games (including Dungeon Royale) were accepted into 57 road shows at Sam’s Club for 18 days in December. Those 57 Sam’s Club pallets were shipped in anticipation that your games would be in your hands, or at least be well on their way before they began sales in Sam’s. Our intention was for you all to be the first to receive the game, but given our agreement with Sam's Club that we have an obligation to honor, we wanted to notify you that those pallets will be arriving through the end of this week.

We also had an agreement with a distributor in Australia who would not have made the PO she did if she could not release the games to their retailers during the Christmas season. This was for a total of 230 games that we recently told her she could ship. It's unlikely any of you would stumble upon these games, but we only think it's fair to be fully transparent as to everything that is happening.

IMPORTANT NOTE: On the bright side, you will still enjoy exclusivity in your copies of the games. The games being sold in Sam’s Club and Australia will not have the minis, print #, or the digitally signed backer thank you note that will be included exclusively in the Kickstarter edition of the game.

Stay Tuned

We were hoping to have better news for you on this edition of the update but we will continue to keep you posted as the story develops. We have 12 total games (including expansions) and have submitted countless orders/shipments from China and never been through such a frustrating process, so the general tone of patience and support from our backers has meant a lot to us. You all really are the best! 👏👏👏

Thank you,

Wes and Brad

Backer Deadlines. URGENT UPDATE!!!
almost 5 years ago – Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 11:23:56 PM

Hello Again!

A few quick, but important items of business/Deadlines for TOMORROW Dec 3rd we'd like everyone to be aware of: 

1- Last Chance to update your shipping address!

If you've moved or would like your game to be shipped to a different address than you input in your survey  you have until TOMORROW Dec 3 AT MIDNIGHT MST to update that information!

How to update your address or CC info: Search your email (same one you use to log in to Kickstarter) for the following:

Sender Name: "Gatwick Games/Dungeon Royale!" Subject: "Reminder -- Response needed to deliver your reward for Dungeon Royale Board Game". Open the email and press the "Click Here to Respond" button in the email and update any relevant information.

NOTE: The physical units are already in route to our fulfillment center so we have locked orders and it is no longer possible to add/subtract items from your order.

2- CC Declines: Last chance to update your CC info!

We just charged cards for post Kickstarter Backerkit survey add-ons. (IMPORTANT NOTE: Kickstarter pledges were ALREADY charged 2 weeks after the campaign). As is always the case, some cards were declined. If you received an email that your credit card was declined, you'll need to update that BEFORE EOD TOMORROW (Dec 3rd) when we make another attempt at charging the remaining cards that were declined. See process above for finding the email w/ your unique survey link to update your cc info.

HURRY FAST before it's too late!

Much Love  💌

Wes and Brad

PS: We just got an update today that everything is still on track for the estimated delivery dates specified in our last update!! 🎉🎉

Shipping/Fulfillment Updates
about 5 years ago – Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 01:28:45 AM

Hi friends!

It's us again. Wanted to drop you a note and let you know how everything's coming along.

Shipping/Fulfillment Update

We'll start by cutting right to the chase. We received some less than friendly news from our friend Bian (DR Manufacturer from last episode) at the end of last week about the DR shipping timeline. Your games were actually shipped on October 21 as per the plan. So we thought we were golden... Out of the woods... Home Free... Surely nothing could stop us... except lots of other games, electronics, and toys, also hoping to make their journey home for Christmas... all at the same time.

In short, the games sat at the port waiting their turn for almost 3 weeks..... 

All the while we were smugly celebrating the certainty of pulling off our target November ship date.

So what now?

Here's the revised shipping timeline estimate:

November 9th- Games left the port

December 5th- Estimated arrival at our fulfillment center

December 12th- Estimated ship date (still working on confirming w/ our warehouse)

US Shipping: 3-5 business days

International Shipping: 4-9 business days

Christmas?

If you do the math, US shipments are currently looking like they'll arrive before Christmas (we'll hold off on the celebratory dance this time until it actually arrives). International shipments will be cutting it close. Either way we'll continue to keep you posted as developments arise.

A Thank You

You have all been incredibly patient and for that we are very grateful. We know it's common for Kickstarters to deliver late, but we REALLY REALLY wanted to match all of your awesomeness with an on-time delivery.

So as a thank you for your patience, we wanted to offer everyone a coupon for 50% off any of our games 🎉🎉. They make great stocking stuffers/Christmas gifts or fun family/party games for the upcoming family Christmas party.

You can find our games here

Enter Coupon Code "DRKICK01" at checkout. Expires Friday 11/22 (Please do not share this code widely)

For those of you who already ordered one of our other games through the Backerkit survey, reach out and we'll either adjust your pledge or give you another one of our games for free!

 💌

Brad & Wes

Updates, Updates and more Updates!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 10:37:13 PM

Fellow Dungeoners,

It’s update time again! Let’s just jump right in:

Round 2 of the Retro Handheld Series

Many of you have heard talk of another Retro Cartridge series game next year… Well, it’s all true. Your input through round 1 was INVALUABLE so there was no way we were gonna leave you out of round 2. For next year’s Kickstarter we wanted to keep all the retro handheld feels and throw it back to a go-cart style racing game… board game style. So we wanted to solicit  your ideas/thoughts on mechanics/gameplay of a game with that type of theme? Any favorite racing games you'd recommend us draw inspiration from?

3…. 2…. 1…. Go!!!😉

Manufacturing & Fulfillment Update

When we started production, we promised we’d fill you in if we hit any snags along the way. Well, despite our best efforts we did hit a very frustrating snag that will set us back a bit on fulfillment😢. However, good news is we’re still on track to ship by November so it shouldn’t set us back more than a few extra weeks.

There’s nothing quite like the thrill and satisfaction of delivering fun to people’s doorstep. It’s what keeps us energized through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. But it’s not always all butterflies and rainbows. So for those of you curious about what a day in the life of a board game creator is like, we wanted to give you a little inside scoop into some of the frustrations that come with the business.

For those who’ve been following our updates, you may be familiar with our ole’ friend Mina (our minis manufacturer). Wes and I have been like little kids on a road trip constantly asking “are we there yet?” And Mina had continued to assure us we were on track for beginning of October. Well.. they had to use a different glue that takes longer to dry and hit a few other snags and that threw off a whole chain of events/headaches that lead to Dungeon Royale being shipped from China a few weeks later than anticipated 😢🙈😔😭😫👎 (more on the minis below). 

We don’t share this to complain, it’s part of the job description and there’s no use crying over spilt milk. But we did want to give you an honest/transparent look into what it’s like being a game creator and be real about why your games will be arriving a few weeks later than anticipated. There was a moment where we thought we could still pull it off despite the delays, so we held off on sharing this prematurely, but now that we know it’ll be delayed we wanted to share the updated timeline:

Estimated Delivery Timelines

October 21- Production Completed & Games shipped

Nov 20- (+30 days for shipping Overseas) Games arrive at our KS Fulfillment partner in New Jersey.

Nov 27- (+7 days for prepping orders for shipment) Games begin shipping to you.

Dec 9-13- US games should begin arriving at your doorsteps.

Dec 16-20- International games should begin arriving at your doorsteps.

Once again we are very sorry for moving the delivery date of the games from late November to early-mid December, but on the bright side it does appear your games will arrive before Christmas!🎄🤶

Minis

The minis are almost finished, so we wanted to send along a preview of a few of the minis that our manufacturer sent along to us. It took a little back and forth but we’re pretty happy with how they’ve turned out:

As far as the minis production timeline goes, everything is on track. BUT unfortunately we had to bite the bullet on extra shipping costs and do some shipping juggling to make the timelines work (ie. prevent risk of further delays) and that means we have to send the minis outside of the game box rather than inside. But don’t worry they still fit inside once you open it!

Updating Addresses/Adding to your Pledge

Backerkit surveys have still not yet been locked so you’re still able to use the same link that came in your email to update your address/add to/change your pledge. Because of the delays we’ve decided not to lock orders/charge cards yet. That will most likely happen around mid November now.

Essen Spiel

Any of you going to the Essen Spiel convention in Germany this month? If so hit us up! We’d love to meet you.

That’s a wrap for this edition in the adventures of Dungeon Royale manufacturing so make sure to tune in next time for the next (hopefully less eventful… 😉) update!

Much love! 💌

Wes and Brad