Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars

Digital rewards are go!
almost 5 years ago – Wed, May 22, 2019 at 12:11:41 AM

Hi everyone

I hit send on a bunch of digital files earlier on. If you've backed at "discount digital" or higher, you should get a message from Backerkit with access to the final Flotsam PDF - not substantially changed from last time, but we've corrected a few typos.

Alongside the book, you'll see the reference sheets for the game, and a second version which is tailored for the scenario "the grey plague". There will be more like that, covering all the scenarios, in the coming weeks.

In addition if you've purchased Lovecraftesque as an add-on you should receive the digital files for that in the same email.

The books arrived at my warehousing partner last Friday, so there's just a few minor things to sort out before they can be despatched. I expect you will receive a further update from me very soon, to let you know the books have started shipping.

Thanks for your support,

Josh

Surprise shipping acceleration
almost 5 years ago – Wed, May 15, 2019 at 12:07:25 AM

Hey everyone!

Observant backers noticed that my last update referred to a date in April when I meant to say May. But I'm excited to say that things have been moving faster than expected and the books are now planned to arrive this Friday, 17th May - a week earlier than I'd thought.

This means that if your address has changed, it's important to update it on Backerkit or get in touch with me ASAP, especially if you're a non-US backer.

This has been a bit of a flurry of updates, and I expect there will be one or two more in short order, as we roll forward with shipping and with pulling together the reference sheets (playbooks etc).

Cheers

Josh

2 week shipping warning
almost 5 years ago – Fri, May 10, 2019 at 01:31:47 PM

Hi everyone

After a slightly longer-than-expected round of corrections to our print files, the print run has commenced and the books should be at our UK distribution partner on or around 23 May.

What this means is:

• For US customers, a shipment will be despatched to our US partners IPR. I would guess they will start shipping rewards on to you about 2-3 weeks later.
• For everyone else, rewards will be sent to you directly from our UK partner.
• It is obviously very important to make sure we have your correct address on Backerkit before your reward ships!

If you're going to be moving house on or around the above dates, or are having any problems with Backerkit, then do please drop me a message and I'll do my best to get it sorted.

I will also be at UK Games Expo, with the UK Indie League, so if anyone wishes to collect their reward there, I can arrange that. Please let me know ASAP if you intend to do that.

I'm super-excited about getting Flotsam out to you! We are very close now.

Cheers!

Josh

Printers go!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 03:06:30 AM

Hi everyone!

I have a tale of woe and triumph to spin you, but if you're short on time, the TL;DR is: after some delays dealing with quality control, Flotsam is at the printers and should be ready to ship by early May.

Still here? I shall begin with my Tale of Woe. The ToW began when my printer told me they wouldn't do a physical proof for Flotsam, and that "digital proofs" were industry standard now. The game designers among you will probably have heard plenty of other Tales of Woe from designers who didn't get a proof and lived to regret it. So I dug my heels in hard and got them to send me a loose-leaf proof, printed out as part of another print run for some other customer. The proof arrived a few days later and wow, I'm glad I asked for it. The colours are washed out, the images kind of grainy - not at all the level of quality that I want you to get from Flotsam.

So I ring up the printer and we get to the nub of it. As some of you may have already guessed from the above, the print run was an inkjet printout, not a litho (offset) print run as I had expected. For those not familiar with the jargon, this basically means it's cheaper but much less high-quality. My fault for not checking thoroughly enough - I hadn't appreciated that there was a middle option between laser (POD) and litho (offset). POD would actually have been higher quality, but very expensive. Having got this info, I sigh inwardly and ask for a litho quote, which comes back but about £850 / $1000 more expensive. And by the way, they really won't do a physical proof this time, so I won't even know the quality until I receive my 1200 books.

My layout artist and I immediately start a dialogue about how we can reduce the risk of quality issues, but in the mean-time I decide I'm going to do some more shopping around. And this is where the Tale of Triumph comes in. Most of the printers I reach out to are more expensive and/or can't do a physical proof, but I manage to find one that will offer a significant saving over my original plans. And although they don't normally do physical proofs, when I ask they immediately suggest a simple solution - print off 10 sample pages to give an indication of quality. The sample pages come back and... wow. What a difference. I've photographed the two proofs side-by-side below so you can see. If you zoom in you can really see how grainy the inkjet one is compared to the litho one.

Anyway, the bottom line is, sorting this out has delayed things by 3 weeks, but the result is you're getting a much better book. I've now ordered the books and it's expected to take another 3 weeks for the printing to happen, after which shipping will commence.

There's probably going to be a flurry of updates over the next month. You can expect to hear from me:

• When we're approaching shipping time, to finalise your addresses if you haven't already;
• When the reference sheets (including playbooks and situations) are ready to share; and
• When we commence shipping.

I'm very much looking forward to sending you your books - not long now.

Cheers

Josh

The proof of the pudding
about 5 years ago – Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 05:49:34 PM

Hi everyone

The last month has been a bit exciting here in the Black Armada household. Alongside all the usual frenetic activity of a game design business, we've had chicken pox outbreaks (child A had it two weeks ago and is now recovered; child B is still pretty spotty), and a frankly ridiculous spike in workload in my day job. So I've been feeling very glad to have got past the peak of my personal involvement in Flotsam's development in earlier months.

The good news is that despite all the above horrors, we've made lots of progress:

• The final version of the PDF is ready and I have just distributed it to you on Backerkit. (If you haven't had an email notification about this, you can get it here.)
• The print files are ready and have been sent to the printer to produce a physical proof. I'm expecting to receive it in the next week or so.
• Stí has begun layout work on the reference sheets for the game.

Assuming there are no unexpected problems, I'll then hit the button on the print run, which I would expect to deliver three weeks later. So we could have physical copies of Flotsam ready to ship in early/mid April.

One last thing! If you haven't seen already, Flotsam is available for pre-orders for people who missed the Kickstarter. It would be wonderful if you could share the pre-order link on social media, to help get the game to as many people as possible. The pre-order store is here: https://flotsam.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

I'm so excited about getting Flotsam into your hands! It's so close now.

Love

Josh