Thank you for your patience and apologies for the long silence. I am going to jump into Keep the Faith stuff for you all and then share some other happenings at the press.
On tariffs: We really don't know what is going to be going on in the fall. We can't know because nobody knows. We have tried to find options outside of China for Keep the Faith, and it just didn't work, not for a reasonable price at the number of copies we need printed. So we decided to go with Plan A, which is continuing to work with Panda Manufacturing. Panda has some options available to us should things become truly untenable and we are looking for warehousing in Canada as an additional option.
What does this mean for you? Unfortunately, I can't promise anything connected to tariff costs at the moment and we likely won't be able to commit to anything until they are at least on a ship crossing the Pacific. We will update you as we are able.
News currently: our copy editor has the game. She should be wrapping up with it this week. Files will be finalized shortly after that and it should be into manufacturing by the end of the month at the latest (maybe sooner). Arrival of the game should be mid to late fall (but don't hold me to that because the world is in a volatile spot at the moment).
We have also been playing with the Print and Play version of the game. We tested a version out at the Reacting to the Past Annual Conference last week and caught one small change. Tweaks are being made and it should arrive to you all in July. We plan to have a printed out copy of it at Gen Con (though we are hoping for a prototype - but that may not happen).
The curriculum guide will arrive mid-July-ish. We will need some time to format it and then send it through copy editing at that point as well. It will likely be a September arrival for you all as July sees us doing lots of preparations for Gen Con.
Other news:
You may have heard we have another project launching July 8th (we are able to do this because in May we hired on a new person! Welcome Veronica!). We wouldn't have started the next project if we didn't have the hands available and know that KtF was going into manufacturing imminently. That project focuses on two games Making History and Witch Hunt 1649. You can find more info here.
We are also launching a new series: Art and System: Games for Expanded Play in the fall. Tim Hutchings is helping us with this one. You can find more info here.
Finally, we will be at Gen Con. If you will be there come see us at our customary spot on Community Row or stop by booth 2759 in the exhibit hall where you can see and buy our games!
We wanted to jump in here before May got away from us to update y'all on a few things since our last update.
Production As last month's "Whoa whoa, slow down, partner!" post regarding tariffs, we have decided to move forward with production after all! Our original production partner on this game, Panda Game Manufacturing, will be getting the files this month, with the hope that we can fulfill backers and release into the retail wilds this fall. We did investigate other quotes from manufacturers in Europe and in the US (such as there are), but, even with the onerous Chinese tariffs in place at the moment, manufacturing with Panda remains the cheapest, best quality option for us.
In terms of how tariffs might affect US-based backers of Keep the Faith, we have not locked in any decisions about that yet. We are still actively exploring options for mitigating the effects of the tariffs on our US-based backers. We'll let you know as we get closer to collecting shipping in the pledge manager, but we don't expect it to affect shipping costs extensively.
Pledge Manager and Surveys Now that we are moving forward on manufacturing, it's time to get the pledge manager in order. You should see the Preorder Store in Backerkit open up next week. Surveys from Backerkit will be off to you by the end of May. And, once again, we'll be collecting shipping costs closer to fulfillment. We'll send out an update about each of these steps as they go live.
Let us know if you see any problems accessing the file or if you see any typos/issues (always good to have extra eyes on things). There are a few things in this draft that are a little out of date. For instance, as we have been finalizing things, we decided to shift the first player token into a card, but we haven't made the change to reflect that in the game manual yet. We're also still mucking around with font sizes and placement in the example setup images.
Spring's heating up here in the Northern Hemisphere. Stay cool, everyone!
We had hoped this announcement would be something like, "yay we are in manufacturing!" But it isn't. In part, we had planned to submit the game for manufacturing last week, but illness among a number of our team members delayed our submission. This delay may have been a good thing. With the announcement of the new tariffs, we are delaying the submission of the files a little longer. Mainly, we are trying to determine the best way to get the game to you with the least financial impact on all of us. This may mean changing our manufacturer or making other adjustments to help reduce our internal costs (this won’t be a job; more questions of warehousing, shipping, and/or packaging of the game, to name a few examples). We may have to ask you all to help cover part or all of the tariff. Before we do that, we want to analyze our options as we know money is tight for many people. Regardless, we are excited to keep this project moving forward! We hope to have an update about our progress in the next few weeks. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding in these matters.
Thank you, everyone, for your support on this project. We're super pleased we crossed the finish line and excited to get to work getting this game into your eager hands.
Next steps are of course Backerkit collecting pledges and us finalizing the game for production. We'll have some more cool previews as we get closer to production happening.
We'll also be in touch soon with details about the surveys and when they will go out.
Thank you again. If you have questions about anything in the meantime, please don't hesitate to reach out to us ([email protected]).
We're super close to the end of our Backerkit campaign for Keep the Faith. Only three days left to go! We've been bouncing around at 95% of our funding goal for a few days now. Now's the time to push us over the finish line. Share the campaign with folks you think might be interested. Or hop on board if you haven't yet backed the campaign.
And, for your information, here's a recent news blurb published on the Central Michigan University news feed of their website which has a few nice quotes about the game in that are new: https://www.cmich.edu/news/details/keep-the-faith.
