I owed this kind of update earlier, but we were so excited, I had to convince Melissa to let me have a play date with Letty so we could go on celebratory walks (and maybe enjoy a few treats). Adventuring Letty is happening! And to all of you, regardless of your pledge level, you are a big part of making this happen! We are humbled and very grateful.

I think my intention was to have today's "24 hours to go" update really be focused on more of the design decisions that went into the game, maybe even feature a little bit about the longer roadmap for the game, and something more personal about why I'm even doing any of this game stuffs, but let's keep this one short. I'll share a few ideas with y'all.

First, crowdfunding enables us to manufacture and deliver the game to our "fulfillment center." That's what makes this whole effort - or makes the Adventuring Letty game - feel real. Melissa and I have also discussed how we can give back to our community, support education around dogs, advocate for adoption and animal services and the like. Where we've landed is to make a commitment that a big chunk of the revenue from any copies of the game sold after the conclusion of the campaign will be used to support the Chicago Animal Care and Control group - the folks who found, cared for, and facilitated Letty's adoption by Melissa. Crowdfunding gets us to the first step of having a product, and of course getting you a copy of the game to play.

Everything we do after crowdfunding will have an aspect that ensures other animals who are looking for their forever home can have the best chance at finding their persons, and living long happy lives. We're still in the early stages of sorting out the more mundane aspects of how this will work - paperwork, ensuring we do everything by the book, making sure the way our future contributions will get to the right organization, etc - boring, not fun but necessary work to ensure we're setup to support animals like Letty for the long haul. We're going to try our best. If it wasn't for these organizations, Melissa might not have met Letty, and ---well let's not even go down that route. Letty is great.

Second, let's talk stretch goals. In the beginning, we had left some ideas on the cutting room floor when it came to shaping and designing this product. Some of those things were just out of reach for the minimum order quantity we would have to manufacture, and since I was going to take deliberate approaches to this campaign, some of those ideas would have to wait. As you know we kept our pledge levels low as much of our target audience was new to crowdfunding, but we still wanted to bring a high-quality product. We're not a few folks in a garage tinkering away at a weekend project - we're looking to build out from Adventuring Letty into a wider array of games of all types and themes. We needed to ensure with this first game that we had reasonable expectations and so we didn't go total ham.

That said, if we blast upwards through 20% of our goal - maybe even 15%, I'll need to double check - some of the upgrades to the product will be possible. There's a story for another time about how tight margins are in the gaming industry - more informational than a sob story - and how even little upgrades like card quality or packaging design can have an impact on the manufacturing price. Total rabbit hole: Even changing the quantity of cards in the game, could lead to needing a deeper box, which means fewer copies of the game would fit into the shipping container, and on and on - it's less "house of cards" (ha, puns) and more of a "domino effect" to make small incremental changes. However, as I mentioned, our intention was to make as reasonable and high quality of a product as possible. If you weren't already a fan of Letty (or even Melissa or Mr. Nick) there's a good chance you were drawn into this game based on the illustrations (ha, more puns). We hope our core product will keep that good feeling going straight through to when we land the games at your doors.

So what happens if we make it significantly beyond our goal? Well we've 24 hours, less by the time I'm done editing this, left in the campaign. Let's say if we nudge up 15% past our original goal, we'll put out a poll for what kind of upgrade we should make available to everyone's pledge. No additional cost to any of the pledges, this will be a little something extra built into the final product you'll receive. It'll be something like an increase in card quality, upgraded packaging design, upgraded Letty "token" design, something along those lines. There aren't a lot of components in the game and we don't want a frivolous promise of what's possible. We've options with a slight up-tick in raised funds. Oh and that domino effect I mentioned? We'll ensure whatever options are available to this group doesn't go nuts with shipping. (We won't make a metal-box for the packaging that'll increase the weight of the game to like a backpack of treats, that'd be nuts.) (I also just said "backpack of treats" out loud, and I think she heard me, ha!)

None, and that's good news. Everything we estimated is still the estimate for delivering on this campaign. While all good news, my biggest insecurity if another container stuck in a major shipping route. Post-campaign we'll be very transparent about how the manufacturing process is going, what shipping details look like (to get to the "fulfillment center") and other key details throughout this journey. The goal is still to have Adventuring Letty in your hands before the big end-of-year holiday rush of games starts hitting your inbox. We want you to have time to play our game before your holiday purchases start taking up your game shelves.

This evening Snakes & Lattes in Chicago is hosting a "Game Designer Night" where aspiring folks like myself will bring their concepts or fleshed out products to test them out with random (unbiased) players. While we put a good 200+ hours of playtesting into Adventuring Letty, it's still fun to play - even with my bias - and watch others play. We'll have one of our demo copies of Adventuring Letty there and be making an effort to teach and play with others. If you're in the Chicago area and want to play some games, stop on by. I'll literally be the only person in an eyepatch unironically, come say hi. (But if you do, I'm going to entice you to play.)

More text than delightful imagery in this update, I'm afraid. Though, I realize if you just read that, it's probably too late, you've already gone through the text. Derp. The post-funded exhale of stress I think might be affecting me - maybe I just need a nap. And a cuddle. And if Letty could type, she'd add "and some treats, please, Mr. Nick."

Gratitude, humility, and excitement cannot be overstated. You helped make this a reality, and I appreciate you.

Much love,
~ Mr. Nick