You can expect this to be the last update on Despair Dilemma until we have another project ready for crowdfunding, and we wanted to take this chance to give an overall update on the year! We have a more detailed EoY wrap up in our discord server going over everything if you want more details - but we decided to keep this one brief!
Despair Dilemma is Shipped Out!!
Firstly, we wanted to let you know that Despair Dilemma is entirely shipped out and we've gotten confirmation that at least some number of books have successfully crossed the border into the USA despite the issues we were having earlier. We have discovered a slight issue with some backers receiving their second tracking codes, so if you haven't received one please feel free to get in touch with me so I can send it your way.
There have also been some delays due to the holiday season, so we're sorry if you don't get your copy until the new year.
With that said, we can finally wrap a bow on this project, at least for now!!
What's Coming Next?
People keeping an eye on the projects we've been playtesting will already know about Mugen Taikai, a drafting autobattler card game we've designed to replicate the experience of a shonen battle tournament and TCG draft in less then an hour! We're happy to announce that the game has been signed on by Level 99 Games, the team behind Millennium Blades and BattleCON. They'll be finishing the development, while we work on other projects! If you've played their games in the past, you'll know this is something to be excited about.
Speaking of, we've been hired on by their team to develop a TTRPG set in their World of Indines universe. This is incredibly exciting for us as huge fans of the setting. Most of the work for this game has already been done, but we'll be finalizing and refining things in the background over the next year or so. I hope you'll be there to see how things turn out!
We cant share many more details on either project for now, but keep an eye out for further updates in 2026!
We Want to Hear From You
Other then those projects, we have a lot of ideas for things we want to work on. Last year, to help us make decisions, we did a consumer survey to find out what people in our audience would be most interested in us doing.
These were never a promise of course, and we don't believe in working on something we're not passionate about (I don't think you can make something good in the way we do if you're not). But they did help us a lot in making decisions and understanding how feasible certain projects might be.
So for 2026, especially since our audience has grown so much since that point, we wanted to set up another one:https://forms.gle/sRADTBSWPqYwkPDG8
All of the questions are optional, so don't feel too stressed about answering everything. That said, we want to hear from you! If you have any questions, we have a "Survey Discussion" channel open in our community discord.
I'm happy to announce, that after some frustration with US shipping, we've none the less successfully gotten all orders ready! They're currently sitting in front of our apartment ready for the postage team to come and pick them up on Monday morning! Here's a photo from my sister, who just received her copy last week!
We may be tactically smoke testing a small number of these first just to make absolutely sure that there are no issues crossing the border this time, but for the time being - everything is done! We will have everything shipped out easily before the end of the year, and while it may take some time to get to your location depending on the circumstances, you should already have your tracking number!
If you have any errors, damages, or other issues, please refer to our guide from Update #5 on what to do. We do ask that if you haven't received your tracking code to please give your email a double check before getting in touch with us, just for the sake of saving us time. We do understand that there's likely to be some number of errors given we're a small team and new to this scale of shipping, so we've prepared ahead with enough resources to get you anything you missed out on.
What's Next?
For the most part, this is the signal that the campaign is finally at its final stage of fulfillment. Many of you may have seen the somewhat viral video from Saeiouth pitching our previous Perfect Draw!, and admittedly this has kept us fairly busy for the last few days alongside getting shipping done. Myself and Iris will be taking a well needed break over the holiday season, but you should probably expect at least one more update around the end of the year confirming that things have gone well.
With that said, at the end of fulfillment for our last project, we also did a Consumer Survey that helped us figure out what to work on next. This was a chance for backers and fans of our projects to share their insights into what projects we've been working on behind the scenes that they'd be interested in. Of course, we believe keenly that good games are made by people who are passionate about their subject-matter, so we aren't going to do just about anything. But we have a lot of ideas and betas brewing so it's helpful to do things like this every once in a while to guide us. Most likely you can expect this in the next update we mentioned earlier.
We're already publicly playtesting some of the projects from the last survey in the Discord server if that interests you at all! We may actually have some exciting news regarding one of these projects and what we'll be dedicating a good portion of our dev time to soon. But I can't reveal anything for the time being.
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In the meantime, I hope you have a lovely holiday season! Best wishes, Nora Jean Haynes
Our work on shipping everything out is going well! Australian Backers have started receiving their packages, and global backers are starting to be shipped to their location.
With that said, we've hit a small snag with United States shipping. Due to an error with Zonos, a tool used by our postal service to pay the new tariffs to the USA, a majority of US orders have been returned to sender. This means delays to the shipments of packages to the states as we:
Wait for the packages to return
Submit refunding requests
Print new labels
And send everything back off
We'll also need to be 100% sure that the integration is set up properly this time before sending anything off.
What does this mean for you? Ideally not much. However, it does mean:
Your package will get shipped off later then we hoped
If you've been sent a tracking code, that it is no longer correct. You may receive an email letting you know the package has been returned to sender, but you'll need to wait for a new tracking code to know when your package will actually arrive.
Some of you will have already started getting tracking codes from us for your copy of Despair Dilemma! We wanted to wait and make sure things where going smoothly before making this update properly, but we've shipped out about 20% of orders!!
This should represent almost all Australian/New Zealand backers and a portion of US backers. We're hoping to get the rest of the 80% done over the next couple weeks, but resourcing this as two people in our living room can be inconsistent, so we're not going to make any promises. With that said, we'll do everything in our power to make sure that everything is shipped off before the end of 2025 at the least.
Please note that if you're in a more niche area without a lot of other backers or from somewhere with more complicated customs systems (such as the UK), we'll likely be completing your orders around the end of the process. Additionally, we processed our orders around the start of November, so if you added your address or finalized payment after that time, we'll be reprocessing those orders after the rest have been completed.
The actual time to get to your address will depend on your region, but you should get an estimate from AusPost when you receive your tracking number from them.
What to Do in the Case of Errors or Damages
Now, myself and Iris are doing this by hand ourselves, and while we're doing our best to keep everything tracked, double checked, and correct - it's likely that there will be some number of errors. That's even before we get into possible issues occurring during shipping or printing errors unique to your copy of the game.
We've made sure to order about 20% more of each of the book, playing card deck, and perspective markers then we needed to make sure that in the case of these sorts of errors we can provide you with a replacement.
If you receive your copy and:
Your package is missing one of your rewards
One or more items has been damaged during travel
One or more items have significant printing errors
then please get in touch with me at [email protected] with a photo and any relevant information about your order.
If you don't receive your copy for a significant time after receiving your tracking number, then we request that you please get in touch with the shipping company first to make sure this isn't an expected delay of some kind. Especially as we're hitting the holiday periods, there are likely to be some amount of back up that will cause delays. If they're not able to help, please feel free to get in touch with me afterwards.
Once we believe we've shipped out everything, we'll make an update to let you know. If you still haven't received a tracking number by that point, you should get in touch with me and I'll check what's happened or if you've slipped through the cracks. There should be a good number of extra copies in the worst case that we can use to resolve problems.
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Thank you for your time, Nora Jean Haynes
P.S. When you receive your copy, we'd love for you to share it with us on our Discord Server! Its always a joyful experience for us to see people with their copies in their hands after so much work getting it done! When you do! Let us know if you're okay with us sharing your photo in a future update like this also!
Yesterday morning, we finally received the pallets from the factory with all of the copies of Despair Dilemma!! We've opened a few copies on our end to make sure everything is up to the standards we expect - and as far as we can tell everything is perfect! The book feels great to read through and it's brilliant to finally have this in our hands.
Fans of our previous crowdfunding project Perfect Draw! will be happy to know that we've set things up so the spines of each book line up with each other. While the variance present in any book printing means that it's likely it won't line up *perfectly*, I can promise you that the shared spine designs look great next to each other on a shelf.
Next Steps
For us, the next step is just going to be getting the books shipped off to you all! The books came a bit earlier then we expected, so we're still locking everyone's addresses in the back end, but once that's done - we'll start our next few weekends of getting everything sorted properly into your orders and sending them off.
Most likely we'll be sending these off roughly by region - so for example, you should expect most books in the USA to be delivered with each other. If you had any issues with your survey, now's the time to make sure it's all resolved! We'll do our best to get the books to you so long as you get your survey done and card charged, but it's likely you'll face some amount of delays if things don't get resolved soon.
You can expect our next update post to come once we've sent out the first set of copies (probably to Australia first since that'll be the easiest for us).
-- Thank you all greatly and have a fantastic rest of the week! Nora Haynes
