Hey everyone! Nora here.
The books are in!! Just a couple days ago, we received the final proofs in the mail, and after checking everything we could, I'm glad to say we were...
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Nora Haynes
18 days ago
The Last Leg of a Long Journey
Hey Everyone!! Nora Again!
Happy New Years!! I hope you'll all have a great 2025.
Last February, we launched our campaign for Perfect Draw! and it did so much better then...
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Nora Haynes
about 1 month ago
Holiday Production Update!
Hey Everyone!
I hope you're doing well, and I hope you're all having a great holiday season. I wanted to give you all a short production update on the book and keep everyon...
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Nora Haynes
about 2 months ago
Physical Proofs Are In! - Perfect Draw! Production Update
Hi y'all! Nora again!
Now that everything is properly up and running, this'll be a fairly short update. That said, we're happy to say that everything's ...
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Nora Haynes
2 months ago
Physical Book Production Updates - When will you get your book?
Hi all! Nora again!
If you've been following the campaign from the beginning, then you know that this project went well above our expecta...
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Nora Haynes
3 months ago
Perfect Draw! Physical Books are Avaliable to Preorder Now!!
Hi everyone! It's Nora again!
We've been hard at work getting Perfect Draw! ready to ship to backers as well as building up our new projects in the background. We're really ...
The books are in!! Just a couple days ago, we received the final proofs in the mail, and after checking everything we could, I'm glad to say we were able to approve the game for mass printing and shipment to backers. The hardcover especially feels fantastic, it's just the right size to feel sturdy but still extremely usable. I'm really excited to see the game get into people's hands!
We're actually slightly ahead of schedule from what we had predicted last time we gave an update, so we can ideally expect things to go pretty smoothly from here. The production company is already printing copies of the book for backers, and we've sent in the final shipping information to our distributors.
We'll likely have more news soon, so be on the look out for shipping updates in the coming few weeks.
Thank you all so much for joining us on this journey! Keep an eye out for updates regarding Despair Dilemma as we get closer to its launch, and for more information regarding the future of Perfect Draw! some time a little after then.
Happy New Years!! I hope you'll all have a great 2025.
Last February, we launched our campaign for Perfect Draw! and it did so much better then we ever could have dreamed. Admittedly this success made a few things difficult - we originally intended to use printing services and warehousing that just turned out to be impossible at this scale. We wanted to get people their core books printed shortly after the book and booster pack finished, but at this scale things got a good bit more complicated and we wanted to make absolutely sure people got the best product they could.
In May, we announced our collaboration with Japanime Games for a retail release of Perfect Draw! This was something we were in talks with for almost the whole time since we realized the project had gotten too big for us to handle alone, but we'd finally gotten everything sorted through at this point.
In June, we released the core game on Itch.io to major success! We're still one of Itch.io's best selling TTRPGs ever - not quite breaking past things like Lancer, but still doing awfully well compared to what we had expected even with the success of the crowdfunding.
In July, we announced the exciting news that thanks to our collaboration, we were able to not only get a color cover created for the book, but also vastly improve the quality of both the hard and softcover versions of the game.
In August, we finally released the Booster Pack, the expansion containing all of the exclusive content unlocked from the crowdfunding campaign - we even included a few other cool ideas we wanted to add in but weren't technically "unlocked". I'm still deeply deeply proud of some of the design in this book and believe it's some of my personal best work.
In November, we finally sorted out the production issues we were having with our printers and resolved the communication issues where they incorrectly assumed a size for the book that created some frustrating delays. Nonetheless, this meant we were finally getting proofs made and sent our way!
And now, just hitting January of the following year, we're finally in the last leg of things. In only a week or two, we're expecting the final proofs to reach our doorstep so we can approve them - and from there, books will start arriving in the shipping yard. This process can be its own confusing one (carriers can be difficult), but there's a golden lining on missing the holiday shipping season.
Last Chance to Finish Your Backer Survey
I wanted to take this chance to give one final reminder that this is your absolute last chance to finish your backer survey and change any details. If you've moved address, your card has failed to charge, or you never completed your survey at all - this is the last time that I can do anything to help even in extreme circumstances.
If you need to change your address, are having issues charging your card, or otherwise need assistance, please contact me directly at [email protected] and I'll do my best to help.
Download the Free Demo Kit by Clicking the Image Here.
As the design portion of Perfect Draw! begun wrapping up, we began working on our next project - Despair Dilemma: A Death Game Mastermind TTRPG. This new TTRPG is designed to replicate the kinds of Death Game stories you see in DanganRonpa, Squid Game, or Zero Escape, with victims putting their lives on the line to win, argue, or scavenge their way to survival.
The crowdfunding campaign for Despair Dilemma will be launching this March alongside Backerkit's upcoming "Pocketopia" campaign. However, just like we did with Perfect Draw! we want to make sure everyone gets the chance to play the game early so they can decide if our project is something they could be interested in! To do this, we've released a completely free Quick-Play Demo Kit featuring the Locke Mansion Death Game in the same style as Perfect Draw!'s Rising Star Tournament.
We have a ton of extremely exciting news to announce about this game later as we get closer to Pocketopia. We're really excited to see the kinds of terrible despair-filled stories you create in our new game.
-- That should be all for now, so thank you all so much for your time and may this year be better then the last in every way imaginable,
I hope you're doing well, and I hope you're all having a great holiday season. I wanted to give you all a short production update on the book and keep everyone up to date on how things are going.
A couple weeks back we received the soft prints and gave our feedback. There were a few changes we requested to be made - and they've made them! Based on this, the book is looking fantastic!
However, making these fixes did take a couple weeks and the production timeline has been pushed back just a smidge to match. We can now expect advance copies to be approved by the 16th of January and everything to be ready in the dockyard by the 20th.
To speed things up, we've requested our publishing partner to check things themself and approve from here. This reduces the frustrating time it takes for books to get to Australia - which is famously long and difficult.
Thank you all so much for your support and understanding! We hope you're as excited as we are for our next projects - but we'll talk about those in more detail as people start getting their books in hand!
Now that everything is properly up and running, this'll be a fairly short update. That said, we're happy to say that everything's on track! A couple days ago, me and Iris received the soft proofs from our publishing partner (these are a series of unconstructed proofs designed to confirm the printing quality is up to the standards we expect).
We found a few minor adjustments we've requested for the printers to make - but otherwise everything looked absolutely fantastic! I'm really excited to get this in everyone's hands, cause the hardcover felt really good to peruse through.
Thank you all so much for joining us on this journey, and I'm so glad people have been enjoying the game. The stories channel on our Discord has been an absolute joy! There's been a few rough steps, but that's to be expected with a project that did so much better then expectations I suppose.
Reminder: If you've changed your address since we locked shipping, you can get in contact with me directly at [email protected]. This is the fastest way for me to get things done, so please don't be afraid to get in touch.
I hope you all have a lovely holiday season, Nora Jean Haynes
If you've been following the campaign from the beginning, then you know that this project went well above our expectations. To make sure we could get copies to everyone and that the book's quality would be to a high standard, we began working with Japanime Games as a publishing partner. This caused some delays in our shipping timeline already due to needing to get all of the administration done, but we worked hard to make up for that by improving the final product in a number of ways (such as colour cover art and higher quality paper).
We had expected our printers to begin production up to two months ago; however, due to a mistake from someone in their team, they begun formatting the book for a 6x8" size instead of the A5 size the book was built to. It took us a bit to realize that the changes they were requesting were the result of this, and we only figured it out in the end because they had requested a redesign of almost every page in the book.
After talking it through, we received an apology from them, but this still meant further delays in how long it would take us to get our book in your hands.
With that all said, with this whole debacle sorted out, we finally have a proper timeline from them.
Core Book Production Timeline
Nov 22: Soft Proofs Approved for bulk printing.
Dec 10: Covers approved for binding
Dec 23: Advanced copies approved
Dec 30: Books arrive in ship yard
Jan 6: Books ready to ship across the world
From there, how long it takes to get into your hands depends on your region and any complexities within your local shipping processes.
What if I need to Change my Address?
We needed to lock addresses in a few months back to ensure we had the data necessary for our publishing partners, but we understand that these delays may have lined up badly for people who have since moved. If you've moved or expect to move before the books ship out, you can contact me personally at [email protected]
I'll update your shipping information personally and make sure it goes to the right place.
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Thank you all so much for being understanding, and I hope you have a great week, Nora Jean Haynes
