Hello, Boltonauts! Here is an update on the progress of our game!!

I will touch on THREE IMPORTANT THINGS and leave ONE THING DANGLING to BUILD SUSPENSE.

Also -- a reminder that I am sharing frequent WIP images and progress reports in my  Discord! If you are ever curious what the latest news is, feel free to check there, or ask any questions there.

At the tail end of a previous update, I mentioned a change to the game's title. Turns out that was a FALSE ALARM. The existing title, Bolted, will remain unchanged, except for the addition of an exclamation mark.

As you can see from the rulebook cover above, the Doctor von Gravenstein character has become a sort of instigator/framing device for the "creature-crafting" activity that's central to the game. But I've decided he doesn't need to show up in the title.

Here is a sneak peek at the box cover, with something much closer to final artwork than the WIP version I shared during the campaign!

Most of these appendages are actual parts in the game! I took some creative liberties with how they all fit together, but I think the overall effect is pretty striking.

All the head characters in this game have this same sort of blank-eyed stare (otherwise they look alive/awake, which is unsettling).

But I've attached a poll to this update to get your opinion on whether or not that look is too weird for the box cover. The alternative might be to give him cute little glasses.

As we close out the summer and stare ahead into the leaf-strewn fall, I'm eager to share some updated timelines with you, revising my earlier estimates.

I've spent the past several months polishing this game to a high sheen, in a process that's proven both exhilarating and exhausting. I've postponed other work and stayed up nights to make every part of this game as beautiful as I can.

Naïvely, I thought the game mechanics were pretty close to done when we started -- but the more I played and the more feedback I got, the more interesting ideas arose for improving the core experience, aiding replayability, and increasing strategy.

So the game has gotten better, in a way I'm very pleased with and proud of! A few new things that will be included in the final version:

These are crown tokens! They represent points!

In early iterations of the game, you scored points for placing body parts. Each part was marked with a point value.

This was OK, but it involved a ton of counting at the end. Some points were conditional ("on the left side", etc.) so it could get confusing when all you want to do at the end of the game is see who won.

Now, in the final version, you can only score points by completing rewards -- each reward card shows a particular pattern that a billionaire patron wants desperately to see:

When you claim a reward, you drop a crown token onto each part involved. ("The patron disdainfully throws a fistful of coins onto your friend.")

Now you've earned those points, but those specific cards have been marked as used -- they can't be used to claim another reward right away.

This introduces a strategic element to which cards you use to claim certain rewards, as well as how to manage your resources to "clean" or "grease" your parts so you can reuse them.

The scoring also becomes easier, because at the end, you just count up your tokens!

That's one example of how the game's evolved. Here is the breakdown of ALL components in the final game, compared to the estimates I listed in the original campaign:

So! I may have gotten a little excited and enthusiastic and added more stuff to the game! But I think it's ALL WORTH IT.

The very last thing that still remains to be finished is the rulebook. I'm trying to make it the very best it can be, both clear and concise, and it's gone through many revisions. There's more testing left to do before I'm completely confident it's as good as it can be.

Once that's done, I'm ready to begin proofing the final artwork with the factory. 

I think there's still a chance the games will ship out before the end of 2025. I REALLY HATE announcing dates that are not fully confirmed, so I will have more updates on this as soon as the final proofing process has begun and the factory gives me their timeline.

Today, what I CAN confirm is:

One of the things I'm most pleased with is how lovely all the final colored art has turned out!

Preparing the 150+ pieces of art in this game has been a labor of love -- so interesting and fun that I often had a hard time narrowing down which specific pieces to include, from all the cool vintage source material that I collected.

(In case you missed it earlier, here's an example of how I've built each game card out of individual pieces of period artwork...)

It's been a ton of work, but it's been SO satisfying getting everything just right.

There were probably another 100 pieces of art that I worked (at least a little bit) on before ultimately discarding, as I wound through the process of refining the game's contents into the final set.

My goal was to create a set of cards that maximized variety, visual interest, and fun.

They are very striking in all their various combinations!

I'll end this update before it gets any longer with just ONE BRIEF TEASER:

I have made a hand puppet of Doctor von Gravenstein and you'll see him in a video soon!!!!

Until then... keep on boltin' (???)