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Secret Unknown Stuff: Escape from Dulce - Co-op Sci-Fi Fun!

Created by Sentient Cow Games

Escape from Dulce is a collaborative, sci-fi dungeon crawler for 1 to 5 players. Choose from one of 8 hilariously bizarre characters, who have been imprisoned on the bottom level of Dulce Base and have just awoken after a Cryo-Pod malfunction. The players must blast their way through a base full of self strategizing human and non-human enemies, as they attempt to traverse the seven nefarious levels of Dulce and escape to freedom.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Escape from Dulce Teaser Trailer 2021
almost 3 years ago – Sun, Jun 06, 2021 at 10:41:42 PM

We know it's been a long time, but we really hope you enjoy this little teaser trailer for the next campaign! We don't have an exact date set, as we're all still working through some issues with our parents, which is something I would expect myself to say as a teenager, not a grown man. Anyway, we hope this gets you all excited for our next campaign!

So, I'm sure you all have more questions, so we'll be doing a little fire side chat video later this month to talk more specifics about this new campaign, where we're going, and what took so damn long. If you have anything specific you want us to cover, please moo in the comments section below.


In addition to the second printing of EFD, we’ll also be offering 2 expansion packs, each containing 2 adventures that can be played as one-offs or part of a larger campaign! You probably know some of this already, but not all of it. =)


The red box, “More Mayhem in New Mexico”, first gives you “The Hidden Shrine of Umugatu” where you must help Sir Reginald the Cleaver navigate the lizard man infested caverns under Dulce Base and confront the Lizard Man God, Umugatu. 


After that we’ll take you on “Joey Fixit’s Wild Ride” which details the exploits of our heroes and their new primate friend, Joey as they fight their way across the desert to hijack a UFO!


The blue box, “The League of Evil Somethings, Part 1”, finds our band of misfits flying to northern California in their newly acquired UFO to unlock “The Mystery of Mount Shasta’. Blurry the Sasquatch will be your tour guide as you learn about his family, clockwork soldiers, the dreaded Uber Robotor, and the Cosmic Cows that live within the mountain. 


Once you deal with the problems in Mount Shasta, it’s a quick jaunt down the coast to Santa Monica, where you’ll aid your old friend Kaltar the Atlantean with his “Attack on Atlantis”. Fight fishmen galore and defeat the evil Sharkasaurus to take back the throne for Kaltar!


While we still have the purple box, “The League of Evil Somethings, Part 2”, in the works, the adventures for this, "Journey to Point Pleasant" and the "The Hunt for the Jersey Devil" are being moved to the back burner right now for various reasons. Don't you worry, they're still coming, just not part of this campaign.


We’ve got a lot of weird stuff planned and he hope you’re interested in taking this journey with us! Stay tuned as we get closer to the drop date! Moooooo!


Also, an extra special thanks to Joel, Brian, and Sean, for use of their song “Trust”! This video would not have been possible without my old friends. 


Moo to you soon!

Weller, Donna and Craig


Sometimes You Gotta Go Back to Your Roots
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 11:30:59 PM

An average day at Sentient Cow Games

Have you ever had a crazy thought, and it led to another crazy thought, and another crazy thought, and then after pinning up all those notes on the corkboard, you had another crazy thought? Yeah, that's pretty much Sentient Cow Games in a nutshell. 

The hardest part is figuring out how to connect all those thoughts in a coherent way and making sure all the colored coded pieces of yarn are wrapped around the right pushpins. 

And then you have to bust out the old Underwood, because the computer is just too New School.

We always planned for Secret Unknown Stuff to be a trilogy of big box games with multiple expansion adventures for each, but we didn't quite have the whole story figured out. While we still have a lot of details to work out, we now have a solid road map, time map, intergalactic map, and The Last Diner in the Universe established to get us to where we need to go! 

Escape from Dulce + 6 expansion adventures, to The Hollow Moon + 6 expansion adventures, to Lost in Time +6 expansion adventures. Adventures are mostly planned for 2 in 1 packs, but there might be something else we can't talk about ... that... oh never mind.


Ok, let's cut to the chase, what you're looking at is a pixie stick fever dream I had last week. It's full of tons of stuff that has inspired us for what we're doing story-wise. Absolutely everything in this photo connects to something that we have planned, whether it be in Attack on Atlantis, The Hollow Moon, The Ghost Ship of Nikola Tesla, Lost in Time, or any of the other things we're not going to mention just yet. Every single thing in this photo has a meaning. As Stan Lee would say, "Nuff Said!"


When everything is said and done, we hope people will go back and realize we've seeded things throughout the series that connect in ways you're not going to expect. And the end of the series will hopefully bring a tear to your eye. We want to give all the characters multiple possibilities for happy endings. It's just going to come down to who survives in Campaign Mode. 


So, Cows and Cowettes, dig into the photo. Zoom in. Check the book titles. Figure out the what's in the thought bubbles. What's with all the other props on the table? What's wrong with these people?


It's time to get some pushpins and some yarn and see what you can figure out! While we'll probably be a little evasive and not give you straight answers on anything, we might point you in the right direction and pose some other questions for you to think about. 


This is the first of a couple of giant Easter Egg Hunts coming your way. Stay tuned! There is so much science yet to drop!


While we're planning bigger universe stuff, we've not forgotten about the new adventures, and they are coming together delightfully! Picnic Baskets, Deadly Mushroom Spores, Surfing Aliens, an AMC Gremlin, The Mothman Bowling, The Bartender of the Dead, and Clockwork Nazis, oh my! Hahaha, I'm re-reading this and realize that George Takai should be narrating this! Ok, a new post it note has been added to the board!


So everyone, please sound off! What do you see? How do you think certain things might fit together? Who is that guy? Who is that other guy? Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Paprika? What is wrong with these people?


Hoping you are all well, will live long and prosper!


Weller, Donna and Craig

Sentient Cow Games


A New Cow Year, Full of New Cow Goodness!
about 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 07:50:39 PM

Happy Moo Years to all! We hope you and all of yours are safe and sound, and even if we can't all see each other, let's all raise a glass of something together for getting through this year!

It's been too long since we've had one of these little fireside chats, but we've got quite a bit to share with you. If you're super busy, check the SHORT VERSION.

If you got some time, sit down, put your feet up, and check out the LONG VERSION.

 SHORT VERSION

BAD NEWS: 2020 sucked. A lot. We didn't get as much done as we needed to, due to other work we do to pay the bills, family health issues, and the tribe of Lemurs from Planet Shmoo, which has taken up  residence outside our headquarters. The next Kickstarter will not be dropping in January.

GOOD NEWS: 2021 is gonna rule!!! The next campaign will drop when it's ready. Updates to the base game, including new scaling enemies! More storytelling! The new expansion adventures are just as expansive as the base game, filled with some new mechanics, new monsters and snazzy new weapons and gear. Encounter and Loot cards are specific for each adventure. No more mixing card decks with these new expansions! All of these adventures will tie into Hollow Moon, and Lost in Time in thematic and additional gameplay ways*. In a nutshell, you'll have 4 brand new adventures, and some fairly big updates to the base game coming your way soonish.^

Footnotes:

* So let's say you've completed "The Mystery of Mount Shasta". Let's say you get a "Summon Card". Let's say it let's you summon a bunch of Cosmic Cows or some Sasquatches. Let's say you can carry this card over to future games, but you can only get it by completing this adventure. Cool?

^ We will launch when everything is ready. Nothing will be half-assed. We're hoping for 3-6 months, but we'll see. I'm worried about those Lemurs!

 LONG VERSION

BAD NEWS: 2020 sucked. A lot. A whole lot. We're a small company and we adjusted as best we could. Up until this year, all three of us split our time pretty evenly between working on what we'll call "Cow Stuff", and side gigs to pay our bills. Most of this year has been us each putting in 40 hours in our side gigs, and finding time to fit the "Cow Stuff" in when we can. Don't get me wrong, we're all very thankful we still have work and can pull in paychecks, considering everything going on, but we just haven't been able to do this full time like we used to.

My father's been in and out of the hospital since mid-October. He's got a lot more health issues now than he had earlier this year. It's been a challenge on many levels, and it's affected my ability to work on "Cow Stuff". 

These *%$#@*&!!! Lemurs! 

GOOD NEWS: 2021 is gonna rule!!! Seriously, you have no idea! Let's break this down.

Escape from Dulce 2.0 - The Re-Escapening: Ok, the biggest change we're making to the base game is updated enemy cards that scale with your adventure. We've seen a party of 5 tear through enemies in the second half of the game like they're made of cardboard a bit too often, so we wanted to rebalance some things. 

Old Cards VS New Cards

Ok, let's use the Grey Aliens as an example. In the original game they always had 4 Health and 0 Armor, no matter where you encountered them in the game. In the new version, they will still have 4 Health and 0 Armor when they are found on the bottom three levels of the game (6,5, and 4), but when found on the top three levels of the game (3, 2, and 1), they get a bit of an upgrade, having 6 Health and 1 Armor.

These changes will be slightly different for each enemy type, and apply to the Boss Commanders as well. This will allow players to adjust the overall difficulty of the game much easier, and give those that are gluttons for punishment a way to seriously ramp up the difficulty!


Another fairly large change will be to the game manual. We're going to pull all of the Special Missions out and put them into their own smaller manual. This will give us a little room to expand in the main manual, not only clarifying some things a little better, but breaking the game up into smaller chapters for folks who prefer to play that way. It will be six chapters, one for each game level. 

We'll also be layering in some more storytelling. More backstory on certain things, more silliness, and more character interactions to help players get a better sense of who these characters really are. 

The new manuals will be available as free downloads, but you'll also be able to purchase physical copies. The new enemy cards will also be available to purchase in the next KS campaign. Updated tokens are still coming for free for anyone who previously purchased the game.


2 in 1 Adventure Pack 1 (Red Box)

This contains the adventures "The Hidden Shrine of Umugatu" and "Joey Fixit's Wild Ride". For those of you who missed out on these the first time they were released, "The Hidden Shrine of Umugatu" takes our heroes into a deeper part of the caverns under Dulce Base. Here, you'll meet Sir Reginald the Cleaver and aid him on his quest to find and defeat the lizard man god, Umugatu! Hope you packed your best fur loincloth for this old school adventure!

The second adventure, "Joey Fixit's Wild Ride", takes place right after you escape the base and find yourselves in the middle of the desert. Our heroes are approached by a super intelligent chimpanzee named Joey Fixit, who drops a whole lot of science on them. He claims he was sent from a secret base on the Hollow Moon to facilitate our heroes' escape. Joey tells them of a coming invasion from the moon and that they must help him gather allies for the coming war, but first they're going to need a way out of the desert. He points to a small UFO sitting on a landing pad in the distance. "That's our ride!" 

This adventure tasks our heroes with fighting across the desert and commandeering a UFO all while the base continues to spit out enemies to hunt you down. We advise wearing your brown pants for this one!


Most of the updates to this pack is in the form of component upgrades. The game board will actually be 2.5 or 3mm folding board instead of the paper maps included in the original version. One side will be the map for Umugatu and the other will be for Wild Ride. 

The updated version will also include a 2 piece box with a plastic insert to easily store all components, as well as minis of Sir Reginald the Cleaver, Umugatu, Joey Fixit and the Tall Grey Alien Commander. Here are renders of the sculpts by Raul Tavares, and photos of 3D prints from our good friend Mark at Noble Dwarf, to use for demo purposes. Final production minis will have more detail and none of the blemishes from cutting off the support sprues.

Sir Reginald the Cleaver
Umugatu
Joey Fixit
Tall Grey Alien Commander

In addition to these upgrades, we'll also be expanding both of the adventure manuals a bit and fleshing out more bits and pieces and adding some more character interaction. A good villain should always be taunting the heroes along the way, so you better start practicing your best dinosaur voice!


Some Notes on the New Adventures

These things are much larger in scope than the adventures in the Red Box. Each adventure has it's own unique Encounter and Loot card decks, so no more having to mix cards from the base game. Each adventure also introduces 2 new enemy types in addition to a boss, as well as a whole host of NPC characters. The gameboards themselves are larger than the ones in the Red Box, with more encounters and longer play times. 

Similar to the Red Box adventures, one adventure is for lower level characters and one for higher level characters. Each 2 pack can be linked together to form a longer campaign if you wish. 

All graphics shown below are considered a work in progress and subject to change as we continue playtesting and tightening things up. 

While we're not going to get into tons of detail, there might be some minor spoilers below for those who want to go into these adventures completely blind.


2 in 1 Adventure Pack 2 (Blue Box)

This baby right here contains the brand new adventures "The Mystery of Mount Shasta" and "Attack on Atlantis". Both adventures come packed in a 2 piece box with a plastic insert to store all of the components. 

The 2.5mm to 3 mm game board for these adventures is a whopping 22" x 34"! One side for Shasta, the other for Atlantis. Other components for each adventure will be listed below.


"The Mystery of Mount Shasta"

First stop is northern California to track down Blurry the Sasquatch, and as soon as you land in the forest on the slopes of Mount Shasta - you can see something's not right! Giant trees felled, small fires burning in the underbrush, dozens of boot prints and what appear to be tank treads. You exit the UFO to locate your ally Blurry, who has returned here to find his village destroyed and the rest of the Sasquatches gone.

"The Mystery of Mount Shasta" sees our heroes, now joined by a fully playable Sasquatch, exploring the forest for clues. Help locate the scattered members of Blurry's tribe, then find a way into the dark heart of the mountain, where an ancient race and something far more evil await you! If you are not quick, and let too many Sasquatches get captured, Uber Robotor and his minions will take over the world!


Shasta is broken up into 2 Acts: The Forest, and The Mountain. Each Act consists of 10 Encounters, then culminates in the final battle with Uber Robotor. 

Components will include Blurry the Sasquatch file folder (making him a playable character), 1 Uber Robotor mini and various boss cards, 7 Clockwork Trooper standees and enemy cards, 7 Ancient Lemoorian standees and enemy cards, 45-55 Encounter Cards, 85-100 Loot Cards, various tokens, chits and other cards.

Uber Robotor

"Attack on Atlantis"

After the chilly mountainside of Shasta, our heroes are ready for some sun and surf, so they're heading to the Santa Monica Pier to meet up with Kaltar the Atlantean. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight, so Kaltar started a fish restaurant in this city full of wonderful weirdos! 

Before you can find a parking space at the beach, what looks like a giant gleaming city erupts out of the ocean and chaos breaks out on the pier. Find Kaltar at his restaurant and fight your way down the pier to begin your "Attack on Atlantis"! Help shop owners on the pier for special rewards, maybe borrow a boat to head out on the ocean, or explore the area under the pier while looking for a place to pee. Whatever you do, don't take too long or the evil Sharkasaurus will summon the Kraken and destroy the coastline!


Atlantis take place over 3 Acts: The Pier, The Ocean, and Atlantis. Each Act consists of 6-7 Encounters, then you'll have to defeat Sharkasaurus in the Atlantean Throne Room.

Components will include Kaltar the Atlantean file folder (making him a playable character), 1 Sharkasaurus mini and various boss cards, 7 Atlantean Infantry standees and enemy cards, 7 Atlantean Calvary standees and enemy cards, 45-55 Encounter Cards, 85-100 Loot Cards, various tokens, chits and other cards.

Sharkasaurus

2 in 1 Adventure Pack 3 (Purple Box)

Hope you're ready for some more weirdness as we head off on a "A Journey to Point Pleasant" and then go on "The Hunt for the Jersey Devil"! Both adventures come packed in a 2 piece box with a plastic insert to store all of the components. 

The game board for these adventures consists of a series of 5" square double sided tiles that are 2.5mm to 3 mm thick. Other components for each adventure will be listed below.


"Journey to Point Pleasant"

After your adventures on the West Coast, it's time to head East, specifically to Point Pleasant, West Virginia. You've tracked Maury the Mothman back to his home turf in the hopes he'll go to the Hollow Moon with you. You arrive to find a distraught Maury and the whole northern half of the city covered in a strange green fog. Maury's arch-nemesis, Dr Terry (SPOILER: Also a Mothman), has kidnapped beloved actor Richard Gere, and is planning on unleashing another terrible calamity on the city!

You'll start in the southern part of town searching for clues to the whereabouts of Dr Terry and Richard Gere. The evidence you uncover leads you over the Silver Memorial Bridge into the fog covered northern section of the city. Be sure to check out key buildings like the library, the hospital, and Al's Bowling Alley! Maybe Cat Lady Jenkins, Dr Finkelstein, or Albert Plotz know something! Are they shady and weird? Yup! Before long you'll find your party in a network of tunnels underneath the city, populated by a race of Molemen and giant sentient mushrooms. Rescue Richard Gere before time runs out, then face Dr Terry on the Silver Memorial Bridge for your final showdown!


Point Pleasant is broken up into 3 Acts: Southside, Northside, and The Tunnels. Each Act consists of 5-12 Encounters, then culminates in the final battle with Dr Terry. 

Board setup for this will be pretty easy. Take the 5"x5" tiles for this adventure and shuffle them. Place 5 in a row from left to right. This is Act 1: Southside. Above this row of tiles will be the river (not playable as an encounter area) with the bridge leading north. Above this are 2 more rows of tiles making up Act 2: Northside. A good number of these tiles will have flip sides that are Act 3: The Tunnels. 

Components will include Maury the Mothman file folder (making him a playable character), 1 Dr Terry the Mothman mini and various boss cards, 7 Mole Miner standees and enemy cards, 7 Giant Funguy standees and enemy cards, 45-55 Encounter Cards, 85-100 Loot Cards, various tokens, chits and other cards.

Dr Terry the Mothman

"The Hunt for the Jersey Devil"

After escaping Dulce Base, Mikey the Goatboy hitched a ride to New Jersey, the Pine Barrens specifically. You land in the middle of a small clearing and step off the ship, just as Mikey appears out of the forest gloom. "A few decades ago, something terrible happened here. Some people decided to mess with something they shouldn't have and it released an evil that has been corrupting the forest and everything in it ever since. It's also become a spectral magnet for a certain type of spirit." 

You thought it was a trick of the moonlight earlier, but as you squint your eyes, you see dozens of ghostly men and women, mostly clad in ethereal leather. Glints of light off of bullet belts and metal studs; transparent guitars and drum sticks in their hands. They coalesce in the center of the clearing and a tall, thin man with greasy long black hair, giant mutton chops, and what looks like two cocopuffs glued to his left cheek struts his way to the front, tips his cowboy hat and says, "Don't sweat it mate! We're on your side!"

Explore the Pine Barrens searching for the cause of this mischief, while fending off attacks by corrupted forest creatures (The Opossums are the worst!) and Evil Cultists on Motorcycles. Follow the Jersey Devil's trail to the Graffiti Highway outside of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Your UFO can't land in the abandoned town, so you're going to have to get yourselves a new set of wheels to beat the cultists to Centralia. Thankfully the kid running the local Sheetz has an offer for you, and you pile your crew into a 1974 AMC Gremlin and head out on the highway!

As you enter the abandoned town, you see huge fissures in the ground, spewing toxic clouds of gas and sometimes small bursts of flames. Mikey explains that a mining accident decades ago lit a pocket of coal under the town and it's still burning to this day. Literal hell on earth seems like an appropriate place for you final showdown with the Jersey Devil!


Jersey Devil take place over 3 Acts: The Pine Barrens, The Graffiti Highway, and Centralia. Acts 1 and 3 consist of 6-8 Encounters, and Act 2 is kind of it's own thing (More on this in a bit). After all that you still have your final fight with the Jersey Devil.

Board setup for this adventure will vary by Act. Act 1 will consist of 8 tiles, some of them rotating, limiting your path progression. Act 2 will be 2 large roadway tiles (5" x 12.5") that are swapped out as you progress down the highway and battle enemies. Act 3 will be another 8 tiles that are flipable, so there will be some adventuring under the town of Centralia.

Components will include Mikey the Goatboy file folder (making him a playable character), 1 Jersey Devil mini and various boss cards, 7 Evil Forest Creatures standees and enemy cards, 7 Motorcycle Cultist standees and enemy cards, 45-55 Encounter Cards, 85-100 Loot Cards, various tokens, chits and other cards.


The Jersey Devil

So, now for the big question on everyone's mind, "When is the next Kickstarter campaign?!" The answer: We're not setting a date right now. 

There have been sooooo many stops and starts with these projects, and we don't want to keep setting goals we can't live up to. Right now there are a lot of thing up in the air that could seriously affect our ability to get these out in a timely fashion, so we're taking it a day at a time. 

While we haven't been able to make the progress we hoped for, we all still plug away at this every day. There's still a lot of work to be done on Point Pleasant and Jersey Devil, and we have a ton more playtesting of everything before we're going to feel comfortable bringing this to market. 


We're not going anywhere as a company. Creating this stuff is our life's blood. While this past year has been incredibly challenging, taking the time to let these adventures breathe a bit and having the courage to throw out things that weren't working and starting over, has been a blessing in disguise. They will all be better games for it. At the end of the day, isn't that what you want?


Take care of yourselves out there. It's a weird world.

Weller, Donna and Craig

Sentient Cow Games

Well, what do we have here?!
over 3 years ago – Sun, Sep 06, 2020 at 04:37:35 PM

Hello Cows and Cowettes!

While we're making great progress with ironing out the wrinkles in the new expansion adventures we'll be dropping in January, we've also been busy with character development for the Hollow Moon, which should be coming your way in January 2022.

We gave you some brief character descriptions in an update a few months back, but now we've got some initial visuals to share with you. For Escape from Dulce, we worked very closely with my old friend, Mo Moussa, to develop the characters and he ended up doing all of the final illustrations of them. 

Mo and I have been friends for 25 years and have worked together developing visuals on tons of things over the years. We finish each other's sentences and then keep building on ideas and bouncing things back and forth until they get to where they need to be. That's usually when we're both laughing.

Mo is a very busy man these days, and while he probably will not have the time to do the final illustrations, he generously sat down with us on a Zoom call to work out initial illustrations of a few of the new characters. Getting him to be a part of this process again means a LOT to us. 

Please keep in mind, this is not final art, but we love where the character designs are going and wanted to let you in on the fun!

We'd like you to meet Feldspar, Princess of the Moon Trolls! When the aliens started hollowing out the moon to make their base they found an indigenous race living below the surface. These beings stand  roughly 8-10 feet in height, are comprised of living rock, and had built a relatively advanced society. 

The aliens initially feigned peace, and the King of the Moon welcomed them with open arms. It didn't take long for the aliens to betray and murder the king, and enslave most of his people. Feldspar and the rest of the Moon Trolls were used as slave labor to tunnel deeper and deeper into the moon as the aliens expanded their base and seemed to be searching for something.

Five years before the events of EFD, Feldspar, Joey Fixit, and Sir George led the first uprising against their alien oppressors. Since then, their resistance has worked from the shadows to try and free their allies and friends. Part of this plan was to send Joey to earth to free the inmates of Dulce Base for reinforcements when the time was right. 

These two good boys, are Dextros and Ciciros! As the space race started on earth, innumerable test animals were launched into space before everyone was confident enough that a human could survive. Many of these test flights were intercepted by the aliens and the  "pilots" taken to the Hollow Moon base for further study and  experimentation. Some of these dogs were given incredible intelligence in an effort to plant them back on earth as sleeper cells for the coming  invasion.

Dextros and Ciciros are a two of the grandchildren of original batch of dogs the aliens abducted. Dextros is parts pitbull, chow, and border collie, while Ciciros is a fierce little chihuahua pincer mix. They were part of the initial group of animals freed by Sir George in the very first uprising, and now play a key role in the resistance.

This intergalactic cephalopod with delusions of self-grandeur is Klung the Conqueror! No one's really sure when or how Klung came to be on the moon, and while he loves to tell tall tales about past conquests, he keeps his motives and cards close to his chest. 

After being freed from one of the test labs, he agrees to an alliance with Princess Feldspar and the rest of the resistance in exchange for a way off of the moon and the opportunity to kill as many of the aliens responsible for his humiliating imprisonment as possible.

His personal hoverpod is outfitted with a variety of advanced weaponry and he can blend into his surroundings at will. He also has very shifty eyes!


Alright, hope you all liked that little Hollow Moon preview! We've got another character planning session next week, so we'll be dropping some more character concept art soon.

You'll also be seeing a lot more about the new expansion adventures over the coming weeks. We've got a lot of fun weird stuff coming your way, and we hope you're as excited as we are!

All of the Best!

Weller, Craig and Donna

Sentient Cow Games

Howdy Stranger!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 02:14:21 AM


We hope this finds everyone safe and in good health. It's been an interesting few months, and that's putting it mildly! We're thankful that the Covid 19 rates have been going down in most parts of the world, and hope most of you can get back to some sense of normalcy. 

Things are still pretty sketchy in the US, especially here in Los Angeles. We've been playing it smart and safe, but it's been one challenge after another. 

On the bright side, I just got back from a little trip thanks to my brand new Time Map, and Craig got himself a Crystal Skull! 

Tin Foil Hat, check!

 Because of these recent acquisitions, the new Kickstarter started yesterday! What are you waiting for?
 

Sigh..... if only it were that easy.

I was hoping to write this update telling everyone we'd be launching the next kickstarter in September, but it's looking like we're all going to have to wait just a little longer. This was by no means an easy decision, but it's what we need to do to help ensure the next campaign can be as successful as possible.

Well Raylock, the good news is we will be launching in January 2021, so hopefully it's not that much more of a wait!

Another great question! There are multiple reasons for this delay that we'd like to lay out in the hope of being transparent about why we are making the decisions we are making. For sake of clarity, let's break them down into three categories: Business Decisions, Financial Concerns, and Personal Issues.

1. Business Decisions.  There are a lot of variables that go into bringing a game to market and if we make a miscalculation on something, it could ruin us as a company. Please remember, we are three people working out of a small second bedroom that functions as Cow Headquarters. None of us takes a salary. The little money we make we put back into the company. 

The lack of conventions this year was another reason we had to push out the the next campaign.  We depend on these, not only as promotional events to help spread the word and build hype, but also to playtest the new adventures. So there's a lot less people we can turn on to our weird world, and we have had to spend a ton more time playtesting things ourselves.

The lack of playtesting also set back our schedule to get prototypes of the new adventures out to reviewers. We need to have at least a couple of reviews for the new material before we launch, and it usually takes reviewers 3-4 months to have a video to post. 

Another big reason for this decision, is that there are currently millions of people that are out of work and having trouble making ends meet. This situation has only gotten worse in the past few months and we want to wait until people can get back on their feet financially before we launch. 

2. Financial Concerns. The next campaign is going to feature not only a second printing of EFD, but three 2 in 1 Adventure Packs, and an upgrade pack for the original two adventures. We have to produce a minimum of 1000 for each of those items, so we are going to need a much larger initial goal than we did for that last campaign. To hit that goal, we need to draw as many people to the campaign as possible. With so many people out of work right now, we feel it makes more sense to let everybody get in a better spot before we launch.

Taxes and lack of other costs to offset them is another problem we're running into this year. If we launched in September and the campaign ended in 2020, we would be liable to pay taxes on whatever we made by April 2021. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal as we would use all of our normal yearly convention costs and related business expenses to offset this. We only did 2 conventions this year, as opposed to what we normally would. With no money to offset that tax bill, we could end up with a shortfall of resources, which could cascade into other financial problems with shipping and import/export fees.

3. Personal Issues. I hoped to avoid talking about this, but if I'm being transparent with you, I'd be remiss not to touch on it. Back in late February, my father was diagnosed with stage 3 Pancreatic cancer. Our world was personally turned upside down and it left us unable to focus and function as a company for a couple of months. All of our time went into trying to find a path forward for my dad. He gave me some great advice when we started this company. "Plan the work and work the plan." So we came up with a plan for him and we're working it. 16 weeks of chemo and his situation is improving. 

In addition to having to deal with that jerk, cancer, Craig and I have both had to deal with job losses that have left each of us scrambling for a bit. We're all in a better position now, but you have to make sure the rent is paid and you can keep the lights on, before moving on to the fun stuff. 

I know none of this is fun to talk about but we wanted to be honest with you about the reasons we're making these decisions. We're in a really good place as a company right now and can weather this storm, but we have to be very careful about the path we navigate. At the end of the day, if there are going to be delays we'd prefer them on the front end, where we have more control of things, as opposed to the back end where we'd just be chasing problems. 

We haven't been sitting on our laurels here at Cow Headquarters, as we've continued development on The Hollow Moon, and even have a good chunk of Lost in Time plotted out. We've been striving to tell a truly amazing story with this trilogy, and want to give everyone a wonderful memorable ending to our story. We also want to make sure we don't end up writing ourselves into a corner. =) Remember how disappointing the endings to some of your favorite TV shows were? 

So based on the strides we've made with Hollow Moon development, we should be able to launch that and it's first 2 expansions in early 2022! (because KS doesn't let you launch a new campaign before the current one has shipped - hooray!)

In other cow news, we're all very excited to announce that Tim Kask will be writing the introduction to the next version of the EFD Rulebook! While he's not a house-hold name to most people, Tim was the very first employee at TSR, hired by Gary Gygax in 1975. He was the editor on all of TSR's early publications, and the creator and editor of Dragon magazine. 

He talks about it briefly at the end of Curmudgeon in the Cellar #131, so I'm pretty sure we have his blessing to let you all know. Go to 42:23 in the video to hear it in Tim's own words. This means A LOT to us, and has been one of the highlights in a frustrating year.

We're also completely redoing our website, have the new EFD expansion video mostly story boarded and  a rough cut put together, and have a killer song by my old friends Plow United that they've graciously allowed us to use for all things Dulce! Hope you dig it!
 

 With the exception of Amelia and Raylock, none of our escapees had previously met, before trying to escape together. They had to trust each other and that can be difficult when you have a group of aliens, abductees, and genetic experiments. We think this song nails that feeling!

Also, each line in the first verse describes one of the eight playable characters. Any guesses?

Last but not least, we've been making slow but steady progress trying to get this adapted into a TV show. This started about 3 years ago when we were approached by a fairly large media company that was very interested in what other things EFD could be other than a board game. Plush Baby Raylocks! Hattori Lunchboxes! Escape from Dulce the Flamethrower! Kaltar Underoos! An EFD Musical!

We laughed at the ridiculousness of some of it, but thought we could at least get a comic book deal out of it. Meetings were had. Emails were sent. We pushed more for a serialized TV show and they saw the potential in it. Legal contracts were sifted through. Lawyers were hired. 

After a year, we just couldn't come to an agreement that made any sense for us, but we learned a lot by going through that process. We figured if one company saw the potential of the stories we wanted to tell, there had to be another company that would feel the same way. The script went through some more drafts and we plotted out an 8-10 episode arc for EFD. We put together a look book to help sell the script. We got actors and a showrunner interested. It's weird to say this, but we got an agent. 

We've since gotten the script and look book in front of a few other companies / individuals and we're working to make inroads with whoever we feel will be the right fit. Of course there are no guarantees any of this will happen, but we're extremely hopeful based on the feedback we've gotten. 

While our main focus continues to be on creating great games, we have been trying to expand into other media in the hopes that one day we'll be able to bring you a Dulce comic book, or maybe even a Dulce TV show or cartoon! How friggin' cool would that be?!

Now who wants a cameo as a Dulce Guard in the show?

MOOOOOOOO! - Weller, Donna, and Craig