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

Updates on the Next Campaign and a Packet of Goodies!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 02:38:47 AM

Okay folks, we're getting ready to go public with details of our next campaign. Two updates ago, we gave our original backers a sneak preview of our plans and got great feedback. 

We've continued to flesh things out and put everything together in one cohesive packet to get everyone really excited for the next campaign. We figured this was the easiest way to share EVERYTHING we've got up our sleeves. 

Click the image below to download a kinda top secret 20 page PDF with all the details.

Now a lot of this is a rehash of our huge update we did for backers only. We haven't added any new items, but we have a whole bunch of new art of all of the new enemies, that is seeing the light of day for the first time.  The enemies run the gamut, from truly terrifying, to weird and wacky, just as you'd expect!

Please feel free to share the PDF link with anyone you think it would appeal to. We're going to need to grow the ranks of the Cow Army a bit to get this next one funded!

Our next convention will be PAX Unplugged on December 6, 7 and 8. Those of you in the Philadelphia area should check it out if you haven't gone in the past. It's a giant madhouse of a con, in the heart of one of our favorite cities! Stop by and we'll eat cheesesteaks until we're all sick!

Until next time, keep it weird!

Weller, Craig and Donna

A little something to hold you over...
over 4 years ago – Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 01:28:30 AM

Cow Headquarters has been a hot bed of activity lately! New sculpts and illustrations are rolling in every couple of days. Playtesting and development are moving forward. A convention in Los Angeles and a convention in Maine have all kept us very busy. 

First off, here's the final colored art for The Mystery of Mount Shasta adventure. Pencils and inks by the ever wonderful Ron Joseph, and color wizardry by super talented Jesse Heagy. Feast your eyes!

We also got the sculpt in for the Tall Grey Alien Commander, the boss for Joey Fixit's Wild Ride! This guy has been drinking his milk and working out! Click on the image below to view him in all his spinning glory. Behold!

A huge thank you to everyone that gave us input in regards to what we're offering for the next campaign! We'll be dropping another update later this week with a slightly more fleshed out version of what we previously shared with you. It will be a multi-page PDF that you can download and share. 

In the meantime, we wanted to give you all a little something to hold you over until the new stuff comes out. Click on the link below to download a copy of a brand new Special Mission, The Multidimensional Egg of Dr. Smitkka!

While we did not personally attend Apple Con in Maine, last month, we had a very special Cow Army Ambassador that ran demos for us. D&D OG Tim Kask told us that he would be at Apple Con as their special guest, and he wanted to run short demos of Escape from Dulce for us. He asked us to create a new Special Mission that would allow him to teach the game in about 90 minutes. When Tim Kask gives you a quest, you take it! 

If you're looking to introduce EFD to some new gamers (and why wouldn't you?), this would be a good place to start. It covers the basics, as well as introduces two of the allies, and has multiple boss battles, all in a condensed period of play time. It's also a little more forgiving for new players, especially if you play with the rule that no Robots appear. This little request was made by Tim personally, as he hates those little buggers!

Let us know what you think of The Multidimensional Egg of Dr. Smitkka, once you get a chance to get it to the table. You all know how important your feedback is to us.

That's all for now. Expect some more Cow Goodness later this week!

Weller, Craig, and Donna

Top Secret Preview of our Next Campaign
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 01:58:25 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Mega Gigantic Super Fun Update!
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 10:06:19 PM

Well, hello there stranger! I know we haven't chatted in a while and we needed to remedy that. We hope everyone has been well and enjoying their various escape attempts!

Things have been incredibly busy here at Cow Headquarters. We've done 5 or 6 conventions or events, pulled off a small viral marketing miracle, got to meet some D&D royalty, created a bunch of player aids, and got a lot more development done on the expansions, all in the past 2 months. And Tacos. We ate a lot of tacos, too. We've been busy and have had full bellies, so life is good!

Let's start with the new stuff! We weren't sure if our schedules would align, but we're super happy to announce that we got the incredible team of Ron Joseph (pencils and inks) and Jesse Heagy (colors) to do the cover art for all four new expansions! These guys are responsible for the EFD box cover, as well as some of the other larger pieces peppered throughout the game manual. These guys are both getting huge in the comics industry and we're very thankful to have them come on board!

Here's a little taste of things to come!

Not only will these new expansions be a little meatier than the first two, but they'll each have unique enemy types, and interesting twists and turns to keep seasoned players on their toes! We're having way too much fun writing these, and we just know you're going to love these new adventures before we all blast off to the moon!

Progress is being made on all four expansions and we'll continue to share details and offer up more teasers as we approach our next Kickstarter campaign. We're still shooting for a late summer / early fall release, and will keep you all appraised of the situation. If we need to push things out a little bit, just to make sure everything is the best it can be, we'll take that step. You can't rush epic-ness!

While development of the expansions has taken up the lion's share of our waking hours, we also spent a bunch of time putting together a number of player aids to, well, uh...aid players. A number of people have told us they wished there was an easy way to save their progress with the game, so we created a bunch of downloadable resources to help players with this. Below, you'll see character save sheets, as well as campaign save sheets for both the short and epic campaigns. Just click on the graphic and you'll be taken to the Cow Army google drive where you can download these and print as many as you want. 

We also had a member of the Cow Army tell us that they were having a really hard time shuffling the Loot cards, due to their small size. Well, we didn't want arthritis or anything else keeping someone from having fun, so we put together a sheet that allows you to roll dice to determine what loot you find. This can also serve as a master list for the three Loot Decks. Click on the pic below to download a 6 page PDF.

Now onto a little craziness! We've posted this on social media, so a chunk of you have already seen it, but for those of you who missed it:

Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin record their Fatman Beyond podcast from the Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood and we got tickets to go see them do any episode on April 20. If you haven't checked out their podcast before, we highly recommend it! They talk all things nerdy and geeky and sometimes dig into the weird forgotten corners of it, like one of our all time favorite indie comics from the 80's, Grimjack!

We brought a couple of copies of EFD with us to spread the fun and well, we'll just let you take a look. We recommend watching the whole episode, but if you want to skip to the parts with us, go to about 39 minutes in to see Kevin's reaction when he first notices the games on the bar, and then jump to 2:22:30 to see us talking to Kevin and Marc about EFD. 

We were stupid only bringing two games and regret our poor planning, but we got Marc a copy of the game the next week. Elliot, the One-eyed Jedi, (shown in pic with Kevin) was the guy who answered the trivia question and won a copy of EFD, and boy was he jazzed about it! He worked for the Jim Henson company for years as a creature designer and couldn't wait to get home to paint the minis.

We drove home that night with us all thinking, "Wait, did that really just happen?!" It was one of the most surreal moments in all of our lives. How could anything crazier happen? Well, a few days later we got a message from a gentleman named Tim Kask.

While not a house hold name, Tim Kask was influential in TSR's early days, and was their first full time employee, hired by Gary Gygax in 1975. He worked as an editor and helped smooth over the rough spots of what would become Dungeons and Dragons, as well as heading up Dragon magazine for it's first few years. 

A couple of weeks earlier, Craig noticed that he was going to be in Los Angeles as the guest of honor for an auction of D&D memorabilia. We told him a little about our game and asked if he'd be interested in getting together to play. While the concept intrigued him, we just couldn't get together due to timing. 

We sent him a copy of EFD and he started messaging us with some questions, and then he started talking a little bit about EFD on multiple episodes of his "Curmudgeon in the Cellar" podcast. This led to an hour and half Skype call with Tim, a man who helped create a game that opened new doorways into our imaginations and set the wheel in motion to us becoming game designers. While opinionated (There's a reason his podcast is called The Curmudgeon in the Cellar), he was incredibly humble and treated us as peers, telling us some of the new things he's working on and asking us what we had up our sleeves for the next release. We filled him in on a couple of the expansions and started going back and forth with various ideas. So Tim Kask is responsible for some of the details in "The Mystery of Mount Shasta" expansion! 

And for the second time in a week, we had another very surreal experience! It just blows all of our minds that a man who helped create a game that brought us so much fun is now playing our game with his friends and having a blast with it! I guess the circle is complete.

We recommend checking out his podcast, especially if you play D&D. Here's one of the episodes where he gives EFD some glowing praise, which was another astonishingly surreal moment. While you should check out the whole episode for more context, jump to 23:04 and he'll start talking about EFD in a bit. 

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! 

Tim, we still have to get together to play!

So this all brings us up to present day, where I'm typing this from a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio. We flew in last night and start set up for Origins game fair tomorrow morning. It's going to be a very busy week for us, and if you're in the area, stop by and see us! We'll be in booth 467 and would love to see you!

Expect another update before the end of the month. There is a ton of fun coming your way!

As always, thank you for your support. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

Weller, Craig and Donna

Sentient Cow Games

To the Moon... and Beyond!
about 5 years ago – Thu, Apr 04, 2019 at 11:22:39 PM

Well, that was a crazy couple of weeks! Conventions, events, and final shipping ate up all our time. When we weren't sleeping or watching The Umbrella Academy, we were busy finalizing our plan for world domination! HAHAHAHA MOOOHHAAAA HAAAHAHAMOOOOO!

Actually we've been working on the next releases, but it would be cool if that somehow led to world domination in a laid back, non-bossy way. Like if the Dude from The Big Lebowski was in charge. I digress.

We've got a LOT of plans with the world of Secret Unknown Stuff, and to make it easier for everyone to wrap their heads around it, we put together this handy dandy graphic covering our current plans for the next 3-4 years! While this is by no means everything we have up our sleeves, it should give you a good idea of where we're going.

All of the new expansions are going to be a little bit meatier than the first two, each with it's own set of new, unique enemies, as well as a new Boss Commander. And there will be minis. We've got the amazing Raul Tavares, who sculpted everything in EFD, currently working on Sir Reginald the Cleaver! 

While illustrations are still in the early phases, here are tight pencils of some of the horrors that await you in Attack on Atlantis! 

These guys are the basic enemies you'll be facing and boy are they ugly! A mix of all manner of deep sea terrors with a touch of cybernetics thrown in, these baddies will prove to be worthy adversaries! 

Chosen from the upper classes of Atlanteans, these elite warriors serve as an honor guard to Atlantis' ruler and guide the near mindless Atlantean Shock Troops. Usually found riding giant mechanical Sea Horses, they strike terror in creatures below and above the water.

The big baddie. After Prince Kaltar went missing, the Evil Sharkasaurus usurped the throne, but one kingdom was not enough for him! He now has his evil beady shark eyes set on taking over the surface world and only you and your weird band on misfit heroes can stop him! We've said it before, but we'll say it again; Good luck! You're gonna need it!

Please let us know what you think of our future plans and let us know what you want to see in addition to all of this. We've got some other ideas for things, but would love to hear from you. 

As we move forward to our next campaign, we'll keep you informed of everything and hope to get our Kickstarter page up a month before the campaign launches so we can get your feedback and make adjustments to things as requested and needed. 

We're really looking forward to sharing this next batch of adventures with you before we all blast off to the moon next year. The fun is only just beginning!

Thank you for taking this journey with us,

Weller, Donna and Craig

Sentient Cow Games