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

Board Assembly with Professor Scientist!!!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 01:07:05 AM

Howdy Cows and Cowettes!

Today we have a great creature double feature of videos, starting with board assembly, starring the ever lovable Professor Scientist and the ever hairy Weller. The Professor seems a little lost without his trusty assistant Ray, but still gives it his best!

Speaking about the Professor, we have a ton of footage of him and assistant Ray wandering the halls of various game and comic conventions. We'll be working on a new video detailing all of their adventures over the past six months and hope to bring it to you in the coming weeks. This is something we've been trying to put together for a while but unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day.

Now let's move on to our second feature, a video all about game setup! While this and the board assembly are covered thoroughly in the game manual, we realized that we hadn't done a setup video of the final version of the game, and wanted you to see how everything looks when it fills up the table. Grab your popcorn and enjoy!

The Professor's assistant, Ray, showed up right as the video cut to bring him a fresh pair of pants and take him back to Dulce.

Next week Craig and I will be doing a playthrough of the starting board, Level 6, the caverns under the base! We'll show you how to start a campaign and take you up through the first boss, the Lizard Man Commander! We'll be doing a lot of explaining, as well as just playing the game, so this will likely be 45-60 minutes.

We are also planning on playthrough videos of The Hidden Shrine of Umugatu, and Joey Fixit's Wild Ride. There has also been talk of assistant Ray recently taking up breakdancing and we're trying to arrange a meet up to follow up on this. If you have suggestions on what you would like to see in future video features, please let us know!

Until next week, keep your eyes to the skies and your feet on the ground!

Weller, Donna, and Craig

Expansion Unboxing and More!
over 5 years ago – Sun, Dec 09, 2018 at 10:30:07 PM

Hello Cow Army!

Well, we just returned from PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia and it was a great experience! We saw some old friends, made a bunch of new ones, and inducted some new members into the Cow Army. If you live in the area, we would highly recommend this for next year. Here's a couple pics!

Now, for the reason you're all here, another unboxing video! Today's video is all about the expansions. While we don't get into gameplay, we cover all of the components and get into each of the new stories a bit. Hope you enjoy it!

As an added bonus, here's a second video of Craig and Weller talking more about the Box Top Expander (TM) and showing you exactly how to fit the assembled legs back into the box. Pay attention, as there are some minor Tetris skills required!

Next week we'll be dropping another video showing basic set up, as well as some gameplay of EFD to get everyone excited for delivery!

Speaking of delivery, the games, expansions, and everything else is on two giant ships right now. One is headed to the US for our stateside backers, and the other is headed to the UK for our European friends. Both ships are due to make port on January 8. From there the games have to pass through customs and then moved to each of our fulfillment centers where everything will be shipped from.

In other news, we had a great creative meeting yesterday where we hashed out more of the story and new gameplay elements for the next round of expansions. Concept art has been started. Maps are being drawn. Cheesy jokes and pop culture references jotted down. If playtesting goes well, we hope to offer these on Kickstarter in late spring / early summer 2019. A little something to hold everyone over until we visit The Hollow Moon!

Alright, that's all for now. We'll be back next week with more Cow goodies!

Weller, Donna, and Craig

Unboxing Video! :D
over 5 years ago – Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 12:34:09 AM

Hello Cow Army!

Our manufacturing is complete and Ningbo Eastar sent us some photos of our plethora of pallets ready to ship! The 2-in1 expansions are not in their cartons yet in the photo, but do not fear, they will be in nice protective cardboard boxes before they ship.

Eastar, Quartermaster, and OTX are all working out the shipping details right now and initial feedback as of Friday is we should be able to get this all on the ships by end of the week. We will let you know if anything changes with that and share the manifest info once it is all finalized. After that it should be 4-6 weeks for it to travel across the ocean, go through customs, and arrive at Quartermaster and the other distribution centers. This still puts us at Jan for the start of shipping out to all of you.

Now on to the photos! :)

 We also got our final production copy of the core game and the expansions. While we have had many samples sent during the manufacturing process it is very rewarding and exciting to see everything in it's final version! We are very happy with the end results and could not have been happier with our experience working with Derek and Ningbo Eastar on this!

Behold the UNBOXINATING!!

 We will be sharing more videos as the games are in transit. We will be doing a 2-in-1 expansion unboxing, a "how things are assembled" video, some basic game play and set up videos, some expansion play throughs (spoiler alert will be added for those who want surprises), and more!

Reminder that we will be at PAX Unplugged in booth 1858 so stop by and see us if you will be there! We will do the next update once we get back and share more game videos, shipping updates, and convention pics! :D

'till then, EXCELSIOR! and MOOOOOOO!!!

Donna, Weller, and Craig :D

A short but (very) important update about shipping!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 01:07:48 AM

Hello Cow Army!

Our manufacturing will be done end of this week and heading off to the port for the long sea voyage! One step closer to delivery!

With that said, we want to make sure everyone has their correct addresses in Backerkit. Please let us know if there are any changes before December 7th just so we have enough time to get any updates over to Quartermaster and their partners.

While the numbers are very low, we do still have a few cards that errored and surveys that have not been completed. We will be sending out personal emails to anyone on that list to give them a chance to make adjustments before we start shipping.

We are still looking at shipping beginning in Jan and will keep everyone updated if anything changes.

We will be getting our final production samples this week so look for some fun unboxing videos and other cool stuff in the coming weeks!

If you are going to be attending PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia please let us know and you can pick up any shirts and patches you ordered while you are there. We will be in booth 1858. Unfortunately we will not have copies of the game to pick up yet as they will still be on boats but we will have the production copies to demo along with the first two expansions!

As always, if anyone has questions, please contact us through Kickstarter, [email protected], or through Facebook. :)

All the MOOOOOOOs!

Donna, Weller, and Craig

A Very Meaty Update
over 5 years ago – Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:53:02 AM

Hello Cow Army! We've been working our cow butts off tightening up little details for manufacturing to make sure the final product is top notch. Ningbo Eastar has been great to work with and extremely responsive to to the little tweaks we've been requesting.

A lot of these adjustments were related to making sure the game boards fit together just right. If the joints are too loose, the board won't be stable and is likely to fall apart if you try to move it. If the joints are too tight, you risk tearing the paper during assembly, so there's been a lot of back and forth to ensure that everything is just right. We're very happy to announce that the latest sample we received fit together perfectly!

We also decided to have all of the cardboard components printed with a linen finish and everything looks amazing. It was a bit of an additional cost, but we wanted to make the best quality game we could, and you are all worth it!

Another very cool thing we got in the latest round of samples was the first set of component blisters for the game. The bottom blister has places for all of the cards, as well as the oversized stat check dice. It even has extra spots for the cards from the 2 in 1 expansion if you picked that up. The top blister has individual spots for all 18 minis, the combat dice, and areas for the enemy standees and all of the other various components. We've giving you a whole bunch of little baggies to keep everything organized, and streamline game set up. The samples we received of the these are clear, but the final versions will be black. The top blister also has a clear lid to keep everything in it's proper place.

We suggest at this point that you go to Youtube and put on "Playing Your Game, Baby" by Barry White, to set the mood, because this video is sexy! Here's someone at factory putting most of the stuff into the box. Those of you with eagle eyes will notice that it's not a complete sample, and missing some of the minis, and the slider clips are the wrong color. The character file folders shown are not diecut and printed on normal paper, instead of cardstock. With that said, we still think it looks sexy, so check it out!

How was it? We thought so. =)

As of right now, most of the components are complete and will start being packed into individual boxes next week. Everything, including the expansion, will be ready to ship to our distribution center at the end of the month. Shipping to the distribution hub will take about six weeks.

Now for a little bit of bad news. I'm going to pull the band aid off quickly and let you know that you're probably going to receive your copy of EFD 4-6 weeks later than we expected.

We know, this sucks. None of us are happy about it either. We only just learned of this a few days ago, and we'd like explain the issues we ran into.

While Ningbo Eastar has been a great manufacturing partner, we have been exceedingly picky about every little detail, and this has led to an additional 2 weeks of manufacturing time that we were not expecting. We feel that if you're going to do something, do it right the first time. Don't cut corners. Ever. We had to make the decision to ship a slightly inferior product on schedule, or take a little extra time to ensure everything is perfect. We chose the latter.

Last week we heard back from Quartermaster, our fulfillment partner, with an updated shipping quote. Our last quote, from six months ago, had us still tracking to have games delivered in December. We were informed that due to increased shipping volume for the holiday season, they did not think that was likely. We were crushed.

So, here's the revised timeline of how everything should work. Games will arrive to the US in mid December at the latest. At this point, they have to go through customs before they are delivered to Quartermaster. This might take a bit longer than normal due to the holidays. Once Quartermaster receives the games, they said it will take them about a week to get everything organized before they can start picking and packing orders.

If everything goes according to plan this means that QM will start shipping games somewhere between late December and mid January.

We know this will be a big disappointment to all of you, and we're very sorry. We've hit all of our milestones up to this point, but unfortunately there are some things that are out of our control. We hope you understand and we're sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

If you have any questions please hit us up in the comments and we'll be nothing but honest with you. We're very sorry for the delay, but we hope you understand that a bit of it was due to making a better final product, and most of it was due to circumstances out of our control.

As we're finishing up production and getting into the shipping phase, we'll be sure to keep you updated along the way. There will be another update coming very soon, so stay tuned to this cow channel!

Weller, Craig, and Donna

Sentient Cow Games