Update 8: Just in Time!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 01:32:44 AM

[tl;dr- Unlocked 2 stretch goals, 2 new stretch goals available, Brother Murph livestream postponed, Art AMA time announced]

Good morning/afternoon/evening Seekers! (I know we have folks in all timezones here, and also it takes me a while to write these updates so sometimes the salutation changes even for my own time zone!)

The big update is that we woke up to $195K! And I’ll admit, we were prepared to move forward this morning with gratitude for coming close. We were brainstorming some encouragement to help us all get there eventually. But you surprised us in those wee hours of the morning with your enthusiasm and support. Thanks to you, we’re unlocking both stretch goals today:

(1) 125 card sleeves with custom card back added to the Premium Collection, AND

(2) we’re updating every card in the game (including new cards added by any unlocked side quests) with black core and a linen finish.

What makes us extra-excited about achieving two stretch goals so quickly is that it brings us closer to achieving the next ones. Speaking of which, we revealed 2 new stretch goals this morning!

The new $210k stretch goal (Base-Tier) is for adding illustrations to all memory cards. In Kinfire, there are special story cards (“memory cards”) that you earn from making choices or achieving specific outcomes. Think of it like a memento from your adventure (that also conveniently reminds your play group what happened since the last time y’all met). You take these with you to each quest and into town, where they may unlock special encounters or unique options.

As we playtested the game, we enjoyed memory cards very much but often wished for a visual to remember them by (a few memory cards had art, but not all). When we achieve this stretch goal, we’ll make that wish a reality. Our amazing art team will review & update all memory cards, including ones from unlocked side quests.

At $245k, the second stretch goal we’re announcing is for the Premium pledge level. It’s an extra gold treasure pack! As you play through Kinfire, you will modify your player deck through new action + boost cards that you can purchase in town, earn as you level up, or obtain through treasure packs. The board game comes with all the booster packs you need (22 in total) to enjoy the game. With an additional gold treasure pack in the Upgrade Kit, premium-level backers will enjoy a little extra variety to their replays with some top tier cards.

Livestream Update:

Unfortunately I got news today that the Brothers Murph won’t be able to do their livestream tonight due to circumstances beyond their control. They’ll still be playing Quest 2 on stream, we just don’t have an official time set yet. We’ll let you know when we do!

Over in Update 7 there’s still time to vote on which sidequest Ruel Gaviola will play on his livestream on Thursday. I do have to tell him which one to prepare, so voting will end tonight and whichever quest, The Stranger or Ash and Bramble, has more votes by the time I check the Kickstarter page tomorrow morning, that’s the one we’ll do.

AMA Time Announcement:

We love reading the comments about how much you all enjoy the artwork that you’ve seen so far. Join the Art team Ask-Me-Anything (“AMA”) this week on Friday September 9th at 4pmET/1pmPT/10pmCET on our Discord server. We’ll be joined by Art Director Katarzyna “Kate” Redesiuk, Graphic Designer Ines Możdżyńska, and Senior Illustrator Sandra Chlewińska. So start thinking about your art-related questions, and feel free to start posting questions. By the way, the art team was also involved in the development of the Seekers and the vibe of Atios, so don’t forget to ask questions about character design and setting!

That’ll wrap it up for today! Make sure you vote on the sidequest you want to see streamed, and if you like this voting thing, you might enjoy tomorrow’s update…

Mysteriously,

Risa Petrone

Community Manager

Update 7: Save the date! Upcoming livestreams
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 11:35:57 PM

[tl;dr: Watch some of your favorite folk in board games livestream Kinfire Chronicles!]

Hey Seekers! Keeping it brief today. We are REAL close to that $195K goal and getting 125 card sleeves with 1 custom back added into the Premium Collection. Remember if we hit it before midnight PDT tonight, we'll get that holiday weekend BOGO deal and unlock 2 stretch goals for the price of 1. If we don't get there in time though, don't panic (I also say to remind myself). The upgrade for all cards to premium black core with linen finish is still on the table! It'll just take a little bit longer to reach. But I have nothing but faith in us! It's been absolutely wonderful hearing people in the comments talking about trying out the game on tabletopia, asking questions, and getting excited.

We’ve also had a lot of AMAZING content creators playing through this game, and one of the cool things about watching all the different playthroughs is seeing how different characters and different gameplay choices affect the story. And this is just the first few quests, when we’re still laying out how the game is played. You’re still getting your feet wet, so the choices are much more this-or-that. By the time you leave Vinna, your choices will have left you with several memory cards that could make you several friends (or enemies) by the time you reach Din’Lux.

ICYMI yesterday, Steph Hodge did a livestream of Quest 1 on her twitch channel in a 2-player playthrough. No spoilers on how they did! If you don’t have time to watch the whole playthrough and just want to hear what she and Michael think of it, you can just watch that here.

Looking towards this week, we’ll be having TWO more livestreams:

Tomorrow September 6th you can catch The Brothers Murph playing Quest 2 on their Twitch channel at 9pmET/6pmPT. To see how Quest 1 went, you can watch their Gamehaus playthrough on their YouTube channel.

On Thursday September 8th you can see Ruel Gaviola playing one of our unlocked sidequests! Which one do you want to see him play? Ash and Bramble is a murder mystery where you’re trying to figure how who burned down the alchemist’s shop (and possibly stole his valuable notebook). The Stranger is a race against time to find a mysterious person who doesn’t speak any local languages, and was driven out of the safety of the town during the onset of a Starless Night. You’ll need to find him and determine if he’s friend or foe.

Which one do you want to see him play? Let us know in the comments! (And before you ask, no he can’t play The Ascent if we unlock it in time by cracking the Top 15 on the BGG Hotness. He’ll be playing with a physical prototype copy, and we were only able to include the first two sidequests in it)

Have a great day Seekers! Tomorrow I’ll be back in the office and ready to tackle all your questions and comments!

Trying to relax,

Risa Petrone

Community Manager

Day 6: Feel the Fire
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 10:29:35 PM

[tl;dr: Kickstarter Campaign Reminders, get a feel for the experience with the Kinfire Playthrough Series, and upcoming Art AMA]

Happy Sunday Seekers!

We are moving closer and closer our next stretch goal! AND we’re still in the Top 5 “Taking Off” on the Kickstarter homepage! Look at us go! Don’t forget our bonus specials:

1) Labor Day Weekend Challenge: If we can hit $195k by 11:59pm PDT on September 5, then we’ll unlock not only the $195k reward (adding 125 card sleeves with 1 custom back in the Premium Collection) but also the one after it (upgrade all cards to premium black core with linen finish). Tell your friends: now is the time to back!
2) BGG Bonus: if we make the top 15 of the BGG Hotness list at any point in the campaign (we're still on it!), we’ll instantly unlock The Ascent sidequest. It’s a doozy, with over an extra hour of gameplay, a new enemy (+1 acrylic standee in the Premium Collection), and a new battle map with a unique mechanic (restricted movement)! Don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say depending on how you play this one, you might find that the real treasure was the friends you made along the way…

KINFIRE PLAYTHROUGH SERIES

To give you a better feeling of the experience of the game, the first thing we did was reach out to the professionals: The Brothers Murph, Rahdo Runs Through, Our Family Plays Games, Kovray/Foster the Meeple, Nixx, The Hungry Gamer, and more, including some upcoming livestreams from The Brothers Murph, Ruel Gaviola, and Amanda Panda!

But we wanted to take an extra step to help the average player imagine themselves at the table. Rather than throwing paragraphs at you about how much we like the game (and we do), we invited people who aren’t professional board game previewers, reviewers, or developers to play through the game. We asked folks that we know hold a high bar for TTRPGs and/or video games to show you what that looks like. We also edited it down to <20 minutes so that you can forward these videos to your play group to give them an idea of what’s in store for them.

The result is the Kinfire Playthrough Series, available on all devices on YouTube. Here’s a brief summary of the episodes so far and what’s to come:

•  Episode 1: Features Quest 1 and combat basics.
•  Episode 2: Features Quest 2 and adventure basics.
• Episode 3: Features town exploration basics. (Coming this week)
• Episode 4 & beyond: WIll feature a NEW play group and Quest 3, for more advanced play.
   

Is it something your friends would play? Why not send them a video and ask.

UPCOMING ASK-ME-ANYTHING WITH ARTISTS

If you missed our last AMA with the Kinfire Chronicles game designers, not to worry! Our next AMA will be with some of our art team this Friday September 9th! I’m still finalizing a time because most of the team is based in Poland and few were taking a well-earned break after getting this Kickstarter page ready for us! But I can confirm we’ll have our Art Director, Katarzyna “Kate” Redesiuk, who also did art direction for The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077,  and our graphic designer Ines Możdżyńska.

You can see a plethora of examples of this team’s incredible work on our Kickstarter page, but have you seen their previous work samples? Check out Sandra, Ronnie, and Ulvar’s Instagrams, and Ulvar’s official character concept art for Critical Role!

And as an extra treat, here’s a never-before-seen image that Sandra made of Roland on a Wyvern (a wonderful joke that sadly didn’t make it into the final cut of the Kinfire Playthrough series, but could one day be a deleted scene?)

And that’s it for today! I’ll be back tomorrow with a SUPER brief update (remember we’re technically supposed to be off for the holiday weekend) but if all goes well and we unlock that stretch goal, I’ll be in the comments celebrating with you all. Let’s see how it goes!

With anticipation,

Risa Petrone

Community Manager

Day 4: Stretch Goals Unlocked, New Goals Announced, A Limited Time Offer and an AMA!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 04:55:48 AM

[tl;dr - We’ve unlocked 2 stretch goals and the next stretch goal is premium. We need your help this weekend to unlock a bonus stretch goal. Join us today at 5:00pm EDT in Discord to chat with our design team]

Happy Friday, Seekers!

Congratulations: WE JUST UNLOCKED TWO SIDEQUESTS (+2 hours of additional gameplay)!!

If you’re interested, you can read a bit more about the murder mystery Ash and Bramble in Update 2, but thanks to our BGG Hotness BOGO deal, we’ve also unlocked…

New sidequest: “The Stranger”

In this extra hour of content, you’ll be tasked with tracking down a mysterious creature that some believe could be a victim of the Darkness. No one’s quite sure where they came from, but they didn’t speak any local languages, and a group of nasty town kids ran them out of the safety of town with a Starless Night on its way. It’s a race against time to find this stranger and determine if they’re truly friend or foe. The story cards in this one lean towards the skills in your party as you deduce where this creature may have gone, and what you’re wandering into. If you’d like to see some of the concept art of the actual Stranger, you can do so right here, safe behind this spoiler link. And if you want to learn a little more about possible enemy encounters, you can check that out behind this spoiler link. (Both of these also include a little note from our Art Director, Kate Redesiuk, about the development of these sidequests)

If this sounds like something you might want to see played out, you’re in luck! Keep watching the Kinfire Playthrough series to see some familiar gaming faces like Felicia Day and B Dave Walters take it on. (That particular episode isn’t up yet but don’t worry, we’ll tell you when it is!)

Next on our list of cool stuff to talk about:

ASK ME ANYTHING

You may have seen this on our social media, but we’ll be having an AMA in our Discord today with our Game Design team! Join Kevin Wilson, Brandon Perdue, and Darrell Hardy at 5pmET to ask any burning questions you might have about game design (either Kinfire Chronicles, or their previous work)

https://discord.gg/bUZaaVG7?event=1014918857988788295

Hope you’ll have the time to join us! We’ll be doing one of these every Friday with a different group of team members, so if you can’t catch this one, maybe you can join us next week. Let us know in the comments who you’d love to have in the AMA next!

AND we saved the best for last:

NEW SIDEQUESTS

Our next stretch goal is something that will get our Premium Collection backers excited. We’re going to be including 125 card sleeves with a custom Kinfire Chronicles design! Perfect for keeping your Seeker decks nice and safe. (We’d love to offer sleeves for the entire game but 1,000+ card sleeves is… you don’t want to know).

While we’re over 300% funded already and feeling great about it, the team is eager to put more into the game and premium box. So, we could really use your help to spread the word. Please share the Kickstarter and tell your friends about Kinfire! It's already working!

We also came up with a special bonus for this weekend only: If we reach $195K by 11:59pm PDT on Monday September 5, we’ll upgrade every card in the board game to premium black core cardstock and a fancy linen finish. We’re talking about over 1090… excuse me, now over 1150 thanks to the unlocked side quests, of cards upgraded to more durable, premium cardstock. This upgrade grows in value with each side quest we unlock, so with any luck we’ll get into the Hotness Top 15 of BoardGameGeek and unlock the third side quest (with 30 more cards).

Now don’t worry if we don’t hit the $195k by Monday: we won’t take this upgrade completely off the table! It’ll still be available when we reach $220k. But we figure this weekend is a great opportunity for visiting and chatting with friends, and maybe we can get them all onboard!

As we head into this holiday weekend (at least for the US), we just wanted to remind everyone that while we will still be posting daily updates and unlocking stretch goals, please expect our response time to be slower as we spend some time away from the computer and with our families.

Excitedly,

Risa Petrone

Community Manager

Day 5: Teamwork Makes the (Incredible) Dream Work!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Sep 05, 2022 at 11:03:16 AM

[tl;dr: Shipping table update, Get to know Kevin Wilson, top Q&As with our Design team]

Happy Saturday, Seekers! I hope you’re doing something fun this weekend. If you’re playing any games, let us know in the comments!

First things first: you all are the best. We had our first troll show up, and our team joked that that was what truly made us feel like we were doing well at this Kickstarter 😆. While we talked about official response options, you came in and handled it like champs, and to be a little cheesy for a second, it was like seeing the game’s boost cards in real-life application. We’re a pretty great adventuring party. So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being the amazing community that you are.

Shipping Table Update

Many of you have asked questions about shipping– especially international shipping– we wanted to let you know that there is a new shipping table on our KS page. The shipping section features updated rates, UK broken out, and better clarity on “Rest of Asia” and “Rest of World”. After collaborating with our manufacturer and fulfillment partners, we were able to improve on our rate estimates– especially on the Premium Collection. Still, keep in mind that these are only estimates for 2023 and you will be charged for shipping separately (and more accurately) in the pledge manager phase. We’re doing our best to give you rates that will help you plan and budget, but we can’t do anything about the global macroeconomic picture next year.

INCREDIBLE SPOTLIGHT: Kevin Wilson, Game Design Director

Throughout the campaign we’re going to be dropping little focuses on some of our team that I like to call Incredible Spotlight. Today we’re going to spotlight on the reason I imagine many of you are here: Kinfire Chronicles’ designer: Kevin Wilson!

Kevin Wilson is the Director of Game Design for Incredible Dream. He's been designing tabletop games for over 20 years and is best known for Arkham Horror 2nd Edition and Descent: Journeys in the Dark 1st Edition, though he has over 100 games and expansions released to date.

Kevin's favorite games offer a lot of variety from play to play, and are loaded with moments of drama and silly fun, Cosmic Encounter being a good example. His favorite character in Kinfire Chronicles is Asha, because he always plays rogues when he can.

TOP Q&A WITH DESIGNERS

We had a WONDERFUL first AMA on our Discord server. Game Design Director Kevin Wilson was joined by quest designers Brandon Perdue (Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth) and Darrell Hardy (Fantasy Flight Games) to answer questions about Kinfire Chronicles gameplay and development, their previous works, and game design in general.

Here are the top question and answers from the AMA (edited and adjusted for brevity and clarity):
 

Q: Having only played a 4-player game so far, how are different player counts balanced? Less enemy chits to pull from the bag?

A: There are always 12 player chits in the bag, divided evenly between players, so there is always the same ratio of monster turns to player turns; at lower player counts, this just means each individual player will get more turns. I think some quests end up being harder for small groups and some for larger groups based on choices and consequences, so it all kind of shakes out okay. In a 2-Seeker game, each Seeker gets 5 extra Health, since there are fewer Seekers to split the damage between. In a 3-Seeker game, it felt close enough that we didn’t need to adjust it. Each player getting more turns themselves also means they get to charge their lantern more often, so they can deliver really big hits more frequently, but there’s less heroes for the enemies to choose between. High risk, high reward.

Q: Curious as to how much actual choice there will be in how each seeker's deck is altered... will a character's deck look vastly different than another player that had played the same character in a different campaign?

Kevin: Each Seeker deck has 4 cards unique to that Seeker, the other 5 are from the 'general' pool of cards, which is pretty large. I think the overall card pool for Seeker cards is somewhere over 200 different cards. It was pretty tricky designing the Seekers so that they both evolve over time but stay recognizable, but I think we managed it pretty well. Most playtesters had 1 or 2 cards that they clung to through the whole campaign, but everything else changed up by the end.

Darrell: There are many cards to choose from. Some cards are limited to specific Seekers, but those players aren't required to choose those cards. Also, different playthroughs will unlock different sets of cards altogether, so it's possible (even likely?) that two groups won't all see the same cards over the course of their campaigns.

Brandon: Each seeker has access to cards that only they have, so they do have certain tendencies as far as what cards they synergize with. That said, even with those, you can end up with very different decks for the same seeker - especially depending on your party makeup.One of the things I really appreciate about how Kevin designed the Seekers and card pool is that each seeker can fill several different roles well depending on what your party needs.

Q: What do you find most limiting in making a card-based story-driven board game? What do you find most freeing?

Kevin: The toughest thing to remember about story-driven board games is that cardboard doesn't have memory. That is, most games are designed in such a way that you don't care what happened 3 turns ago, only what's happening now. Obviously, for what we were doing, we needed to mess around with that limitation some. The other tricky thing is that you don't know which Seekers are going to be played, so you have to think carefully about how you write stories to take that into account. Overall, though, there's a ton of possibility with the system we went with that we've only started to explore, such as the sections of certain quests that started to feel a lot like mini-games.

Darrell: The finite real estate is obviously limiting. You can't just go crazy with the text, but have to be disciplined and succinct - which doesn't come naturally to all writers. [coughlikeme] The freeing aspect is that the cards are separate from the story. If you kick a puppy in quest 1, you can get a card called "puppy-kicker" that will come back to haunt you in quest 6.

(Note: No puppies will be kicked in this game and if we find out you did we’re going to go John WIck on you)

Brandon: Yeah, basically echoing Darrell's answer here. The game I was working on before joining Incredible Dream was Descent: Legends of the Dark, which contains its text in an app. That game contains as much text as The Fellowship of the Ring. Shifting to this much more compact style definitely took some time. But sometimes limitation breeds creativity.

If you missed our AMA with the Kinfire Chronicles game designers, not to worry! Our next AMA will be with some of our art team on Friday September 9th! (Time and guests TBA). But be sure to join our Discord if you want to join in the gameplay discussion, and to see episodes of the Kinfire Playthrough series a day early…

Last thing! We are plugging along towards our next stretch goal of $195K to put the Kinfire Chronicles branded card sleeves into the premium collection (right now they’re an add-on, and will still remain so for those backing. Remember, if we can hit it before 11:59pm PT on Monday September 5th, we’ll unlock the next goal early and upgrade all– what are we up to?– 1,150+ cards to a premium black core cardstock and a linen finish! (If we don’t make the deadline, that stretch goal just goes back to its regular funding level. But it would be sweet to get a head start on the goals coming down the pipe).

I asked it earlier and I’ll ask it again, what are you up to this weekend? I’m headed to a much needed game night with some friends and I’ll finally get to play Wonderland Wars! Can’t wait! Are you playing some games? Traveling for the long weekend? Let us know all about your fun in the comments!

Cheers!

Risa Petrone

Community Manager