Production update: just the regular amount of minuscule details…
about 2 years ago – Wed, Mar 02, 2022 at 01:26:47 PM

Hello Heroes!

The factory reports the production of the game started again after the Chinese New Year and everything is moving along as expected for now. Print on the four themed boxes is ongoing (as you might recall, all the components were green-lighted a few weeks ago), and we’re working on the Collector’s Edition final details. They still aim to complete the packing process by the end of March, so no new delivery updates for now.

Details, details details

We know all that paragraph above really sounds uneventful, but as mentioned before production is a lengthy process by itself. Just to give you an example of what is usually going on behind the scenes, here’s some corrections we recently made to the Collector’s Edition plastic trays after seeing the samples coming from the factory:

…And this is it!

The 3d models of the trays we made were pretty accurate so this only took a few weeks to get fixed, considering the shipment of the sample and the actual rework of the molds… Actually, in the vacuform process the positives are called bucks but let’s not delve into a lengthy explanation on that too!

Just to be clear, this will not delay production: trays are among the last items made in the production process and we're still on track at this point.

And speaking of last items...

We got graphics!

We also finalised and approved the artwork for the Collector’s Edition, let’s have a look at it!

An impressive box for impressive heroes! Make sure to check out the previous update if you want to see the box in action (albeit, still in white).

One More Quest late pledge is open!

Did you miss out the ONE MORE QUEST kickstarter campaign, the dexterity-based, comedy role-playing game set in the Dungeon Fighter universe?  Well it is not the end of the world, as the Late Pledge option is now available! Make sure to check it out on Backerkit: you’ll get the same offers that were available during the campaign.

Are you a Dungeon Fighter backer that also pledged One More Quest instead? Thanks for your support, you’re among our favourite people in the world! You’ll receive an email invitation to the pledge manager soon, don’t worry.

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team

Green light EVERYTHING!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 12:31:39 AM

Hello Heroes!

After the last load of samples, we finally managed to check out all the final details and we sent out confirmation to the factory: we officially gave the green light for the final production phase. In their latest report, the factory aims to finish the packing (the process of actually filling the game boxes with content, wrapping and filling the cartons) by the end of March 2022, or early April. Once the stock is ready, it’ll be palletized and divided in three different lanes for America, Europe and Asia… But we’ll discuss it more in detail once we approach the shipment date, don’t worry.

Another sneak peek!

The last project update was dedicated to the four themed boxes, but you might recall that during the Dungeon Fighter campaign many backers asked for a special “Collector box” that could hold all the content of the project. Following these requests, the new Collector’s Pledge was created... and we can finally show you the dummy sample for the incredible Dungeon Fighter Collector’s Box!

Here you can see our first exploration of the sample we got from the factory in the hands of none other than our CEO Lorenzo Silva: being the founder of Horrible Guild, he also doubles as one of the designers of the Dungeon Fighter game itself!

Believe us, it took our design team a lot of time to correctly design all the inserts of the Collector’s Edition: fitting the insane amount of crazy shaped gadgets that form the entire Dungeon Fighter series, all the cards, targets, and dice in separate trays created to be piled up in a single box is not a meaningless task. We’re really proud of the results, hope you’ll be too once you receive it!

Join us for ONE MORE QUEST and get a special discount!

In other news, we just threw ourselves into another adventure here on Kickstarter: we recently launched One More Quest: a dexterity-based, comedy role-playing game of dungeon-crawling adventures, set in the Dungeon Fighter universe. As you might remember, this project started as an add-on to this very Dungeon Fighter campaign, but later we realized that it could have been so much more than a secondary item to an already very successful campaign, and that it deserved the chance of being its own, bigger project.

Without this campaign here for Dungeon Fighter, there would be no One More Quest, so we’d like to thank you for the amazing support you all gave us by offering a € 5,00 discount on any One More Quest physical pledge level to all the Dungeon Fighter backers! We also have some pretty Early Bird offers running for the next 48 hours, and the two may add up… wink wink nudge nudge ;)

Roll out the FAQs:

• How do I get the € 5,00 discount?

If you’re a Dungeon Fighter backer (either on Kickstarter or on Backerkit) just pledge the One More Quest campaign at the “Starter Set” level or higher, you’ll receive a € 5,00 bonus credit in the One More Quest pledge manager once the campaign ends.

• What do I do with this €5,00 discount?

The amount can be used to pay for some add-ons, or it will be automatically deducted from the shipping costs.

• If I pledge as “Early Bird” (meaning in the first 72 hours of the campaign) on any level from “Starter Set” and up, do I still get the extra € 5,00 discount in the pledge manager?

Yes!

• Is the € 5,00 discount applied on top of any other discount already in place in the campaign?

Yes!

• Since I'm a Dungeon Fighter owner, can I use the components to play the One More Quest role playing game?

Yes indeed! You’ll need at least the digital version of One More Quest to have the complete ruleset, and you might have to apply some house rule to ignore the holes in the Dungeon Fighter targets. Or not, depending on how cruel the Supreme Dungeon Mastermind is!

• Will this new campaign affect the Dungeon Fighter project somehow?

No, the new project is being followed by our newly-formed RPG team and its development and future production will not affect the Dungeon Fighter production at all.

• Are you sure?

Pinky swear!

If you’re curious about this new project, you’ll also find the free Quickstart booklet that you can download on the campaign page, a good introduction to the crazy world that awaits you.

We hope you’ll decide to help us in this new adventure, heroes! After all, it is… One More Quest!

Until next time,

the Horrible team

Production update: It's the final sample! (cue famous melody)
over 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 03, 2022 at 11:42:58 PM

Hello Heroes!

The winter season is storming upon us and, while the whole worldwide situation seems to be getting crazier (again?!), we hope you managed to celebrate the holidays in the best way possible. While the Italian post service really took a hit this year, we finally received some more samples to share with you… Actually we received a ton! As usual, these samples let us fine tune every item you’ll find in the game, from the dice, to the many throwing gadgets (which are those that caused more problems than expected), to the plastic tray holding the items in the first place.

Let’s start with Castle of Frightening Frosts, the “ice themed” box:

First, the special dice:

And then some more plastic components, starting from the tray that holds all components safely (and some white samples of the cardboard components):

And let’s keep going with the Catacombs of Gloomy Ghosts, starting with another white sample of the box and the other cardboard components (as you should know by now, we use these "white dummies" to check the tray tolerances and that everything fits well in each box):

Here we have some more cool accessories for the weirdest throws:

And of course, more dice:

Let’s jump to the Chambers of Malevolent Magma, starting with... the magma itself!

Another load of dice...

 ...and the soft "lava pad" used in some special throws!

And finally, let’s have a look at the box of The Labyrinth of Sinister Storms:

Here are the themed accessories of this box (and some more "white dummy" blank shapes):

 This is the cup throwing gadget with a few dice inside, just for scale (note that you only need to put one die inside during regular use of the gadget):

As you can see, there was a lot of samples that needed to be checked, but with the last shipment we’re at a good point! The plan for now is still to have the game ready to be shipped out to our hub during Q1 2022, ideally starting the final fulfilment six to eight weeks after that, when the goods will complete their sea travel from the factory to their destination port... around March/April, if we can achieve that. The situation with global logistics is still a bit of a mess, and everything's more complicated and much, much more expensive than normal still. Rest assured that as soon as we have more information from the factory, we’ll publish an update on this campaign.

Happy holidays!

On behalf of the entire Horrible team, we’d like to thank you again for your support, the patience, and the help you gave us during this process. While the worldwide situation is still weird, we hope you have happy and safe holidays!

We are ready to tackle this new year!

Cheers from Italy!

Until next time,

the Horrible team

Development Update… and inevitable delays.
over 2 years ago – Wed, Nov 03, 2021 at 05:10:23 AM

Hello Heroes!

First of all, thanks to all our fans who came to visit our booth at SPIEL in Essen last month! We're still overjoyed to have been back again in person demonstrating our titles and, let’s face it, spending a lot of cash on new games and accessories! 

Production Status: the inevitable delays.

While the development of the four Standalone Expansion boxes (and their throwing gadgets) is moving along – we'll have more detailed news on this to share in future updates – and we hoped up to the final moment that we would be able to at least meet the deadline for a December fulfilment, we are sad to report that this achievement is really unlikely at this point.

After the hurdles in the development of the throwing gadgets that made us delay the fulfillment from its initial planned date in the first place, and apart from the "renowned and infamous" shipping crisis that’s been storming the world (and Asia in particular) as a fallout effect of the pandemic... We received some more bad news. Our factory has recently been reporting that they got involved in recurrent power outages that are basically halting our production on-and-off, even for the parts that we were indeed able to start mass producing while tweaking the final missing bits. China is experiencing an unprecedented energetic crisis, due to the consequences of previous lockdowns and various other factors, and some areas only get power up to three days per week. While we knew that our production for Dungeon Fighter was going to be a lengthy process, we could never imagine such a scenario.

Luckily, despite yet another spanner in the works, we've been able to continue the development of the accessories contained in the four Dungeon Fighter boxes (and in the Collectors box too of course)! The usual process during pre-production is: a prototype component must be produced, shipped to our office, checked, modified if needed... and back from the start again. This is indeed a long process in and of itself, which is being slowed down even more by the terrible situation.

Also, the completion of the mass production print run as a whole will suffer more inevitable delays at this point as a consequence (hence the paragraph title!). The new plan is to have the game ready and loaded on ships (en route to the main hubs) before the dreaded Chinese New Year, the holiday period where everything basically stops in China for almost one month which this year will take place around February 2022. It is not with light heart that we give out this news, believe us, but we also believe that we are making this edition of Dungeon Fighter worth the extra wait! Speaking of that...

Things just got HOT! And... sleeve-ish?

Continuing the production process, we finally received some more samples from the factory. First of all, we have some magma!

Well, prototype magma at least. These are special neoprene mats representing the Lava element, and Heroes might be forced to throw the dice bouncing on these instead of the regular table… Welcome to the land of the tricky, unpredictable bounce!

Apart from the scorching lava, we also received the final version of the custom sleeves! 

These custom printed sleeves will hold your cards safely during all your adventures. Our production manager is an avid player of an Undisclosed Magical Themed Card Game™ and assures us that the sleeves are designed not only to perfectly fit the cards, but they are also made with a nice premium material to give out that extra smooth feeling when you play with them. Then he started rambling on micro texturing, translucency, light bouncing values and we felt like not investigating this any further!

And since we got the bare metal versions last time, let’s feast our eyes with some more (fictional) precious metal! Here are the final metal tokens in all their goldness: 

And to keep the precious loot safe, what’s better than the elegant Dungeon Fighter cloth bags? These optional add-ons (also included in the Collector pledge) come in a four colors set, guaranteed to match any outfit or plate mail! 

And although not elegant like the rest of the items, we also received these dice samples: they are the first prototypes for the variant basic dice that will be included in the four thematic standalone expansions, one type each: 

These might not look as interesting in photos, but they’re the very core of the entire game! Checking how they feel in hand, bounce, slide, fly, roll off the table and get under that annoyingly raised cabinet is instrumental to correctly design a proper Dungeon Fighter experience. It was also our first chance to check the custom engravings first hand: that's why these dice look "dirty"... that's just some graphite that we've been using to check on the engraved symbols even with these early, rough, and unpainted prototypes.

We hope the sneak peek at this goodies mitigates a bit the bad news. Believe us, we're as impatient as you are to finally see the entire new Dungeon Fighter line on our shelves! Now, let's see if we can find that pesky die under the cabinet...

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team

Post-summer development update!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 12:20:32 AM

Hello Heroes!

Long time no hear, we know! August hit us like a sack of bricks, and it took us pretty much all of September to dig our way out of it. You’ll see why in a moment!

Plastic and... Heavy metal!

First of all, we got some more samples from the factory to show, let’s have a quick look:

Plastic pieces and cloth bags are fine, but let’s see what the forge has to offer! These samples of the metal tokens are the first pulls from the mold, so they’re missing the special gold finish that you’ll find in the Metal Upgrade pack and in the Collector’s Edition: let’s face it, it might not be REAL gold, but still. These items are instrumental to see if the mold was sculpted correctly, if the details are crisp enough, etc.

Production Status

Production wise, the Dungeon Fighter: 2nd Edition "core game" (Confused? Check out update #30!) is finished, and our partners are working to ship it to stores all over the world. Production is still ongoing for the four Standalone boxes at the moment and, of course, also for the Collector box that will be consolidated with our own stock of core games.

Unfortunately, the shipping situation in China has not improved recently. Between container shortages, lockdowns, an insane port traffic congestion, and skyrocketing shipping prices, it is really hard for us to give out clear predictions on possible fulfillment at the moment, even with the end of the production getting closer each day. We are working behind the scenes to simplify the shipment process, but it’ll be complicated to have a fixed date for now, and at least up until our production is finished. As usual, we’ll update you as soon as we know more details.

We played at PLAY!

We were completely amazed by what happened in the first weekend of September: a proper gaming convention! Such a rare sight these days… PLAY (the biggest gaming convention here in Italy) took place in Modena, from September 3 to 5, in a very controlled and safe environment. We booked a booth not really knowing what to expect, but it was really amazing to be once again among our kind! We met with a lot of people, played a lot, talked endlessly, and had a ton of fun!

In the last pic you can see our designer Hjalmar reading… Wait, what is he reading?!

ONE MORE QUEST?!

Remember when we announced  back in update #28 that the “Monstronomicon” roleplaying manual addon was being canceled, renamed as “One More Quest”, and transformed into its own kickstarter campaign? The project, which is being developed by an entirely different (and expanding!) team compared to Dungeon Fighter, has been making a lot of progress since then!

One More Quest is a hilarious roleplaying game where you don’t roll dice... you throw them, in pure Dungeon Fighter style. The game is still in development, but you can already play an early version of the game with your friends thanks to the free quickstart guide that you can download on our website. And make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of any update on the project!

As you can see, we’ve been pretty busy ever since our last update (and once again, sorry for the radio silence)! And that's not all, folks, we'll be at another gaming con real soon! If you’ll be around Essen, Germany in a couple of weeks, we hope to see you at the SPIEL fair (which will be held October 14-17): you’ll find us in Hall 3, booth 3F111! We might have some goodies too!

Until next time!

Sincerely,

the Horrible team