Update #84

Jan 1 2017
Happy New Year and Good News!

Greetings Backers!

Sebastian and I hope you all had a great Christmas and a fun New Year.

I certainly enjoyed myself and partook in a good selection of some of Australia's finest Craft Beer whilst eating myself silly :-)

Whilst this is a busy time of year things still proceed well on the Twisted front.

Rules Away!

A couple of days ago the final files for the Twisted Rulebook text was sent to our printers and the artwork has now been checked over by them and approved for printing! This is a big milestone which we are both really excited to have achieved and a little terrified by at the same time. It's rather more nerve wracking than I expected when you have to finally declare everything done but I'm confident that the game, as it stands, is fantastic. It's been a long road and lots of work but now we have arrived at this point it's all been worth it.

This could not have been achieved without your support so, again, thank you all so much!

Here's a photo of all the iterations of the rules I have on hand. There are more versions than this but these 11 represent much of the work that has happened since the Kickstarter. You can clearly see the difference between the 40 page Beta v2 from April and the 150 page monster the book has now become.



The book is now 50% longer than we expected when we started. It contains all the rules needed to play Twisted (obviously) along with a host of options for you to play the game. There are 10 different Deployment options, 20 base Missions and 20 sub Missions in the form of the Tarot of Taxing Tasks (a set of cards that you draw and keep secret from your opponent). You also have Master Kirkwood's Fascinating Features, a set of 20 weird and interesting effects you can apply to your gaming table to add to the chaos and fun.

On top of this there is a 10 Mission Campaign that can be run as linked Missions where the results of the previous games affect the following Missions. It is divided into three sub campaigns of three missions each and one final mission. You can also just play a sub campaign or even just pluck one mission out of the Campaign to play as a standalone game.

The Book contains plenty of backstories and art, each helping to build the Twisted world. I've jammed in small snippets of story wherever I can, each helping to build the overall picture. Much of this art would not have been possible without the generosity of you, our backers.

Here is a photo of a the latest white dummy I received from our printer.



It is missing one set of dice but you can see the spot where they go. The dice aren't the right dice either, it's a dummy set I sent them some time ago - the ones you get will be a set each of Black and White dice.

The three decks of cards at the bottom are the Alchemancy Deck (40 cards), the Eye of The Engine Deck (44 cards), the Tarot of Taxing Tasks (20 cards), Pass Cards (4 cards), and cards for the Rat Swarm, Catch Wagon, Spy and Sewer Slime that you use in some missions or Fascinating Features.
Counters and Templates

One of the Stretch Goals we achieved was to put card sheets of Counters and Templates in the box. We originally intended this to be just a single sheet but as the game grew in scope we quickly realised we needed more!

There are now three sheets of Counters and Templates - as seems to be the way Twisted expanded a wee bit more than we expected.

Here are some images of the fantastic sheets. Much of this art was done by Lily McDonnell, the talented lady responsible for the shiny new Twisted Logo, with one or two by Konrad Langa and Mitchell Nolte who both contributed a host of great illustrations for the book.





These aren't quite finalised as yet. Our printer is checking the layout is OK for them to work with and we are going through them one last time to check every measurement matches the rulebook.

The Green lines you can see don't actually print. These are an indication of the dieline for the printer to make the cutting forme that punches the shapes from the card.

You can see a host of State Counters used to track common effects on Characters, Elemental Essence counters used when some missions allow these to be found and a whole bunch of markers for the Fascinating Features of one kind or another. You also have the usual Blast and Jet Templates as well as a Grenade Scatter template and the Favour of The Engine and Priority counters.

In the third image (bottom left) you can see a little 1" measuring widget that is used to determine the Threatened Area if you try and move past an opponent too closely.

Most of the smaller circular counters are 22mm. This will allow you to mount them in the bases we use for Twisted if you want. Where base size might be important, such as the Spy and M'Dusa's Seeker Snakes, we have included one that fits in a base and one that is the size of the base so you can use either.

You can also see counters for the Sewer Slime, Catch Wagon and Rat Swarm. These guys are wonderful fun and I hope you find them as entertaining as I do!

That's it for now. We'll have another update for you soon that may show off some of the shiny new models you haven't seen yet and perhaps some other cool stuff.

Sebastian and I will be deciding in the coming week or so what date to close the Pledge Manager. We'll be sure to give you plenty of notice so you can add in any last minute purchases.

Don't forget you can always contact us if you have any problems or questions: sales@dementedgames.com or message us on Facebook.

Here's to a Twisted 2017!

Cheers
Pete

Update #85

Jan 16 2017

Pledge Manger Closing Soon - Twisted Progress Report - Urkin Ratcatcha and Gentlefolk Miner Sculpts Complete!

Hello everyone,

It's time for another update on our progress fulfilling your Kickstarter rewards, as well as some new sculpted miniatures and an outline of the plan for Twisted in 2017! Although (as you know) we are running a little behind schedule, the good news is that absolutely all the actual 'content' is completely finished for Wave 1, and everything is well into the production phase.

Once again, thank you all for being so patient with Peter and I as we're working hard towards fulfilling your Kickstarter rewards. We understand that delays are always frustrating but we're working as hard as we can to get things delivered as soon as possible without compromising quality. The good news is that everything is going really well with no major problems (other than us being a bit over-ambitious with our initial timelines!). Peter and I are brand new to this as our first big project, so thank you for being so understanding while we work things through. Due to your very generous support as Kickstarter backers, we are very confident that we'll be delivering something absolutely fantastic to you all very soon - even better than we hoped at the start of this journey!

Pledge Manager Closing Soon!

The Pledge Manager is scheduled to close on February 3. We are closing the Pledge Manager at this time so that we can finalise exactly what rewards everyone should receive, so that we can prepare to pack all of your reward boxes.

Get in fast - this will be your last chance to grab Twisted miniatures and terrain at the special Kickstarter discount prices!

Last minute newcomers and friends can still join in via this page:

https://dementedgames.pledgemanager.com/projects/twisted-steampunk/participate/

Or join in simply by emailing us directly (sales@dementedgames.com). We are very happy to accept Paypal payments if you don't have access to a credit card - lots of people have already taken this option, it's no trouble at all and we will add you straight into the Pledge Manager with credit to your account.

Production Progress Update

The Miniatures: all the sculpting of the Wave 1 miniatures is long-since complete and our production partners at Eureka Miniatures here in Australia (for the metal Faction Box miniatures) and Valiant in the USA (for the resin miniatures) have been madly working away, casting up a storm! We are deep into production for the miniatures with about half of the casting complete - I think there is over 50kgs of metal sitting at Peter's house waiting to be packed! We're about to start preliminary packing of miniatures for the Faction Boxes and individual blister-packed miniatures.
The Terrain: all the fabulous terrain designed by Craig Clarke at Miniature Scenery is in the process of being laser cut. We got word a few nights ago that ALL the 'Carver Lanes' are already complete, so we are on schedule for ALL of the terrain in to ship out with Wave 1 as planned. Great news!
The Rulebook: after a huge effort from Peter the Twisted Rulebook is complete and in the first stages of printing! Very exciting news - I am so excited about the Twisted Rulebook, I think you are all going to be really impressed with the final product (fingers crossed, of course!). Check out the Rulebook cover below Once the printing is complete we will have a more precise date for Wave 1 fulfilment. This delay has actually meant a massive improvement to the Twisted Rulebook: as well as the extra Stretch Goal enhancements that occurred during the KS campaign (expanding the card decks, adding the sheet of counters and templates, adding the extra set of dice etc) the rulebook has grown by a huge amount - over 50% larger than originally planned, with an extra 52 pages full of extra artwork, missions, and other goodies! But most importantly the rules themselves have been very thoroughly analysed, re-written, edited and fine-tuned so that we have an amazing ruleset designed to last the distance (as well as being great fun to play of course!) We plan for Twisted to be played for years to come so it was worth the extra effort to make sure we have a great set of rules to back up our brilliant miniatures and rich universe.



The Plan for Twisted in 2017

Aside from Kickstarter fulfilment - which is our absolute #1 priority at this time - Peter and I also have big plans for continuing to develop Twisted through 2017. In a nutshell this means more characters, more miniatures, more terrain and more campaign scenarios for Twisted, as well as a few surprises! In addition to finishing the Wave 2 Egyptians sculpting, we have already developed some new character concepts for the Egyptians (do steampunk mummies sound interesting to anyone?!). We've also created (and are currently developing more!) new characters for the Dickensians and the Servants of the Engine, to flesh out their factions and keep things interesting. We intend to continue supporting all of our existing factions with new releases as time goes on, to make sure games of Twisted stay fresh and to keep your opponents on their toes.

Once the Twisted game rules are released with Wave 1, the Twisted universe will grow organically with your help as skirmishes between the factions of Twisted start taking place all over the world! We're very excited to see where your participation and involvement takes the Twisted universe, and are eagerly working to expand into new characters and factions plus new terrain for the different settings of the world of Twisted. It should be a wild ride - we really hope you enjoy Twisted as much as we've enjoyed developing it!

Peter and I will be doing our best to promote Twisted as a growing game, miniature range and fun, immersive world through 2017. Hopefully we can count on your help as our esteemed Kickstarter backers who've made all of this possible! We can't thank you all enough for helping us make this dream into a reality. Thank to your generous support you guys share a real ownership over Twisted!

Gentlefolk Miner and Urkin Ratcatcha

Time to see some new miniatures (always my favourite part!). We've got 2 new characters to show: the Gentlefolk Miner as a solid pick for the Servants of the Engine (love the little canary perched on the lantern), and the Urkin Ratcatcha wading his way through the sewers to join the Dickensians (snaring more than a few rats along the way!).

Both of these fantastic new miniatures were sculpted by the very talented Lux Thantor - merci beaucoup, Luc. Luc's sculpting has been a wonderful addition to Twisted and we are really thrilled with everything he has created so far. He's done an excellent job capturing the spirit of both of these characters, which will fit perfectly into their respective factions. And what's more, they both look like they'll be a blast to paint! Bravo, Luc.








That's it for today. Thanks again for your support, everyone!

-sebastian

RiTides wrote:Wow, I love that Urkin Ratcatcha! How far is this from fulfillment and beginning general sale, most likely?

Twisted wrote:Hi RiTides,
General release will happen as soon as most Backers get their stuff. I would look for general release probably April or May given shipping from Australia to backers might take a little while.
We'll have minis as general release in both Resin and Metal. Resin in blisters only and Metal in the Faction Boxes and individual Blisters.
Some minis - like Ratcatcha aren't in a Faction box yet but will only be blisters for the moment.

RiTides wrote:I'll definitely be looking to pick it up in resin then . Thanks so much for the detailed info!

Update #86

Jan 24 2017

A quick but handy update!

Greetings Backers!

Things are moving ahead as usual here at Demented Games.


Printing Moves Ahead!

The digital Epson Proofs of all the material for the main game box arrived on my doorstep on Friday. Sebastian and I will be at Cancon in Canberra here in Australia this weekend and will check them over. They then get signed and returned to our printer and then the printing begins! It's rather exciting - let me tell you!

Here's a photo of some of them you can see cards, a bit of the box cover and some other stuff including pages from the book. Sorry for the slightly ratty photo - the proofs are a bit shiny and wherever I stood I got reflections!



If you are a Backer and you are going to Cancon make sure you come and say hi - we'd love to meet you and you can see some soft cover versions of the book I had made to show off for the event along with the resin versions of almost all the wave 1 stuff (and some of the Egyptians!).


Pledge Manager

As we said last update the Pledge Manager will close on the 3rd February. To help you in your final deliberations we have put together a pdf checklist that shows everything available so you can make sure you didn't miss out on anything you might want.

Follow this link to download it.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0jppKYe93VxTC1VUjdIcEpobWc

I hope you find it useful. It will remain up until we have closed the Pledge Manager.

Remember newcomers and friends can still join in via this page until we close it off:

https://dementedgames.pledgemanager.com/projects/twisted-steampunk/participate/

Art for Art's Sake

Just because it wouldn't be a Twisted update without some kind of cool art here's a little something to whet your appetite (inspired by a comment Phillip S left).



This is an exploratory drawing we had Nicolas Amoroso do of an Egyptian scene. These illustrations help define the world in which our Characters exist and inspire the folks at Miniature Scenery to come up with more fantastic terrain for us (and by extension you guys!).

We love the statues with the Set heads and current thinking at our end is that the statues are ancient but the followers of Set have added shiny new brass and gold Set heads to them to show their devotion.

We love this image and can't wait to explore this part of the Twisted world more fully.

That's it for now.

Keep an eye on our Facebook pages for pictures from Cancon and we'll be back on deck on Monday.

Cheers
Pete

An Intelligent And Most Likely Also A Handsome Individual wrote:

Any chance that we'll see Avatars for different Egyptian Gods too?
Anubis has always been a favorite of mine, though he's somewhat similar looking to Set.
And I wouldn't mind seeing Set's rival, Horus, make an appearance too.

Demented Games Creator wrote:
@ An Intelligent And Most Likely Also A Handsome Individual: It has been discussed :-) The problem with too many Avatars is largely that of balance. The Avatar of Set will be a tough nut for your opponent to crack, let alone were you able to field two of them! The idea is so attractive though that it may have to be done and we'll just work out the issue.
Many of the gods despised one another if my memory serves - that may be a good source of a solution - select Avatars that simply would not get on (e.g. Set and Horus). Hmmm.... he says, thinking aloud, perhaps the selection of the Avatar could change the way the faction plays...
Cheers
Pete

An Intelligent And Most Likely Also A Handsome Individual wrote:

That sounds good - and you really could also go with 'only one Avatar per army' - and this would make for a good background reason for two groups of Egyptians battling it out!

Remember newcomers and friends can still join in via this page until we close it off:

https://dementedgames.pledgemanager.com/projects/twisted-steampunk/participate/