Weekly Recap - Week of 8/23

As the title implies, we’re switching it up a bit and we’re going to start providing weekly updates on our progress on The Stifling Dark. To be honest, this is just as much for us as it is for you. This will give us a timeline of how the development went leading up to the Kickstarter and beyond, while also keeping you informed of where we’re at. Hello future self!

Anyways, the biggest thing we focused on this week was actually an idea that first arose from some discussions we had during Gen Con. It’s hard to believe that was a month ago, but we’re finally getting serious about bringing it to life. Someone mentioned that we should have a sort of tutorial version for first-time players that simplified the game a bit so that it was easier for beginners.

We had gotten some other feedback that there was a bit of a rules overload at the start of the game, which is definitely a fair point. It probably didn’t help that we were trying to rush through the rules to start playing since we had a limited amount of time, but nonetheless we agreed that a tutorial version was an excellent idea.

After some more discussion between the three of us, we landed on creating a simpler map, a more basic Adversary, and easier objectives. That way the tutorial version would still introduce players to a lot of the core concepts while removing some of the extra rules to decrease the complexity. We’re also limiting how many actions the Investigators have in order to further decrease the initial learning curve. Don’t worry, we’ll still have the flashlight mechanic!

We’re planning on distributing this tutorial version once we’re finished so people who are interested in playtesting the game can get their hands on it (and so we can get some feedback). We want to make sure everyone’s voices are heard, since that will lead to a better experience for both of us. We’ll be sure to make an announcement once that’s ready to roll! See what I did there? I italicized it, so I really hope so.

Aside from the tutorial version, we also spent some time discussing manufacturing, shipping/fulfillment, warehousing, and other fun logistical things. We’re keeping a very close eye on our timelines to ensure we’re staying on track for a Kickstarter early next year, and we have quite a bit to do between now and then.

Lastly, we’re putting the finishing touches on the flashlight revisions that we discussed in last week’s blog post. As surprising as this is, we actually haven’t playtested since Gen Con since we’ve been so busy making changes based on the feedback we received. Once we finish up the flashlight updates we plan on getting back to playtesting so we can test how the changes are working.

That’s about it for this week, but stay tuned since we’ll plan on posting these updates weekly on Fridays going forward. We’ll still sprinkle in some other blog posts about specific aspects of The Stifling Dark or about game design in general, but they won’t be quite as often.

Over and out,

Jeremy