Status Update - October 25th 2016
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 12:46:01 AM

Whew! Two weeks - It feels like forever, but it also flew by like nothing at all. It's been a very busy two weeks, so let's jump in with the update.

I'll be covering these topics today:

• Project Status
• Manufacturing Status
• Final Print and Play
• Surveys
• Wall of Contributors
• Five24 Labs Website
• T-Shirts
• Social Stuff
• Project Timeline
• Hedgehog Cuteness

Project Status

We are doing well on the schedule. As of Monday this week all of the Advance Copies that I have addresses for were shipped out. There is one Eager Enthusiast out there that still hasn't filled out their survey.

So far I know one Advance copy has been received, and the rest should start to trickle in as this week finishes out. So, Eager Enthusiasts keep an eye on your mailbox!

Manufacturing Status

As of right now, the word from the manufacturer is that all of the printed stuff looks good in initial setup, and they are working on the mold for the embossing of the tin.

The mold fabrication process is fairly time consuming, and will take a little while longer to finish up. As of right now the sampling should be complete by November 6th. Which means if things stay on track I'll have good news in the next update!

Final Print and Play

These last two weeks I've been focusing heavily on finishing out the Advance copies for the Eager Enthusiasts, and because of that the ultimate final Print and Play was delayed, I apologize for this!

That said, your disappointment can now be over, because here is the ultimate final Mint Works PnP: https://www.dropbox.com/s/126isec5fpxujy2/Mint%20Works%20PnP%20Final.pdf?dl=0

The player Aid is not part of the PnP, however you can download it here as well as on the BGG page for Mint Works, once it gets through the BGG approval process.

Surveys

So far 95% of you have completed your survey, good job! I'm told that this is pretty much the best that can be expected, as the last 5% are tough to gather, so huzzah!

I may lock down responses to the survey early, as to be able to get the Wall of Contributors updated sooner, rather than later. If I decide to lock down surveys early I will be sure to notify everyone.

Haven't received your survey? Follow this link to recover it and get it submitted.
Mint Works on Backerkit

Wall of Contributors

Obviously, I've missed the deadline on this guy. That's my fault for not thinking through the process entirely. As I need to lock down surveys before I can create it, however I also need to leave surveys open long enough for just about everybody to fill them out.

Once I get surveys closed, I'll be getting the Wall of Contributors updated and online. Then you will finally be able to see your "brick" in the foundation of Five24 Labs.

Five24 Labs Website

Our current website host has been very poor lately, and I'm in the process of moving the site to a new host. This will make the site much less terrible to visit (I hope anyway!) with that I'll also be updating the content there, as things are getting a bit stale post campaign.

Mint Works Backer T-Shirts

If you still want to get one of the exclusive Mint Works Backer T-Shirts you have about another month before those are going to be shut down and ordered.

These shirts are only available to backers that pledged during the Kickstarter campaign, not pre-orders. They are also restricted to one shirt per backer, so these are extremely limited!

Social Stuff

My wife suggested letting you know that if you wanted to see more behind the scenes stuff with what's going on at Five24 Labs, and me in general, you should follow me on Instagram or Twitter.

Justin's Instagram: jblaske
Justin's Twitter: @_jblaske  (note the underscore! very important!)

Here are a few of the pictures I took when I was making the copies for the Eager Enthusiasts.

Bonus video of some mint tokens being printed

Project Timeline

We are moving along the timeline, coming up to the end of when I wanted to be done with pre-production, however as I mentioned earlier, we will be going about a week longer than I had anticipated because of the embossed tin. 

I think we can make that week up, and even if we can't we have enough buffer to soak that up. I think we are still in pretty good shape!

Hedgehog Cuteness

Now we are here, finally to the moment you have all been waiting for. Hedgehog time! Sonic was being stubborn and didn't want to take a picture, so I had to hold him so we could all see his cute little mug.

Status Update - October 11th 2016
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 12:20:32 AM

Another week goes by and this one was quite productive! Let's take a look at the status of things. Once again, no Hedgehog picture, sorry!

• Status Update
• Survey Update
• Update Frequency
• Final Print and Play
• Timeline

Status Update 

As of right now, all files are locked down and have been sent to the manufacturer. i'll be working with them to make sure everything is in order over the next week or two.

Also over the next two weeks I'll be producing the Advance Copies for the Eager Enthusiast backers, and start shipping those out as well, I'll be shipping to the international backers first, and then the domestic backers.

As of this moment delivery by the end of the month for Advance Copies is still on track. 

Survey Update

BackerKit tells me that 91% of you have filled out surveys so far well done! The sooner all of the surveys get filled in the sooner I can put up the Wall of Contributors page.

If you have not received your email for BackerKit please go to this address to start the process of getting into your survey: https://mintworks.backerkit.com/

There are a few Eager Enthusiast backers that have not completed their surveys yet. If you backed at the Eager Enthusiast pledge level, please make sure you filled out your survey. If I don't have your address on file by Wednesday October 12th I won't be able to make sure your advance copy will arrive by the end of the month.

Update Frequency

Starting now, I'm going to be slowing down the update frequency to every two weeks. At this point not much will be happening on a week by week basis so I don't want to flood you weekly with updates full of no news.

Final Print and Play

I'll be putting together the final print and play over the next few days. Once it's ready i'll post a link to it in the comments of the campaign. I'll also include the final print and play link in the next update as well.

Timeline

We are still on track, following the timeline nicely. However, we are now heading into the portion that I will have far less control over, but I'll be doing my best to keep things moving on schedule (or faster!)

That's it for now, if you have any questions or comments feel free to use the comments section here, the Five24 Labs community forums or send me a message here on Kickstarter.

-Justin

Status Update - October 4th 2016
over 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 11:49:06 PM

Time is flying by! Another week has passed! This week will be a little smaller update and there's no Hedgie picture (sorry, forgot to take one!)

• Status Overview
• Print and Play
• Pledge Manager
• Pre-orders
• Backer Exclusive T-Shirts
• Timeline

Status Overview

Most notable in the graphic above - the rules are now locked down and Complete. Does this mean they won't change? not entirely, if small edits are found as I start to transfer it into the formatted rules, they will be taken care of.

Also, note how close to ready the cards are as well. Because of this, I'm ready to release the Print and Play! At least the print and play without the fancy rule book.

Print and Play

That's right, for those of you who have been eagerly anticipating the print ant play with updated cards, you can now download it here: Print and Play

The up to date rules can be downloaded here: Unformatted Rules

If you see anything confusing or a lingering typo, feel free to let me know so we can make sure to get it corrected in the final rules!

Pledge Manager

You should have all gotten your email from BackerKit today, and right now almost 4,000 of you have already filled out your surveys. Great job! 

Once surveys are locked down I'll be able to generate the Wall of Contributors and get that up on the website.

Pre-orders

With the opening of the pledge manager, we now have access to the pre-order system as well. So any of your friends that were sad that they didn't get in on the campaign, can still snag a copy at a discounted price (however they will have to pay full shipping costs.)

Backer Exclusive T-Shirts

I had a question about the measurements of the shirt sizes, I've updated the pledge manager to have this included, but I'm including that info here as well for convenience.

As for personal experience, the shirts sizes are pretty much in line with what you would expect. They are a little more fitted than a typical t-shirt, if you don't want to feel your shirt touching you go up a size. Otherwise stick with your typical size and you should be good to go.

Timeline

We are still on track with the timeline as we go into the last week of finalization. I'll be busy as can be this week as I wrap everything up to prep for submitting files next Monday.

Have a great week everyone!

Status Update - September 28th 2016
over 7 years ago – Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 12:36:01 AM

Another week has gone by already! I have a few things to go over this week

• Status Overview
• Revised Timeline
• Rules
• Print & Play
• Pledge Manager & Pre-Orders
• Future Updates
• Hedgehog Time

Status Overview

Revised Timeline

I sat down this weekend and looked at my timeline and things just didn't line up well with what is going on with my day to day life so I've made a few small adjustments to the timeline, which are visible in the image above.

I also wanted to provide you with a longer vision timeline so we can all see some of the major milestones along the way.  

Currently we are in the middle of the "Finalization" phase, heading into pre-production. Following the timeline along you can see my estimates for how long each major phase will take.

Rules

I've been working on the rules quite a bit this week, but as you can see above I'm currently behind schedule on them. A reasonable amount of time goes into processing and waiting for feedback on the edits to the rules.

To attempt to keep things moving while waiting on rules feedback I've been putting time into the formatted rules as well as updating the templating for all of the cards. This keeps us marching ever toward the deadline for getting files to production.

Print & Play

I know many of you are chomping at the bit for the updated print and play files. I want to get them to you, but they just aren't quite ready yet. That said, as soon as I have all of the cards ready to go I'll release the cards only version of the Print and Play.

Then I'll release a full complete print and play once the formatted rule book is ready to go as well.

Pledge Manager & Preorders

You should be getting an email to join Backer Kit in the next couple of days. This is the post campaign pledge manager that I'll be using. 

Once you get set up there you will be able to upgrade your pledge, add extra copies of the game to your pledge, and even pick up an exclusive backer only Five24 Labs T-Shirt.

Future Updates

I had hoped to continue to post updates on Mondays, but that just doesn't work well with my schedule. Typically, once I leave the house for my day job, I won't be home and able to use the computer till after midnight. Putting together and posting an Update at that point in the day is just too much.

So with that, I'm going to shift my typical update day to Tuesday. I may post updates on other days of the week (like this update) as time progresses, but for now my goal is to post one update a week on Tuesdays in the evening.

Hedgehog Time

And here's your reward for reading through all of this update!

Status Update - September 20th 2016
over 7 years ago – Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 12:56:19 AM

Here we are a week later! Things have calmed down a little, I've spent a lot of time with the family and I've been hard at work on getting things rolling so we can head into production.

So, where are we at right now? I'll tell you!

Status

Right now I've been focusing on getting the rule book tightened up and ready to go. The unformatted rules are just about done, and I've started on the formatted rules.

Just about everything has been started for pre-production and is on track to be completed by the end of September. Which is the deadline to have everything ready to begin the process of production set-up with the manufacturer.

Rules

The rules have come a long way, I've re-templated and re-named a few things cleaned up the phases of the games and over all tried to make things a little more streamlined in the rule book, without sacrificing information.

You can download the up to date unformatted rules from this link if you would like to take a look at them. Once the formatted rule book is ready I'll be providing a link for that as well.

Cards / Player Aid

The cards all appear to be balanced decently, but we will continue to verify that up until I finalize them, the only things left now is making sure they are all set up right and have the right templating on them.

The player aid is still up in the air as to the final size/dimensions of it but I think I have some things that will work. Once the cards and player aid are done I'll be releasing the final Print and Play for Mint Works.

Advance Copies

I've been plugging away at the advance copies and the progress does not show! This is because trying to make tiny wooden tokens for 50 copies of the game has proven to be far more time consuming than I had calculated.

To that end, I've deiced to change the tokens in the Advance Copes for the Eager Enthusiast pledge level to have 3D printed plastic tokens, instead of wooden tokens. 

This allows me to print off several copies at a time without me having to micro manage each individual token, allowing me to focus my time on getting things ready for production.

The full officially produced version of Mint Works will still have white painted wooden tokens.

Errored Pledges

There are still 51 of you showing as having an errorded pledge. This means that Kickstarter was not able to charge your card for some reason.

If you don't want to lose your backer status you should work with Kickstarer to fix your card issues as soon as you can.

Pledge Manager / Surveys / Pre-Orders

I'm using BackerKit for our pledge manager, it's looking like next week I'll be opening up the Pre-Order system and sending out the backer surveys.

That's all I have for you at the moment! Now to get some sleep so I can get my nose back to the grindstone tomorrow!

-Justin