A Quick Gen Con Update about Pins!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 02:36:35 AM

Thanks to everyone who has filled out your BackerKit surveys already! We have learned an important lesson: lots of you like cute dog pins :D

The pup pin available on the BackerKit is part of the 2020 Gen Con Pin Bazaar program, which you can learn more about here: https://www.pinbazaar.com/gencon2020

Normally at Gen Con, people run around collecting and trading pins, and there's "rare" pin rewards available for savvy collectors. Obviously, no physical convention this year, so the concept has been evolved for our digital reality. If you buy pins from several vendors, you'll be able to get free pins from the folks running Pin Bazaar (details on that site above).  The good news: Your BackerKit receipt email counts as having purchased a pin, even though it won't be charged / shipped for a little while longer. Enjoy :)

BackerKit is open! And Bonus Good News!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 12:54:20 AM

Today we are sending out all the BackerKit surveys - you should receive an email sometime this afternoon allowing you to go in and confirm your pledge, enter your address, and add-on any items you would like. This is a fairly simple campaign, so there's not a giant list of quirky things and bits! In fact, there are three things: More games, Canvases, and Pins. 

What's the pin look like, you might ask? It looks like this:

This good pup pup is ready to take a trip with you wherever you go, proudly displaying your pup affiliation for all to see. You can also adorn your wall with our beautiful watercolor art, by adding a 12"x16" canvas:

And of course, you can add more copies of Good Puppers to your pledge, if you're buying for a group / want gifts / enjoy having a stack of games. 

Pre-Orders

With the BackerKit open, anyone can now place a pre-order through the site as well. So if you missed the campaign, here's your chance! The Pre-order store is here: https://good-puppers.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders (It's also linked from the main KS Campaign page now)

Shipping

We're keeping shipping costs as simple as possible. There's a base cost for 1 game, and a higher cost for anything that weighs more than 1 game. (For non US / CA orders, there's a third level for higher weight orders, anything over 4 pounds)

US: $3 / $6

CA: $9 / $15

Everywhere Else: $16 / $20 / $ 25

Bonus Good News

As part of the final testing + proofing process, I built an entire Pup Simulator that played the game *tens of thousands of times* with very intelligent dog AI. The AI now wants a doggo of its own, but we'll address that problem later in a series of sci-fi novels. The result of all this testing was some small tweaks to the text on cards, which has allowed us to extend the player count from 2-4 to 2-5! Five players is a very common group size for game nights (you know, once we're allowed to see people again), and I'm glad that Puppers can support it! 

A Quick BackerKit Update!
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 12:23:37 AM

Hello pup pup enthusiasts! I hope you are enjoying the dog days of summer. Woof woof.

Bad News (not that bad)

We've submitted our pre-order/backer site to BackerKit, but it's going to take a day or two to be approved. Once it's approved, we'll send out a quick test of surveys to a small portion (5%-10%) of our backers. Once those look good, we'll send out emails to everyone! 

You'll be able to enter your address, add games, canvases, or pins (pins?) to your pledge if desired, and pay for the extra stuff as needed.

Good News (it's good!)

We have made a very cute Lab pin for Gen Con 2020's Pin Bazaar - and we'll have them available for order in the BackerKit for $8. We'll have pictures later this week, when we post another update to announce the BackerKit + Pre-order site's opening. Aaaand, there's more good news, which we'll be sharing during that update (teaser!!!)

Pups! Schedule updates and BackerKit soon!
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 09:28:02 AM

Hello pup friends! We had planned to open up our BackerKit a couple weeks ago, but we wanted to square away international shipping before we did. I have news, but it's not all good news unfortunately.  

We will be able to open the BackerKit to customers beyond the US and Canada, but the cost will be higher than we'd hoped.  Because of COVID, rates on all packages have been affected, but the effect on small packages is even more significant than on large ones. To ship a single copy of the game to a customer outside the US or Canada will cost $16. That's a lot! It's more than the game costs. The good news is, that rate is the same for up to 6 games. So if you can organize a group buy, the shipping cost isn't quite as awful. 

If you're an international backer, you have a couple options:

1) A refund - if you'd like one, just ask, I'll take care of it right away. As a policy, we always refund Kickstarter pledges in full (no weird 5% fee) for any reason before fulfillment. If you fall into this category, shoot me a message via Kickstarter and I'll take care of it. We prefer this to comments / emails because the message is directly attached to your KS account, and it's easier to process/verify that way!

2) Pledge for several games to save on shipping. This'll be easy to do in the BackerKit once it's open, if you've got local friends that want a copy.

3) Leave pledge as-is. Also easy to do in BackerKit.

Regardless of what you choose, we thank you for supporting our project! Even if you have to wait for the retail release, cute pups are in your future :)

BackerKit Opening: July 20

To get all of this new shipping data into the system correctly, we need a bit of extra time (and then BackerKit needs to approve the project) - we'll be opening up the BackerKit on July 20, two weeks from Monday. 

We're working with the factory on some box-things, since we're aiming this at Ages 9+, we need to do a couple extra safety-testing things that we don't usually have to do on our games. Shouldn't take long for production, we just have to make sure our box is labeled properly.

*Warning: Do not eat box! It is not tasty. But if you do, it's safe. Just...starchy.

Schedule and Things!
almost 4 years ago – Sun, Jun 07, 2020 at 05:37:17 PM

Hello pupper-fan backers, wanted to put together a quick update to let you know what's happening. We're finalizing the art files for production of the game, right now we're working on updating the packaging to properly display all the symbols that indicate that our game is safety tested (in case you try to eat it - but please do not eat game, it is not delicious!)

BackerKit: June 15

The BackerKit website will open on June 15. Each of you will get an email inviting you in - this is where you'll be able to put in your address. If you want to, you'll also be able to add more copies of the game, or one of our fancy canvas wall prints. 

Importantly, this is where non-US/CA fans will be able to join in, as pre-orders! We'll be able to ship to most places, although shipping rates aren't cheap right now. We're working on the exact numbers and will post when the BackerKit opens with details. 

Printing / Shipping

The plan is for the game to go into production in late June, ready for late August shipping. Right now nothing's in the way of that, but we'll keep you posted if it changes!