50,000 boats
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 01:59:12 AM

Hey everyone, it looks like I may have to build some boats!

What an incredible month, over 8,000 of you have joined The Isle of Cats Kickstarter and pledged £467,847 to help make this game, I'm blown away.

I want you to know that I am so very grateful for your support, tonight you have allowed Sara and I to continue designing and producing games, and we will forever be thankful.

In pledging for this Kickstarter, you have trusted me to deliver on a promise, and today I want to re-iterate that over the next 8 months, you will be my focus. I will keep you updated every step of the way, and hope we have a smooth journey to fulfilment next year.

The 1-2-3 of what happens next

I know some of you are Kickstarter veterans, but I'm also aware we have many first-time backers with us, and I'd like to let you know the next 3 steps of the process.

1. Payments

Kickstarter will now process your payment, it can take up to 10 days for the payments to be processed, so please be patient. Unfortunately, I don't have any control over this step, we are in the hands of Kickstarter themselves.

My payment failed

If your payment failed, do not panic! Kickstarter will email you with steps on what to do, this can happen if your card has expired or the payment has been flagged as fraud. Simply follow the steps Kickstarter suggests, and they will re-charge your card in a few days.

No one will get left behind, if you are still having issues at the end of the process, I will find a way to help you.

2. Pledge Manager

In 3 weeks' time I will send out a link to our Pledge Manager, what is that you ask?

BackerKit (our chosen Pledge Manager) is a website where you will be able to login and manage your pledge to The Isle of Cats. This will allow you to:

• Enter your address
• Enter your phone number
• Add additional items to your pledge
• and a few other things which I'll talk about closer to the time.

When we are ready to send the Pledge Manager details out, I will send another email guiding you on what to do, there is no need to worry!

3. Making the game

While your payments are being processed, and the pledge manager is being completed, I will be making the game! Now of course this will take a long time and there are many steps involved, these include:

• Proofreading and editing all the text
• Preparing the files for print
• Signing the contracts
• Proofing the digital and physical files
• Proofing the materials and samples
• and then we'll move into production, shipping and fulfilment.

As we get further into each of these steps, I will continue to update you and let you know what is happening.

The next few weeks

Please keep in mind, the next few weeks really are a waiting game, we have to wait for Kickstarter to process the money, and then transfer it to me before I can sign off with the manufacturers.

This will take up to 3 weeks.

From tomorrow evening (Friday 26th) onwards, I will begin my journey to Gen Con and be in the USA for 11 days, I will return on Wednesday 7th August. During the travel days, I will be offline for 24 hours (it's a long trip), while I'm in America I will do what I can to answer questions, but please expect responses to be a little slower than usual.

The good news is, as mentioned above, during this time we are just waiting for Kickstarter to process things, so nothing will be delayed (I may have planned that!).

Gen Con

If you are at Gen Con next week, please do come and say hello, you can find me at booth 2760 and I will be there for the entire show. I do not book meetings during the show hours, this time is for you and me to meet and have fun.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Until next time

The next update will be in a couple of weeks, once I have returned from the USA. Until then, I want to thank you once more for help making this happen, I still don't think I've fully processed how incredible this has been.

Oh, and one last thing... Many of you have cats, and given how special this day is, I think they deserve a special treat. Please show them that little bit of extra love tonight and let them know I'm thankful for their part in this campaign!

- Frank

1,076,804 cats rescued
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Jul 25, 2019 at 12:57:22 AM

Hey everyone, it's the last 24 hours of the Kickstarter!

What a journey it has been, over 7,000 of you have joined me on this adventure and the number is going up every minute.

I just did a little maths and with the number of cat pieces in each game, and the number of backers, we're currently looking to rescue 1,076,804 cats from Vesh!

Speaking of Vesh, I thought those of you who are less familiar with The City of Kings universe might like a little more story, so throughout this update I've included some snippets from the universe.

The Last Stretch Goal

A few days ago I announced the last stretch goal of the campaign, at the time is was £95,000 away and none of us were sure if we were going to reach it. As of now, we are just £11,000 away and I think we might get there fairly soon! I'm excited, but we still need to work hard if we're going to unlock all those extra animals!

A few people have been asking what happens next, Is this really the last stretch goal?

The answer is yes, the game will be finished, and I will be incredibly happy with the end result that we will be producing, and I hope you will be too. With that said, if we get to £435,000 sooner rather than later, there is still something we can work towards.

Over the past few weeks I have been talking with a lot of distributors, retailers and other publishers, and one of the most important questions they always ask is, how many backers do you have? Many of you have asked whether the expansion will be available in retail after the campaign, and whether new expansions will be developed. The truth of the matter is this all comes down to backer numbers, the more we have, the more companies will wish to work with me to stock the game, and fund its growth moving forward.

Please don't get me wrong, 7,000 backers is already the most incredible thing and I am over the moon. Should the campaign end right now I would probably break down into tears with the joy of what has happened. But I do want to motivate you, I want to encourage you to keep pushing, because we may not unlock more content for the game, but instead, we can unlock the games future, and with that comes all sorts of possibilities. Every backer helps!

Live Streams

Tomorrow I will start live streaming 1 hour before the Kickstarter ends, this will be on YouTube, but I shall also post the video to the top of the campaign page. I hope you can join me for the end of the campaign so I can thank you in (video) person!

If you missed yesterdays stream, you can watch it here:

The Cats!

We've had a lot of people join us in the last few days and I thought it would be nice to put all of the cat descriptions in one place, so for those of you who are new to the campaign, I would like to introduce our cats!

Until next time

We have just under 24 hours to see how far this project can go, I'm going to be doing everything I can to spread the word and hope to see you tomorrow at the stream.

Thank you so much for what has been an incredible month, I look forward to this last day together.

- Frank

Join me live tomorrow, and a rare treasure update!
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 02:23:21 AM

Hey everyone,

We are down to the last 3 days of the campaign, what an amazing month it has been!

I thought it would be nice to spend some time telling the story of The Isle of Cats, showing some of the old prototypes and discussing how the project came to be.

If you are around, I'd love for you to join me tomorrow on YouTube at 20:00 BST, 15:00 EST, 12:00 PST. You can find the stream here:

I'd also love to answer your questions, whatever you'd like to know! If you can't make the stream please ask them in the comments below and I'll do my best to cover them during the stream. While any question will do, questions about design decisions, lore and self-publishing the game are all especially welcome!

Rare Treasures

The alternate artwork for the rare treasures is complete, once again thank you for helping to make this happen by unlocking stretch goals. The game is going to be that much better now we have 30 additional pieces of unique artwork on these tiles!

I look forward to talking with you all live tomorrow!

Have a fantastic day.

- Frank

The Kickstarter Pack is complete!
almost 5 years ago – Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 02:04:06 AM

Hello everyone,

Are you enjoying your Saturday?

I'm having a particularly great day as we have just unlocked our 18th stretch goal!

When I started this campaign, I never imagined we would gain so many backers and get this far, we've flown through every stretch goal I had planned, and even a few I hadn't (the rare treasure artwork), it's been incredible.

When the Kickstarter launched I wrote on the campaign page (the stretch goal graphic) how I wanted to include all of the upgrades in the game regardless of how the funding went, and you've shown me over the last weeks that was the best decision I could have made. It allowed us to start with the finished product, and to gently layer on more replayability via these 18 stretch goals, and I am so pleased with everything we have achieved.

The Kickstarter Pack

With all the stretch goals unlocked, our Kickstarter Pack is now complete, and I'd like to take a minute to remind you of everything you've added to the pack, and the few extras I had already included before the campaign began!

All of these new tiles, cards and lesson modules will add a considerable amount of replayability to the game, easily comparable to an expansion.

I hope you enjoy all this extra content.

The Last Stretch Goal

It's true, we've unlocked all 18 stretch goals that I created, but over the past couple of weeks something special has happened.

You, the backers, the community driving this project past everyone's expectations, you had an idea. Not only did this idea swarm the comments section for weeks, but it spread onto Board Game Geek, Facebook, Twitter and more.

This last stretch goal is your idea, it's going to take a lot of effort, it's going to cost a lot of money, and as a result it's going to be very hard to unlock. But I hope we can achieve it in these last few days and put a touch of all of you into the game.

Good luck everyone and thank you for continuing to help make everything about this game, this campaign, and this community the best it can be.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend.

- Frank

Live streams, play in Bristol, and the final part of the comic!
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 09:34:27 PM

Hey everyone,

I hope you are having a fantastic week. We are approaching the final 7 days of the Kickstarter and what an adventure it has been! I will start sending out more frequent updates as we approach the finals days to keep everyone updated with everything that is happening.

 Comic part 3 

Over the past few weeks I have shared part 1 and part 2 of the fantastic comic Semi Co-op created for The Isle of Cats, and today I'd like to share the final chapter.

You can find a larger version of the comic on their website.

It does make me wonder, what are we going to do with all these cats when we get them home?

Live Streams

I was hoping to do a live stream this week and invite you to come and play The Isle of Cats with me, but unfortunately, I've had a fairly bad fever and I don't think I would have lasted the full session. Instead, I am going to schedule a stream for early next week (on YouTube) and will send out the details once they have been finalised.

Play The Isle of Cats tonight in Bristol (UK)

Thanks to everyone who came by and said hello at Fan Boy Three last weekend!

This evening I will be at Chance and Counters, a board game cafe in Bristol, and I'll be bringing The Isle of Cats for people to play. If you are in the area please drop by and say hello, I would love to show you the game! 

Until next time

The last few weeks have been amazing in so many ways, the Kickstarter has gone incredibly well (thank you!) and we have flown past 5000 backers!

This has allowed us to unlock loads of stretch goals and the Kickstarter Pack is looking better and better every day. We are now getting close to unlocking our next stretch goal, a third lesson module for the Kickstarter Pack and this will give you enough lesson modules to switch out all of the standard ones that come in the game!

Over the next couple of days, I plan to update the campaign page with all of the unlocked cards, and I hope to be able to release the new treasure artwork you unlocked as well.

Have a fantastic couple of days and I'll be in touch soon!

- Frank