The Depths of Durangrar: A Dungeon Crawler...in the dark

Working with Manufacturers
about 8 years ago – Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 12:36:42 AM

Hello!

This past month I've been busy in a back and forth with Wingo Games Manufacturing. They've received the latest prototype of The Depths of Durangrar after some shipping delays. Their sales and engineering team took a thorough look through all the parts. A few of the parts did need some changes and we've been in communication back and forth on how best to change the parts. Specifically, it's the wall pegs and the characters that need the most adjustment. Other details include material and color choice for the other components. 

We're injection molding the characters. Injection molding is the most popular manufacturing process to date for high volume, lost cost production of plastic parts, although it has a rather expensive up front cost for the mold. However, with how Injection molding is done, there are some restrictions and design constraints on how to best design an object to achieve the best quality for finished miniatures without defects. We've been going back and forth on some of the changes necessary. Other than cosmetic changes, the biggest change is how the LED circuit will be attached. Originally I had planned one the character made without a base and the circuit would be embedded in a rectangular base and the character snapped into place. However, after some discussion, this design would require 3 molds rather than two. So the character has been combined with the base with the LED circuit and a lid would be attached separately to conceal the circuit but could be easily removed to replace the battery whenever necessary. One drawback of this is that if I use a opaque plastic for the character, it won't glow. If I use a translucent plastic, it may reveal too much in the game. I'm looking into some possible solutions for this, the leading one being applying a mask or coat of paint to just the bottom of the character, leaving the rest of the character translucent. In the picture below, on the left is the original design, on the right is the proposed new design. Both are 3D printed so the surfaces are a little rough but don't reflect what the final quality will be like.

The next change is the board tile and wall peg. Specifically the base of the wall peg and the punch out on the board tile. Originally, I had the punch out as a cross shape to match the wall peg and make it so that the wall peg fits in either way. However, the cross shape is fairly complicated for the manufacturing process and could wear down faster. A simple rectangular or punch out shape would work much easier and last longer. So I'm experimenting with different designs to make it easy to put together as that's one of the earliest feedback I had gotten during playtesting (making setup as easy as possible). I also need to make sure any design changes will continue to support regular walls and diagonal walls but all in all, I don't expect any difficulties. The first few tests worked well but it was rather easy to knock the peg loose from the square fitting as their is less surface area for the board tile to hold the peg in place. 

As for the night vision goggles, we're still in the researching process. We're comparing many different dash cameras for performance, cost, resolution, weight and discharge rate. We've found 4 possible solutions but each one has some drawback. The top contender has great resolution but only about 15 minutes of run time before it needs to recharge. 

Back from Gen Con!
over 8 years ago – Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 10:37:54 PM

Hello!

We're back from Gen Con! Once again, we're amazed and excited for all the new games coming out. We had some fun checking out a few games but the main reason for our visit was the meet with our manufacturer and distributor in person. Both our manufacturer and distributor are excited to help us make and send out copies of The Depths of Durangrar. 

Meeting in person was a fantastic way to communicate everything we wanted to put in the game and discuss if there's anything that needs to be changed or any problems we can anticipate before they came. We talked for a few hours with Wingo games on every individual component, down to the very tray that helps pack all the components in the game box in place. I also got a chance to see tons of other games Wingo has produced, several of them for Kickstarter projects and I'm very satisfied with the quality of other games Wingo has produced and was even able to use some of the parts of those games to explain what I was hoping to achieve within The Depths of Durangrar.

Survey results! Everybody wins!
over 8 years ago – Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 11:26:10 PM

90% of the surveys have been completed. It's been very exciting to watch the surveys come in. The results are 8 votes in favor of removable tokens out of 612 responses. It's been neck and neck as the surveys have been coming in. Now I can't live with half of my backers unhappy so after talking with the manufacturer about the costs of manufacturing and reviewing the costs of other components and scrutinizing the budget, I am very happy to say that it is possible and we will be giving everyone both the diagonal walls and removable tokens. So every game will include the diagonal walls and removable tokens. The expansion sets will get even more walls and tokens to match their larger mazes. 

For flush tokens, it's in a much larger favor for flush tokens (225:138) so we'll be looking into getting the tokens made out of perforated card stock so that they will be much thinner and sit nearly flush with the floor without cutting into the board tiles. That way the tokens will be removable during the game as well. Another perk is that the different thicknesses will make it easy to differentiate between the equipment tokens and the event tokens. 

Also, if any of your friends missed the kickstarter, it is possible to pre-order through backerkit through this link:

https://the-depths-of-durangrar-a-dungeon-crawlerin-the-da.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Thank you for your support!

87% of surveys answered!
over 8 years ago – Sat, Jul 09, 2016 at 07:18:43 PM

Hello Everyone!

Thank you for being very quick to respond to the surveys. About 87% of all surveys have been answered. I'll be posting the results in about a week from now. If you have not yet answered your survey, please do as soon as you can. If you have not received a survey yet, either leave a comment or you can message me directly and I will get back to you as soon as possible to getting the issue resolved. 

Thank you!

Surveys are out!
over 8 years ago – Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 08:30:39 PM

        Hello! Thank you everyone for being patient with us! There were quite a few details we needed to hash out before sending out all the surveys through backerkit! These surveys are meant to collect your votes on whether we stick with diagonal walls for the stretch goal or go with removable tokens instead, as well as to collect your shipping address. 

        Importantly: don't worry if you end up changing your address before we ship. Before the orders go out, Backerkit will send out a follow up email allowing you to update your address if it has changed between these surveys and when we ship the rewards out! 

        Following with collecting these surveys, we’re moving onto redesigning the night vision goggles based on everyone’s feedback. It looks like the lighter we can make the night vision goggles the better. We’ll also aim for better IR lighting so that more is illuminated, and if we can remain cost effective we'll even try and bump up the resolution. Resolution will likely be our hardest challenge as it’ll be a back and forth between the highest resolution the camera can pick up and the highest resolution the LCD screen can display. These two components are also the most expensive, but thanks to the proliferation of dash cams, cell phone cameras and cameras for drones, these have gotten cheaper over the years as they’ve been mass produced. Please stay tuned for future development and thank you for your support!