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

Created by Creative Cove Games

The Depths of Durangrar is an asymmetrical dungeon crawler that's played in the dark. Play as explorers who use LEDs to light up only what's in front of them in a modular maze that's different in every game. Or play as the monster who has a night vision camcorder and can see all the explorers and the whole maze.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

July Update
over 7 years ago – Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 01:47:11 PM

Last month and the next couple months will mostly focus on getting everything lined up for manufacturing.

The game manufacturer right now is focusing on the injection molded miniatures as that has the longest lead time and most complex. Most other pieces are standard pieces that fit a set tool and simply need the artwork specific to the Depths of Durangrar added. They're reviewing the designs now for injection molded and I'm waiting on a reply about that. 

Other than that, the specialty parts that have to be sourced elsewhere such as the circuits and night vision goggles are progressing steadily as well. I'm working with the circuit board manufacturer to source all the individual components. Most of them are off the shelf such as the switches and battery holder, the resistor they have in house but the candle-flicker LEDs are made by a specific manufacturer so I'll have to order the parts for them and have them sent over. Right now, I'm in the midst of sending them a sample size of LEDs so that I can get a first article sample made before full production of the circuit boards. 

As for the night vision goggles, those I'm purchasing from another toy manufacturer so they're already produced for sale at multiple retail stores worldwide so manufacturing lead time is not an issue. However, their sales process requires more than a quote and payment but a certificate of authority and seller's permit. (this was briefly mentioned in the May update). This process is almost completed as I've gotten the certificate of good standing from NY and just waiting on the permit to be awarded in California. This process is almost completely being handled by my accountant as I've already been delayed from my unfamiliarity of business licenses and I do not want to repeat that mistake. Once that's permits are completed, I should be able to put in a purchase of the night vision goggles and have them shipped to the game manufacturer for assembly into the game box. 

June Update
over 7 years ago – Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 01:22:12 AM

Thermal Paper

I’ve been evaluating the thermal paper for degradation these past three months. Thermal paper is particularly sensitive to finger oils and UV light. So I left the thermal paper in the sunlight. I’ve left two samples of the more promising thermal paper samples I’ve ordered before in direct sunlight and another one in the box for three months each. The last one was made fresh today. I’m much happier with the 2nd one. Despite having faded somewhat over the past few months in the sunlight, it’s held up well out of the sunlight and against skin oils so I am quite satisfied with this sample. 

Circuit Board  

The character base design is finished including the circuit board and the housing. I’ve been able to reduce the overall size of the circuit board somewhat so explorers can pass each other easier through the maze. The enclosure has gone through a bunch of iterations to get it to snap shut and stay closed, easy opening to replace the battery by using a screwdriver on the backside, hold the circuit board secure and direct the light as a lantern would. 

  

Circuit Installed in bottom half of enclosure. The battery is on the underside.
Circuit Installed in bottom half of enclosure. The battery is on the underside.

 

Diagram of the parts of the base that's easier to see rather than the black prototype with black PCB
Diagram of the parts of the base that's easier to see rather than the black prototype with black PCB

 

 

Gloves and War Stick  

I’ve also received a sample of the gloves I plan to use for the monster. It fits comfortably and can be worn comfortable for hours and is a one size fits all. The war stick design is also finalized. It's a lot sleeker than previous designs and is designed so it's easy to swivel but once set in a position, it'll stay in that position making it easy to move the monster from many angles.

 

 

One year update
over 7 years ago – Mon, May 08, 2017 at 12:04:03 AM

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a full year since I launched the kickstarter. Honestly, I was hoping to be further along but my original estimation was a very optimistic. That being said, here’s a look at how things are now.

I’m talking with a supplier now for the night vision goggles. Since I moved to California for work, one thing I was unaware of was that I need a new business license and Seller’s permit. I assumed since the business is registered in New York, I would maintain using the same business license and seller’s permit. I’ll need both of these before we can begin working with the supplier. That being said, they’ve given us a quote and timeline. They currently have 500 units in inventory and will have another 500 in the Fall. So that sets our timeline to delivery as estimated for end of this year.

To avoid this oversight in the future with business forms and licenses, I’ve gone to hiring an accountant to help with avoiding these oversights but also help with keeping the books, allowing me to focus on delivery. That being said, I believe this is my own shortcoming so I’m paying for it out of pocket as it was my decision to move. A very frequent problem I’ve seen with kickstarters that have not delivered is that they have run out of money. The money you’ve given to me for this project remains where it has been after I paid the contractors and artists and the upfront costs to start manufacturing so financially, that is not trending to be an issue. I fully intend to deliver despite these shortcomings of mine. This experience has been incredibly humbling as I overestimated some of my abilities in how fast I could get things done, but I remain confident in my abilities to deliver the full game. However, that’s only my point of view. I’d like to put forward that if anyone does not feel the same way, I will fully refund your pledge anytime from now until delivery. After delivery, I will also also offer refunds one month after delivery but will not be able to offer a refund on the shipping. 

Manufacturing has started with cutting the molds for the miniatures. They estimate it will take them 12 weeks to finish the molds but that there’ll likely be some modifications to the mold will be needed but they won’t know what until the first pass is complete. So that means a minimum of 12 weeks plus shipping to check the quality from today. The other parts of the board game have a much shorter turnaround time. We’ve tested the thermal paper with them and they said it adhered well to the board and worked very well. I’m waiting to receive their produced sample to check for myself as well.

I have a distributor lined up for both North America and Europe. Other locations will be shipped directly to a local delivery company as the quantities are too small to justify shipping containers. However, without an exact weight on the packages, I haven’t received an exact quote and waiting on information to be more solid before requesting an exact delivery date but the distributor has been quite forward with working with us so I am satisfied with how things stand on delivery now.  

I’d like to thank everyone for their continued support and please do not hesitate to ask any questions at all.

April Update
over 7 years ago – Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 08:12:32 AM

It’s been a busy month of taxes. Unfortunately, taxes have taken up most of my time this past month and I haven’t been able to work on much. What I have been able to work on was new revisions of the character base circuit. I’ve redesigned the circuit board to be more compact to better facilitate character moving around each other in gameplay.

The previous design didn’t make it very easy to access the switch either. I was also able to make a custom circuit board setup to test out different LEDs to decide which LED would be best and compare them to the research Julius Ter Pelkwijk recommended which has been a great help. https://bestlight.io/blogs/news/54956417-which-color-led-is-best-for-reading.

Here’s a list of all the LEDs I tested .

In the end, it looks like white light will be the best solution. Red was actually quite easy to see the lettering but overall, quite harsh on the eyes over a long period of time. Blue made the lettering impossible to see. Green was softer on the eyes than red but hid some of the lettering. Yellow was very easy on the eyes but too dim to see. White had the best balance, illuminating all the lettering without being too harsh on the eyes in the dark. Overall, it seems like color has a significant effect on how the letters are seen. I believe the results are quite different from the blog post on which color LED is best for reading as the artwork I have set up uses a light color for the font and a dark color background while the blog highlights an excerpt from a book that has black lettering against a white page. The higher the intensity of the LEDs did make for a brighter illumination but overall, not as much as the difference in color The next steps for the circuit design will be searching for a supplier for the individual components on the board and vetting how well those components work.

March Update
over 7 years ago – Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 10:42:56 PM

Hello! It’s been a busy month of testing out proposed solutions to solve but I’ve made a bunch of head way. First off, I’ve tried out the war sticks and it worked fairly well. I have some more tweaks I’d like to try. First I started off with a Y-like stick. It worked well but difficult for pulling the monster back towards the player. So next I tried a C-like stick.

Y-stick is on the left, C-stick is on the right
Y-stick is on the left, C-stick is on the right

So while in the C orientation, it would be hard to move the monster to the left, the stick could just be flipped to push it towards the left. The only issue now was that it was difficult to move get a good grasp of the monster over a wall. So I designed a swiveling stick that would be able to better flex to a variety of positions.

Swiveling stick
Swiveling stick

I also tried making a stand up board so that a stick with a magnet could be maneuvered underneath the board. Unfortunately, with the modular board, it wasn’t as simple as I thought to hold the suspend the boards up. I used modified pegs and the minimum number I could use were 4 to each board. This resulted in the stick bumping into the pegs frequently and made for navigating the monster quite difficult in the corners of the board farthest from the monster player. All in all, this solution was not as easy or smooth as the swiveling war stick.

Regular Peg is on the left, Modified Peg is on the right
Regular Peg is on the left, Modified Peg is on the right

Next up, we’ve gotten some fabricated printed circuit boards for the character bases. The quality has been great but this being my first endeavor in professionally designed PCBs, the components could be placed around better. In the first run, the LED pins would stick through to contact the battery but if placed wrong, the battery could short between the two leads of the pins causing the circuit to not work. So in the next revision, I went with a SMD battery clip and relocated the LED and created traces to route to the LED. This worked much better but made the overall board larger which may impede how well characters fit through the maze together so I’m now looking to revise the board to best utilize the total space and shrink its overall size.

First version PCB on the left, Second version PCB on the right.
First version PCB on the left, Second version PCB on the right.

I’ve also redesigned the light clips to possibly use the same circuit boards the character base uses. Previously, I planned on buying some book lights off the shelf but of the ones I purchased, many were too large or too bright. Although they would illuminate the screen quite well, the additional light would also illuminate the room just enough to begin to show the overall maze as well. Ideally, these lights would be bright enough to illuminate the character screens, provide enough light that player’s eyes wouldn’t adjust to the dark enough to see the maze but not enough light as to being to illuminate the entire room. While the LEDs I am using currently work great for illuminating parts of the maze for the character, I feel just aren’t bright enough for reading.

Lastly, I’ve gotten in contact with a night vision goggle supplier and I very much like the quality of the goggles they supply but we haven’t confirmed anything yet so I will provide more details on that as soon as I can.