Five Days Left - Final Stretch Goal!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Aug 10, 2024 at 03:19:49 PM
We’re back safe and sound from Gen Con and are finally mostly caught back up on sleep, so it’s time for another update! We’re now down to the last five days of the campaign, so we’re on the final stretch. Speaking of, it’s time to reveal the final stretch goal!
Us gamers love metal, so we figured it’d be fitting to have our final stretch goal be a metal first-player coin. This one will indeed be a bit of a stretch, but we’re hoping we can end strong and get this final goal unlocked!
The campaign will be ending at 3 PM Central on Thursday 8/15, so if you’re a dollar backer or are on the fence about pledging now’s the time to do it! Keep in mind the only backers eligible to receive the free mini-expansion are the ones who pledge at the base level ($60) or higher who are also on our mailing list.
As a reminder, if you get redirected to the Kickstarter page after clicking on the mailing list it means you’re on the list already so you’re good to go! If you aren't certain, feel free to reach out to us and we'd be happy to check to make sure.
Gen Con is always the convention highlight of the year due to the sheer scale of the event. All four days were fully sold out, and that was very much reflected in the insane amount of people we saw everywhere we went.
We got six public playthroughs of Sprocketforge in (in addition to quite a few internal playtests), and they all went swimmingly. There were no major hiccups or changes needed, although we did come up with a couple new ideas for things we could tweak slightly to improve balance or streamline things a bit.
We also had the metal gears on display, which continuously drew people in to our booth. We had the plastic gears set up alongside the metal gears so people could test them out and feel the difference, and the metal gears were a huge hit. One question kept coming up: “what color(s) will the metal gears be?”
We had originally planned on having all 25 gears be the ancient bronze color that we’ve shared previously, but after talking with backers at the show it sounds like there is an appetite to have five different finishes for the gears (one finish for each player). We are getting a list of the potential finishing options from our factory and will be sharing a survey for backers to vote for their favorites once we get that list, so keep an eye out for that!
Those of you with a keen eye may have noticed Jeremy holding something in the picture up above - we found ourselves a three-headed mascot while we were at Gen Con!
He’s pretty great, but we can’t decide what his name should be! Let us know what you think we should name him in the comments so we can officially welcome him to the crew.
You know what time it is - faction time! This update’s featured faction is Golden Bastion! Golden Bastion is a group of humans, and their backstory is below:
Once, humans ruled the world. But those days are long past. Centuries of aggression and expansionism against their neighbors turned many a civilization against the tenacious creatures, and their empire slowly shattered before the resentment of an entire world. Humanity now lives on in the impoverished slums and seedy underbellies of younger civilizations.
Humans have a hard time getting jobs, which leads many to crime as a way to survive. Though poorly represented in the upper echelons of society, they rule the criminal underworld of Sprocketforge. Unfortunately, their success in the darkest recesses of the city further tarnishes humanity’s reputation, perpetuating the cycle of desperation.
There are few human nobles in Sprocketforge, and even those that have reached a privileged position in society have often used blackmail and underhanded dealings to get there. Human nobility has a low status and a willingness to get their hands dirty not often shared by their peers. Though often looked down upon, human houses like Tresh and Ferrier serve a vital role in society by running much of the sewer maintenance and garbage collection in the city.
Human magical traditions have been criticized by other species as disgustingly inefficient, and to some extent this is true. They have a knack for finding natural pockets of magic to exploit, and consequently have never needed to be particularly efficient in their enchanting. Human-made artifacts are often extremely powerful, but leak energy like a sieve and break down rapidly. Their raw power makes humans excellent at waging magical war, a mostly useless specialty in the current era of peace and prosperity.
But now, things are changing. Golden Bastion aims to prove to the world that humans can emerge from their troubled past to become a shining pillar of society. With their new factory, the newly-formed company will show that human enchanting techniques can be as reliable as they are powerful. But not all of their stakeholders are entirely honest, and old habits die hard…
The humans will start the game with blackmailed house cards that are reserved for their use. They may spend renown to take advantage of the abilities granted by those houses, but have to carefully balance their desire for using those houses against their desire to petition other houses - they will lose renown for blackmailed houses at the end of the game. Stay tuned for another faction overview in our next campaign update!
That’s all for now folks! We’ll be back with another update in a few days, and we can’t wait to finish out the campaign on a strong note!
This is Jeremy, Ethan, and Matt, turning the wheels of creativity…
Hello from Gen Con!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Aug 03, 2024 at 05:29:08 PM
You’re receiving this update live from Indianapolis, IN, where this little thing called Gen Con is going on! It’s been crazy so far, but in a good way. We’ve seen lots of friends and familiar faces while also making lots of new friends and meeting backers such as yourselves (which is our favorite part of these conventions, by the way).
While we were busy with the hustle and bustle of Gen Con, we realized we unlocked our next stretch goal - hooray for linen finish!
What’s better than linen finish on the cards? Linen finish on the other cardstock components! Our final stretch goal in the linen department will apply linen finish to the player aids and renown tracker so that all the cardstock in the game has that premium finish.
We had a couple of interview over the past week and wanted to share them with everyone! The first one was with our good friends over at WiscoDice, a podcast based out of our home state of Wisconsin. Consey and Suzanne are pretty awesome people that host an equally awesome podcast, and in this episode we talk all things Sprocketforge, The Stifling Dark, and a bit about the future of Sophisticated Cerberus. You can find the episode on your favorite podcast platform or on WiscoDice’s website.
Our next interview was with Steve Conoboy over at Zatu. The interview mostly focuses on Sprocketforge, but has a couple miscellaneous questions we walk though as well. You can check it out over on Zatu’s website!
As mentioned in our last campaign update, we will be deep-diving into one of the five factions in each of the next five campaign updates. This week’s featured faction is (drum roll please) - the Harmonic Union! The Harmonic Union is a group of Kobolds, and their backstory is below:
Beneath the bustling streets of Sprocketforge lies an expansive network of tunnels and rooms, filled with the high-pitched chatter of tens of thousands of kobolds. Carnivorous by nature and always thrifty, Kobolds happily keep their cities free of rats and other vermin while also collecting and repurposing garbage. Despite this affinity for the less tasteful aspects of city life, the diminutive scavengers are beloved in every city in the kingdom for their friendliness and willingness to share what little they have with others.
Kobold culture has always valued efficient use of resources above all else, influenced perhaps by their reptilian nature. During the Great Famine, they flourished due to their willingness to eat vermin and keen eye for repurposing materials. By the time the kingdom recovered, there was a sizable Kobold warren in every town and city. Yet despite their booming population, they faced far less prejudice than humans did.
Kobold facial expressions are difficult to read, but they have developed rich body language to compensate. They love theatrical performances, both as the audience and as the actors, and many of the most famous plays are performed literally underground in specially sized warrens built to accommodate larger races. Outside of theater, Kobolds are delighted to engage with all aspects of city life, immersing themselves in the culture above ground just as they do the culture below.
When it comes to magic, Kobolds tend to be efficient casters, if not particularly powerful ones. They are very willing to share their arcane knowledge, even with their competitors. This largesse leads some to view them as easy marks, but the truth is they genuinely want everybody to succeed.
Harmonic Union is the only artificery in the city owned and run by its workers. It was founded by Kobolds frustrated by the tendency of existing artificeries to exploit their kind as cheap, gullible labor. All workers in the Union are equal, and labor together toward the benefit of the city as a whole. But their steadfast dedication to the interests of the proletariat makes the Harmonic Union an existential threat in the eyes of some of their rivals…
Their abilities will largely be focused on recycling and exhaust, as the Kobolds are known for keeping things nice and tidy. Stay tuned for another faction overview in our next campaign update!
We also announced our next title today - we are pleased to introduce The Final Straw! The Final Straw is a lightweight dexterity game where you use your cards as fans to huff, puff, and blow your opponents down. You can play cards offensively to increase your huffing and puffing, or use them defensively to build the strongest straw house on this side of the woods.
The game was designed by local designer Scot Eaton, and we were hooked on the game as soon as we played it at Protospiel Minnesota earlier this year. It’s an incredibly fun game that gets people up off their feet and moving around, and we can’t wait to bring it to life!
You can follow the pre-launch page now, and you can keep an eye on our social media pages (@sophcerb) for more details as we continue development on the game.
That’s all for now since we have to get back to it - one last day to go before heading back home!
This is Jeremy, Ethan, and Matt, trying not to lose our voices (or our minds)...
Upgraded Cards, Advanced Mode, and Gen Con!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Jul 27, 2024 at 03:03:48 PM
We just passed $35k, so you know what that means - upgraded cardstock! All the cards in the game will now be 310gsm blackcore, which means increased durability and thickness.
Our next stretch goal is a similar quality upgrade that we all know and love - linen finish! Once we hit $40k we’ll add a linen finish to the cards in the game, at which point the cards will be fully upgraded!
We also wanted to take some time to give some additional detail on how the advanced mode of the game will work. We wanted to keep the base game easy to learn while still involving a lot of strategy regarding how you place your gears, which actions to take when, and how you interact with your fellow players when it comes to things like recycling and petitioning.
That said, we also wanted to include a more advanced version of the game for people who want more involved gameplay once they’ve mastered the core game. Enter the advanced mode! The advanced mode is included with every copy of the game and utilizes the same components with some new rules.
In the advanced mode, each faction will have their own unique abilities that change how you play the game. In each of the next five campaign updates, we’ll dive into deeper detail on one of the factions and talk through their lore and their overall playstyle. Each faction’s ability is closely related to their backstory, which gives an interesting twist on how each faction plays.
In addition to factions having unique abilities, players will utilize the back side of the enchantments and seals. Whenever you gain an enchantment or seal you can either add a new one to your factory or flip over one that you already have. The upgraded enchantments and seals are more powerful versions of the non-upgraded sides, and they also allow you to take advantage of your faction’s active ability. Oh, and did we mention some of them will have 2x storage slots?
Lastly, there will be a few rule changes to make the game a bit more challenging (such as slightly different follow actions). The player aids will be double-sided, so all you have to do is flip your player aid over and the revised rules are right there at your fingertips!
We’ve heard some feedback that people wanted to see the resin resources spiced up a bit, so we’re on it! It just so happens our factory (LongPack) has their booth directly next to ours at Gen Con, so we’ll be talking through some options to really make the resin resources stand out while we’re there.
At a bare minimum, we’ll be working to ditch the bases so the resources look more realistic and appealing. More to come on that front, but rest assured we’re hard at work determining some new options here!
Gen Con is only a few days away, and we can’t wait! We’ll be traveling down to Indianapolis over the next few days, as we’re sure many of you will be doing as well. We’ll be at booth 2566 and have plenty of goodies to show off, so make sure you stop by and say hi if you’ll be there!
For starters, we received the final sample of the metal gears and they are quite awesome. We’ll have them available at our booth, and we highly recommend stopping by and checking them out to see just how chunky they are and how great they look in-person!
We also picked up some badge ribbons, because who doesn’t love those! We have four different designs, all of which are free if you swing by our booth. Check out the options below:
For fans of The Stifling Dark (and/or fans of pins), we will have pins of the Cult and the Butcher available as part of the Pin Bazaar! This will be our first Gen Con participating in the Pin Bazaar, and we were amazed at the variety and creativity of all the pins the various vendors produced.
We will also be announcing our next game while we’re at Gen Con, and we’ll have it available for people to check out at our booth as well. It’s quite different from The Stifling Dark and Sprocketforge but still boasts the use of an interesting component that is a core part of the game (much like the flashlights and gears).
Lastly, and once again for fans of The Stifling Dark, we will have copies of The Stifling Dark available for sale for the first time at Gen Con.
This is our last big convention of the year, so let’s end it with a bang!
This is Jeremy, Ethan, and Matt, shifting gears (literally, in our cars on our way to Gen Con)…
Shipping Discount Unlocked!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 07:36:38 AM
Things continue to move along nicely, and as a result we’ve unlocked our second stretch goal! That means everyone will be getting a dollar off shipping no matter where they live and what level they backed!
Next up on the stretch goal list are upgraded cards, which is one of our favorite “invisible” upgrades. Right now the cards are 300gsm whitecore, and once we hit $35k all cards will be upgraded to 310gsm blackcore (which means they will be thicker and more durable). Who doesn’t love nicer cards?
Speaking of things people love, we figured we should show off the custom insert that is included with all pledge levels. We’ve owned a few too many games that didn’t have an insert, so we wanted to spoil you with a custom insert to make sure your components stay nice and tucked away no matter how your box is stored!
The insert has custom-fit slots for the gears, enchantments, seals, and cards. And don’t worry - the card slots will fit sleeved cards! There is a nice open area to store the mana in as well so it should fit everything neatly. The factory boards and player aids will sit on top of the mana and cards, then there will be a lid on top to keep everything tucked nicely into the insert.
We’ve gotten a couple questions about how to ensure you are on the mailing list to get that sweet sweet mini-expansion, so we wanted to make sure we clarified how that worked.
If you visit the mailing list page and you automatically get redirected to Kickstarter, that means you’re signed up and you’re good to go! If you don’t get redirected, you can go ahead and put in your email address and you should be all set. Alternatively (or if you run into any issues), you can send us a message on Kickstarter so we can check to make sure.
Please keep in mind you need to sign up using the same email you used to back the campaign so Kickstarter and BackerKit are synced up and your mini-expansion is assigned accordingly.
Speaking of emails, it’s never too early to remind folks with Apple relay email addresses that they will either need to update their Kickstarter email address now (ideally) or change their email address in BackerKit once the pledge manager launches. Apple’s private relay email addresses don’t play nicely with pledge managers, so you risk not receiving your pledge manager invite if you don’t update your email address ahead of time.
Enough about emails though - don’t forget to join us tonight at 7 PM Central for our first livestream! We’ll be playing through the game on Tabletop Simulator. Let us know who you think will win in the comments! (Editor's Note: it's totally going to be Jeremy)
It’s hard to believe, but Gen Con is next week already! Don’t forget to stop by booth 2566 to say hi and check out Sprocketforge in the flesh! Rumor has it we may even have the metal gears there for you to play with…
This is Jeremy, Ethan, and Matt, doing anything but packing…
First Stretch Goal Unlocked!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Jul 20, 2024 at 11:27:16 AM
The engine keeps building, and upgraded (custom-cut) mana cubes have just been unlocked! We’re excited to get these into the game since they’ll give the mana a bit more life compared to the cubes that were in the base game. Note that these are placeholder designs; the final designs will be different and will be shared in a later campaign update.
Our next stretch goal comes in the form of reduced shipping - who doesn’t love that! Once we hit $30k we’ll take a dollar off the shipping costs for all pledge levels and countries. Even though shipping itself isn’t getting any cheaper, this represents a way to return some of the extra funds back to you (the backers).
As we mentioned in the last update, we’re also thinking through the possibility of adding some additional content to the all-in pledge (without alienating the other pledge levels). If you have thoughts on how to do that, feel free to leave comments below or on the main page!
We also sent out some additional review copies this week and are excited to post that content once it’s available. Similarly, we have plans for solo mode reviews a bit later in the campaign once we’ve wrapped up our internal playtesting and balancing.
Don’t forget to join us in three days for our first livestream! We’ll be playing through the game on Tabletop Simulator for this livestream and will be playing on Screentop.gg for our second livestream.
We’re looking forward to returning to Gen Con in less than two weeks! We’ll be at booth 2566 and will have Sprocketforge on display and The Stifling Dark on display / available for purchase, and if you’re lucky you may even catch a glimpse of some of our upcoming games!
Our last convention for the year will be 2D Con right here in Bloomington, MN from August 23rd through the 25th. We hope to see many of you at either or both upcoming conventions!
That’s all we have for now, and we’ll see you on Twitch in a couple days!
This is Jeremy, Ethan, and Matt, staying in gear…
