It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Pledge Manager!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 09:00:37 AM

HELLO MY WONDERFUL CRYSTALLO BACKERS!   

Very exciting news. My friends at Zafty tell me the pledge manager is ready to go, and messages with a link and codes will start going out today! It should be a pretty painless process, but if you have any trouble, Frank and I will be on call to assist you :)   

As for the game, manufacturing is complete and the games are headed to the fulfillment center, I’m told they should arrive next week. As soon as it’s our turn, the games will start shipping out to you!  

I’ll pass the update to Frank so he can explain more about the pledge manager, but first, on a personal note:   

I can’t tell you how excited I am to have come this far and be *so* close to putting Crystallo in your hands. The anticipation is real!   I know I say it every time, but I’m going to keep saying it every time, forever— THANK YOU for your amazing support! Home stretch! Let’s do this thing! :D 

 —Liberty

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Pledge Manager & Fulfillment Need To Know!

Hello!  I'm Frank from Zafty Games here to explain what will be a very smooth, and easy-breezy final step for you to receive your awesome rewards!  

Here's what happens next in short.

You get a direct message ON KICKSTARTER  from the robot version of Liberty giving you a unique coupon code worth money. You click the link taking you to our web-store, contemplate if you wanted to meet Liberty at PAX Unplugged in Philly 12/5-12/7 to pick up your reward, add your rewards and any awesome extra goodies you pledged for or wanted to add on, and then check out using that unique coupon.

You'll be delighted to know, I'm not kidding about Robot Liberty.  We have successfully completed automating the messaging of the codes.  If you pledged for one of Zafty's other campaigns, including Starving Artists, those codes did not have a robot anyone. 

If you have any questions or experience any hiccups, please text me at 704-242-1172 or direct message Liberty on Kickstarter. 

Fulfillment ETA: They will be in queue at the fulfillment center officially on 11/22. At that point, it's simply a matter of waiting for our turn! I'll be able to provide an ETA we're in queue. 

One last thing! If you can help it, please refrain from comments/messages inquiring on if your code has been sent or not until after Liberty makes an update stating all the codes have gone out. It takes several hours for even Robot Liberty to send out 2,000+ unique codes to specific backers.  

Thanks!

-Frank

SHUX recap + OMG manufacturing underway!
over 4 years ago – Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 10:12:11 PM

First of all, let me thank you ALL for your patience since my last update. It's been one of the busiest months of my life! I wanted to start by sharing a bit about my experience running demos of Crystallo at SHUX (the convention put on by the wonderful Shut Up & Sit Down team) in Vancouver, B.C. during the first week of October.

It. Was. AWESOME. First of all, Vancouver is a stunningly beautiful city, and this was my first visit. Check out this view of Coal Harbor! Watching the float planes fly in and land on the water was amazing. 

 I was lucky enough to have my bestie along for the trip to help me run the booth, here's us on Day 1 rocking the Light Heart Games shirts! (I'm the one in the blue kimono :))

 The convention went amazingly well. We had nonstop demos running from 9 am-6 pm all three days! The response was so wonderful and it was the best thing ever to watch so many people play Crystallo and enjoy it so much. I barely took ANY pictures, but that's because we stayed so busy! I was lucky enough not only to meet Quinns (he's lovely!) but also play a game of Guards of Atlantis with him and our awesome booth neighbors WolffDesigna (also makers of Warpgate, and Trick Shot.) Definitely check out Guards of Atlantis, it's really cool! (First pic below is from that game, everything after that is our booth :))

A couple of my favorite demos! This last one, Mike Selinker, was also on the panel I did, and *literally* wrote the book on game design (several actually!) So it was an honor to have him not only try the game, but love it! Definitely a highlight. Even better when I got home and saw he gave Crystallo this killer shoutout:

Anyway, I wanted to do this update muuuuuuch sooner after getting back but I had only a couple of days at home to decompress before my family and I had to make the trek to Arizona to help my mother-in-law move! It was an awesome trip, but about 20 hours of driving each direction (we live in Idaho) so believe me when I say I am *still* recovering and finding my rhythm again!  That sun sure felt good though!

SO. Now you're all caught up, onto the exciting part! As I mentioned in the subject line, Crystallo is in production as I write this! I asked the manufacturer to send a couple of pictures for me, and I thought I'd share those with you guys as well! (Please forgive the quality/colors on these images, alas. I wasn't there to take them :P)

Look at those beautiful uncut sheets! EEEEEK.

Tons of tiny rulebooks! Are you excited?!?!? I know I am!

As far as dates, what I know right now is that we are on time/a bit early, and on track to begin fulfilling at the end of this month. My co-publishers for retail, Zafty Games, are graciously handling this part (much to my gratitude!) and I've been assured the pledge manager will be out *very* soon and fulfillment will take place concurrently with Starving Artists, so if you have backed both, they should ship together. I have every confidence in Frank and the team at Zafty to make things happen on time and smoothly, and I'm SO excited to see that we are so close! Naturally I'll be back soon with the pledge manager update and to let you know when games start shipping out (and anything else that might come up!) Thankfully I'm home for a couple of weeks and able to take a breather so if I've missed a message or anything, please hit me up again! 

Again, thanks for your continued support and patience, I really couldn't ask for a better community of backers (trust me, I've asked around, you guys are definitely the best.) Let me know if you have any questions, otherwise I'll be back soon with more news!

-Liberty

Micro-update: Pledge Manager
over 4 years ago – Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 01:07:38 PM

Hey so, just a super quick one— I’ve been getting a bunch of messages and comments since the last update asking about the pledge manager, so I thought it’d be fastest just to answer this way!

The pledge manager will open a month before we fulfill. My friends at Zafty Games (who are handling fulfillment logistics for me) will use their own in-house pledge manager. They’ve fulfilled 9 campaigns already, so they have lots of experience. Very thankful for their help!

As for why we haven’t opened the PM up sooner, this just allows us to get the most current info before we ship— hopefully preventing games being shipped to the wrong address due to moves, etc.

So have no fear, you didn’t miss anything, it’s coming! And there will be another update when it’s live. 

PS—Thanks for all the kind words on the looks of the manufacturer proof, I was just delighted reading them all! So glad you’re as excited as I am :D

Cheers,

Liberty

Manufacturer proof is here, and it's BEAUTIFUL! :D WOOHOO!
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 01:35:55 PM

I have great news today, friends! :D 

The final proof for Crystallo arrived today and it. Is. Perfection! 

Let's start with that satin-lined embroidered bag. 

Silky soft inside, plush and snuggleable outside. 

It's almost... dare I say it... fuzzy? Basically, you'll wanna use it as a pillow. 

So pleased. What do you guys think??

As for everything else, it's looking *gorgeous.* Card colors are spot on and they feel really nice in my hands. Tuckbox came shrink wrapped, super crisp and colors are just right! Yay! 

Here's everything together! You may or may not be able to tell, but these gems are even a bit bigger and chunkier (and shinier? Is that just me??) than what I had in my prototype; they're that much easier to grab onto and that much more satisfying to move around. Consider this tiny upgrade my way of saying thank you for your patience ;) 

So today after I've double and triple-checked everything, I will be giving them my thumbs up and approval to begin manufacturing! We are still on target to deliver on time, hopefully a bit early :) 

If any of you are planning to be at SHUX in October, please let me know-- depending on how many folks are planning to attend, I may be able to bring your copies for you to pick up in person then :)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you're as excited as I am about how it's looking! I'm so ready to get this in your hands! 

Cheers,

A Very Happy Creator <3

OOPS! EDIT: In my excitement I forgot to mention, they didn't do the Spot UV for the creature cards for the proof, but it will definitely be on them for the final version! I'm dying to see what that looks like but I know it's gonna be awesome!

A few misc. updates!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Aug 11, 2019 at 07:04:51 PM

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