ENDLESS WINTER - Paleoamericans

Pre-production Copies Presentation
over 4 years ago – Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 02:47:25 AM

Greetings dear tribe members!

Yes! The pre-production copies have arrived!

Thank you all for your patience, we believe it'll be worth it. We would like to make clear that this is NOT a final copy of the game, and the Big Box and trays are not included. The Big Box is in transit and will arrive soon! The trays will be ready in a couple of weeks, after we confirm that all components are exceptional.

But enough talk - here is the game to speak for itself... Enjoy!

ENDLESS WINTER - Paleoamericans (Core box)

It was really a pleasure to see all these goodies displayed on the table!

Box

The box looks and feels great. The UV spot is applied nicely, and the Mico’s drawings simply look fantastic! Thumb tabs will be removed from the core box. 

Rulebooks

The linen finish on the rulebooks makes them feel so cool - we are sure it’s going to make the reading experience more enjoyable than usual :)

Main Board

The main board fits all components nicely, its iconography looks very clear, and it lays flat on the table.

Player Boards

It’s obvious that the outer shapes of the player boards are not the final ones. The reason for this is the PPC cut technique used was not the higher-quality ‘official’ one (that’ll be used for the final versions). Thus, it was not possible to cut the dual-layer boards; however, we can still imagine how cool the final result will be.

Megalith Tiles

Here, you can see the dual-layer Megalith tiles (KS exclusive) next to the single-layer ones.

Punchboard Sheets

These are the 4 punch board sheets for the game. We will check their content individually. As already mentioned, the cutting method for these sheets was not the ‘official’ one, so expect even greater quality in your final version.

Idol & Animal Boards

All components fit nicely on them. You can see here the thematic vs the non-thematic side of the Idol board.

Terrain Tiles

The Terrain tiles fit perfectly on the playmats, and the artwork looks stunning.

Sacred Stones & Glacier - Rest tokens

All tokens have a nice functional size, and their iconography is very clear.

Starting, Tribe, & Culture cards

The paper quality, combined with the linen finish on all cards in the game, makes them feel and look incredible.

Aid, Setup, Animal & Burial Cap Cards

Solo cards and token

Chief figures & Bases

Here’s a comparison of the washed minis (KS exclusive) next to the non-washed ones.The wash looks even better in person, so look forward to that.

Overview of most Woods and plastics of the game

Tribe Figures, Villages, Camps & Idol Markers

You have seen these in the past, but looking at all the pieces together on display is very rewarding.

Megaliths

A Megalith comparison between the wooden and resin versions. Regardless, both work and look great. Don’t worry about the color inconsistency between the green and red ones - there has already been a color update to address this, but it was after these samples were shipped. We are showing you the smaller sample we received for them.

Round, Animal, Resource, and Score markers.

You can also see here the comparison between the wooden and resin scoring markers. The nice additional touch of the resin ones is the extra engraved design on all sides.

Resin Idol Marker

One of you commented that we forgot to present the resin idol markers. Yes we did :) Here is an older photo just to remind you of them. 

ANCESTORS Expansion

Allow us to show you the material of the expansion just with an overview. We will still show you some extra details of their components (if you are patient enough to check the surprise at the bottom of this update) :)

RIVERS & RAFTS Expansion

Everything looks awesome. The hexes fit nicely on the playmat and work perfectly with the rest of the terrain tiles.

Punchboard Sheets

CAVE PAINTINGS Expansion

We should mention here that the only thing missing are the erasable markers with their famous eraser caps :) We will get those alongside the trays of the game.

Punchboard Sheets

CANINE FAMILIARS, CEREMONIAL GROUNDS, AURORA BOREALIS Modules

All of the modules turned out great. We aren’t showing you the Mammoth Module here as it’s already presented in the Miniatures section.

PROMO ANIMALS

Last, but not least, we present our cute little Animal promotional cards!

Surprise surprise!

As we already mentioned, we have a little surprise for you - actually 2 of them! The first one involves those 4 images where we built a hypothetical terrain scenario using the River’s and Rafts, Cave Paintings, and Mammoth modules.

And our big surprise is this video we prepared - with our limited DIY iPhone skills ;) - for your eyes only. Enjoy! 

What’s next?

The next couple of weeks we are going to be very busy! We need to update any minor issues spotted in the PPC; and once approved, pass them all to our licensees until the 25th of October. Then, we will give 3 more weeks to our licensees to update any changes that were made, and return their updated final files.

If everything goes according to plan, on the 15th of November, our factory will have everything needed in order to start planning the mass production. We were hoping that we could avoid the Chinese new year, which is 3 weeks off; but due to the size of the project, Panda informed us that this is unlikely to happen.

Having said that, we are now confident to say that Endless Winter will be fullifield during the end of Q1. We are sorry for this delay, but keep in mind that we did everything possible to make this game great.

We hope you enjoyed this update. See you soon!

—Fantasia

PPC (Pre-production) Almost there!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 03:46:38 PM

Greetings dear tribe members!

We are happy to present Panda’s announcement: Pre-production copies (PPC’s) of Endless Winter are arriving to us by the end of... next week! We had hoped to already have them, to show them off today, but please be patient for our next update. :)

Delivery Estimate

With the above update, we aim to start mass production early in November. This leaves us with a slight delay from our initial plans. We wish that we could give you a solid answer about the specific date, but considering the global state of freight, we promise to keep you updated at all times. A safe estimation to make for now is Q1 of 2022.

Essen

We won’t have a booth for Essen this year, but we plan to organise some special events with our friends at “Frosted Games” (Germany). Keep an eye on their booth and we'll let you know when and what to expect! Hopefully you’ll have a chance to check out a PPC... and maybe even play it! :)

What’s next

The next next steps for us before starting mass production include:

1. Continuing back-and-forth communication with our licensees to fulfil all translation needs.
    
2. Once we receive the PPC copies, we will conduct multiple comprehensive checks to find any possible errors to fix.
    
3. We will comprehensively proof the final files (again) for any possible changes, and provide a changelog to our licensees. At this point, we will also pass them all cards of the game in order to add their translated titles; then, we can pass everything to Panda.
    
4. Finally, we will be officially ready to start mass production! Yay! :D
    

And that’s all for now. We can't wait to see you in our next update with some unboxings of some Endless Winter goodies.

In the meantime, stay safe... and play board games!

—Fantasia

Since many of you asked about our upcoming game Unconscious Mind, and since this update is kind of short in content, we thought that this might be a good opportunity to share some more info about the game. If you are not interested, feel free to skip this part.

A few days ago, some BGG users asked for more insight about how the game actually plays. We kindly asked our designers if they could share some more information without revealing too much :) Konstantinos Laskaridis accepted the challenge and provided the following text:

Hey

Since you asked for it, here is a more detailed analysis of the game! 

Your player board is a Notebook that has three rows and four columns. Besides each row there is an Ink-pot space. Over the course of the game, you fill up your Notebook with technique cards (that have special effects). As you fill in your Notebook, your engine gets more powerful; and in addition, you unlock other benefits by filling rows and columns. In your play area, you also have a supply of worker meeples (and more which you can unlock by various means), as well as ways to track and manage various resources.

On your turn, you first trigger the Notebook row where your Ink-pot currently is—activating each technique card in that row. Then you choose a location, and place one of your workers on it. When you place your worker, you must move your Ink-pot the number of spaces shown at the location. You can think of your Ink-pot movement as a mini Rondel! Your Ink-pot can land on one of the three rows or your Office (the fourth Rondel space). As you might imagine, you must plan on what location you choose to activate—not only for its action, but for how it will impact your Ink-pot’s Rondel movement! These systems are very interconnected with a bit of an action-programming feel.

At your Office, you can perform actions for your patients, or use the Knowledge you have acquired through the game to write a Thesis for the University. These are two of the main ways to score points in the game. When you visit your Office, you gain Dream cards (yes, those beautiful cards!) and place them by your Patient. They will be the key to healing their conditions… The game’s main resources are Feelings, which are managed on a disc-like board where they can grow and change—with a very unique and fluid-like mechanic (unlike most resource management games that use bits or tracks).

When you acquire a new Patient card, you place a transparent card over it to show what their condition is. When you heal them, curing their ailment, the transparent card is removed!

You can send your Students (workers) through Vienna (a map with routes) to collect Knowledge and interact with various Buildings. There is a variety of modular tiles to make the map feel fresh every game. Many Buildings are linked with the Patients that you are attempting to heal, which improves the map over the course of the game. Not only do you move your Students though the map—the map evolves. The map is sort of an engine in itself, where you can trigger a series of beneficial effects from each building you have a Student on.

In the spirit of some modern worker-placement games, your workers don’t simply come back at the end of the round; instead, you must choose when to recall them. This is not only how you refresh your workers, but also how you gain Time (an important resource in the game) and trigger some other effects—most notably drafting one-time bonus tiles. When these tiles run out, it triggers the end of the game.

And that would be it for today. Before we go, allow us to share some more beautiful dream artwork from the talented Andrew Bosley! If you want to be updated, you can subscribe on the official BGG page here:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/329500/unconscious-mind

or join the official FB group here: 

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/unconsciousmind 

Thank you for your time and support :) 

WE ARE BACK!
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 11:53:28 PM

Greetings dear tribe members!

As you all know, last time we talked, we explained that all files were passed to Panda to obtain the digital proof. In addition, here is some more good: After some minor revisions, they accepted all of the files!Specifically, this is where we are at:

PPC files approved from factory: Checked ⁠✅⁠

Digital Proofs provided: Checked⁠ ✅⁠

Digital Proofs approved from us: Checked ⁠✅⁠

So things are looking pretty great! We are now just officially waiting for the PPC copies in order to evaluate them. In the meantime, we are constantly helping our licensees with any questions that arise, to have a smooth process on the translations too. Once we evaluate the PPC copies, and revise the final files for possible minor changes, we can then pass the final files to our licensees. Having the translations done at that point, it will be quite easy to make any minor updates and have those files sent to the factory. We believe that this was the most efficient way to save time when processing the many languages of the game.

All in all, everything is going as planned, and we are happy that there were no surprises along the way! As always, we will keep you updated with everything that comes along.

In the meantime, stay safe... and play board games!

—Fantasia

Note: You might notice that the pre-production circle of Endless Winter turned back to yellow. Don't worry, nothing has changed. It’s just better to turn those yellow circles to blue once we physically receive the pre-production copies in our hands.

PPC (Pre-production) vol.4
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 12:22:25 AM

Greetings, Dear Tribe Members!

Yes, we can now shout out with joy… We finally did it!!! :)

• Development of all assets: Check!
   
• Rulebooks: Check!
   
• Files sent to the Factory: Check!
   
• Rulebooks and titles of cards sent to licensees: Check!
   
• We even got the first correction notes from the factory, and we already passed all the revised assets (some CMYK and bleed issues).
   

So what’s next now?

Once the factory has no other corrections to ask for, they will prepare digital proofs (like the ones we shared for the core last time) for all the assets of the game. Then it’s up to us to proof and approve them. Once this is done, we have to wait for the pre-production copies to arrive in our hands. Once we receive them, we expect to make a nice unboxing presentation of them.

In the meantime our licensees will have the time to translate their material. We already let them know that if after the pre-production there are any minor changes, we will inform them to update accordingly. We will help all of our licensees in this process to make sure the quality of each localization of Endless Winter is equal to the english one.

Time to relax a bit :)

During this period the whole Fantasia team really exceeded their limits in order to have a smooth process in the development of this great yet demanding game. We feel that it’s now the right time to recharge our batteries over the next three weeks. We hope you won’t mind since it won't affect the process of production. We will still be here, though, answering your questions, talking with our playtesters, and organizing the freight of the game.

We will keep you updated with the process of pre-production. Once the copies are in our hands and we’ve reviewed them, we might send them to a couple of reviewers, too, to share their opinions and maybe organize some playthroughs.

Feel free to ask any question that you might have!

Stay safe and enjoy the summer!

Fantasia Team

PPC (Pre-production) vol.3
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 12:24:14 AM

Greetings, Dear Tribe Members!

We hope you all are having a great time if you are on vacation right now! At Fantasia we are still working 24/7 in order to finish all of our PPC files. Once everything is sent and approved, then we can relax for a bit, too! :)

PPC

In the last update it seems we were a bit enthusiastic in talking about how smoothly the PPC file preparation was going. A couple days after that update, we received an email from the factory to update some of the files because of some technical issues (CMYK, die cuts, and other things that we don’t want to trouble you with), and after some more back and forth with the factory, we finally received the digital proofs of the core game three days ago. Our task now is to evaluate whether everything looks correct and let them start the Pre-Production Copies. Have a look at some of them!

This process took more time than expected, but we are almost done with all the other assets of the game (expansions, modules, promos). We will try to pass them on ASAP so the factory can prepare digital proofs for those soon. Now that we know more about the technicalities that took some time for the core game, we are quite certain we won’t need much time in order to get digital proofs for everything else.

We knew from day one that the process of pre-production was the only one we hadn’t experienced for ourselves in the past, so thank you for your patience and for giving us the chance to become more efficient in this process for the future.

Development - Playtests

Last time we mentioned how difficult the back and forth process is, between trying to finalize rulebooks and stress testing the game. But we also know that this process is worth the effort, so whenever a better idea strikes the team we do our best to update the components, test them, and update the rulebook. It is a very demanding and time-consuming process, but we want to do our best in order to bring the game to its ultimate state. You can follow most of this process in our discord channel, and you can spot the constant minor changes in TTS. :)

The downside of this is the extra time spent on this process, and although some elements of the game might run extremely smoothly even in the first try, there are things like the alter Chief abilities or the Aurora Borealis module that really needed a ton of revisions and playtesting. Thankfully we are confident that we have solved them, or in the worst case scenario they might require some minor changes along the way.

Check out some of our latest changes coming from the feedback of our stress test team and the development revisions of Jonny Pac!

This is just a small peek at the job done during the development and stress test process.

Rulebooks

We are happy to announce that all of the rulebooks are now in their semi-final versions, meaning that we are gathering all final comments in order to prepare the final versions. You can have a look at them here, and you can actually comment on them if you want to!

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/9/folders/11JbYqXaYsBLoGFtak4tARBnz0JH4UcnY

What’s Next

Our priority is still the same--to finish and approve the PPC files of all the products of Endless Winter ASAP. The development has come to an end now (only minor fixes coming from stress tests), so we only need to go through the process of preparing the rest of the files, send them to the factory in order to provide a digital proof of everything, and finally evaluate and approve them in order to let the pre-production begin. At that point the rest of the process will be smooth sailing, sending all files to our licensees in order to translate them, and us receiving the PPC copies, evaluating and approving them.

It has been a long and difficult journey, but there is an end in sight! :)

Until next time, have a great time and keep playing board games!

—Fantasia Games