Hi, Bolted pals! A couple quick updates from me, the guy who is behind this project!!

Thank you everyone for being on board this project!!

We have less than 2 days before the Backerkit campaign reaches its conclusion. I'm so grateful for your support and I am thrilled to see that the game will be printed.

I'll use Backerkit's special functionality to keep pre-orders open after the campaign, for anyone who comes in late -- but the higher, limited pledge levels won't be available then.

We have surpassed $18k in funding, which means we have UNLOCKED spot gloss printing on the box! This will give it a VERY fancy look; it will be a very dramatic effect.

There is one further stretch goal. If we reach $23k in funding, all backers will receive free downloads of my Wondermark comic collection ebooks! There is sometimes a surge at the end of a campaign, maybe we'll get all the way there!! It would be super cool if so.

Unfortunately, my cross-collab partner project Centipede failed to meet its funding goal. They'll regroup and perhaps launch their game again in the future. However, a few people have asked what this means for the special Centipede bonus card that I created for Bolted:
 


I have been using this card in my playtests recently and it's really fun.

I had to downscale it from 6 "leg" connectors to 4, just because the cards were having a hard time fitting onto all of them:



It's a risky card to play, because you're penalized for every connector you leave open, but it also opens up a lot of chaotic possibilities.

So, in honor of the fallen Centipede project, I have PROMOTED this card to a REGULAR GAME CARD and it will be included in the base game!

The other two bonus cards - Gax Head and Piranhamoose Antlers - will continue to be given FREE to those who qualify for them (early bird backers and repeat backers respectively), but I'll also make them available for purchase as add-ons when the time comes to fill out your final surveys.

I'm already super happy with how the game plays, but all the rounds of playtesting have also been very helpful at identifying edge cases and putting new tweaks through their paces.

And it's also been really fun to meet folks and play the game with them!

Here are the times I'll be hosting virtual playtest sessions this week:



Sign up to play here!

I am ALSO just about ready to start opening up UNSUPERVISED playtesting, which means, you get to read the rules and play the game by yourself. 

The goal of that is to provide feedback to me on how clearly the rules are written.

If you’d like to play with your own group — we use a web browser, so you can either play remotely via video chat, or you can play IRL if everyone has a laptop — you can sign up for that here and I’ll follow up with detailed instructions shortly.

ICYMI, I did a short post on the Wondermark blog this week about some of the design choices going into the game cards.

You can read the whole post here!

tl;dr It's been really fun to design these cards. I keep going back into the ones that feel too "normal" to make them just a bit weirder. They can't ALL be wackadoodle, of course, but SOME of them should be.



Thanks again for being a part of this game!!

 

I'm very pleased to announce we have achieved our first stretch goal -- the game box will now have very fancy foil stamping!!

The next goal is at $18k -- which will be for another printing treatment, spot gloss, which will make the whole package even FANCIER.

Also, here are some photos of the latest prototype! I had a couple of sessions over this past week. 

Thanks in particular to the playtesters at Blue Highway Games in Seattle, one of whom actually achieved the very difficult T-REX STYLE reward card, and another of whom used the Gax bonus card in play:





This is also perhaps a fun place to share a photo of the VERY EARLIEST PROTOTYPE, back when it was all mechanics, no artwork:



I shouldn't say it has NO artwork. It has a certain fun style all its own. But I think the Wondermark vintage angle is an improvement.