Home Stretch!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 02:12:11 AM

Last 3 days!

We are at the last 3 days of the campaign! It's been an amazing journey getting here. I just wanted to take a moment and reflect on this entire experience. Just a mere 5 years ago Justin and I were not game designers and had no idea we were going to create what would end up becoming Fantastic Factories.

This cool photo that Justin took really helps express some of the design/prototyping process in crafting a board game. This photo is already on the campaign page, but I'd like to share a higher resolution version of it. If you zoom in, you'll discover all kind of neat details. This only shows a small look into the hard work that goes into designing and publishing a game.

If you want to read more about how the game was created and some early design decisions, check out this blog post I wrote last year.

Solo playmat with or without rules?

A couple updates ago I showed off a mockup of what the solo side of the playmat might look like. Some of you mentioned that you prefer having some of the solo rules printed on the mat itself. Please take a look and let me know in the comments whether you prefer a solo playmat with or without the rules printed and any other feedback you might have.

Rulebook PDFs

I just finished laying out both rulebooks. If you enjoy looking at rulebooks, please check it out! Manufactions rulebook. Subterfuge rulebook. I've been told that Fantastic Factories has one of the best rulebooks out there so we're hoping we can continue the trend with the expansions. One of the things we're continuing to do is to include an appendix at the end of the rulebook containing a list of all the cards and rule clarifications.

More Solo Fantastic Factories videos

If you're itching for more videos of Fantastic Factories solo playthroughs, check out this recent video of El playing with both expansions on Tabletop Simulator. In total you'll find 8 episodes of El playing on the Deep Water Games channel. She has a much better streaming setup than me and is a real pro at demoing games!

I also recently did a livestream for the final piece of art for Fantastic Factories. If you want a little peek behind the scenes on how the art is done, this is a great video to check out! Across both expansions, there are over 50 unique pieces of art!

Highlighting another great campaign

I just wanted to do one last shout-out to another board game Kickstarter called Hoop Godz designed by Omari Akil. This game is a followup to Omari's successful first game, Rap Godz. What I love about Omari's games is how he chooses less conventional themes and finds the perfect way to capture those experiences within a board game experience.

Home Stretch!

We're entering into the home stretch! Once again, I really appreciate everyone's support and engagement. With everything going on in the world right now, I hope that board games can bring you some joy. Let's share our passion with others and finish out this campaign strong! Let's see how many backers we can get!

- Joseph

Final Week and Easter Eggs
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 09:42:09 PM

Tom’s Crowdsurfing pick of the week

The Dice Tower does a weekly segment on crowdfunding campaigns and this week Fantastic Factories was featured. Not only was it mentioned, but it was Tom Vasel’s pick of the week!

Final Week

We're entering into the final week of the Kickstarter campaign. One of the things I love about board games is how it brings us together at the table and how we naturally share our excitement and passion about games with others! I know that all of you who are receiving this update are already on board, but my one ask is that if you are excited about Fantastic Factories, please spread the word and help us finish strong!

Easter Eggs

One of the perks of being both the designer and artist for the game is I’m able to sneak in a lot of little easter eggs and references. It also gives me opportunities to tie in the art of the card with the mechanics as well in some cases. Here are a few examples from the base game of Fantastic Factories.

Robot has a name! In fact, each of the 3 robots in the base game has a different name. During the design/development of Fantastic Factories, 3 of us became new parents and the robots are each named after our kids.

Aluminum Factory is a factory that takes energy and outputs metal, and you can see that reflected in the art.

Trash Compactor might look similar to a familiar face...

And I’m glad to say we’re continuing the tradition with Manufactions! See if you can spot the easter eggs or recognize some of the references from these cards.

So next time you’re playing, if you find yourself waiting for other players to finish their turn, take a close look at the art and see if you can spot something interesting!

- Joseph

Reddit AMA live now and closer look at the playmat
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 11:47:50 AM

Reddit AMA is live now!

The Reddit AMA (ask me anything) is live now! This is a good opportunity to ask more in depth questions you might have about Fantastic Factories, the expansions, the art, or even off-topic subjects. Please drop by, give the post an upvote, and ask a question or two.

“In Too Deep” with El

El from Deep Water Games, our publishing partner, is doing a weekly interview series called In Too Deep, and I’m going to be on it for this week! This series focuses more on the board game industry and dives into the highs and lows of breaking into the business. I think it will be a really interesting conversation so be sure to tune in on Twitch this Saturday (10/17) at 4:30 PM Pacific Time.

Playmat

I’ll be honest, I’m not usually a fan of playmats for board games, but I’m actually quite excited for this Fantastic Factories one for a few reasons.

First off, it’s going to have a durable stitched edge that prevents the edges from fraying. If you’ve never owned a playmat with this kind of edge, once you experience it, you’ll never want to get another playmat without it.

Second, Fantastic Factories doesn’t have a board already. This is actually something we spent some time going back and forth on before creating Fantastic Factories. Ultimately we decided against it so we could keep the game as affordable as possible. Using this new playmat really helps anchor the game and create that table presence. It also means you don’t need to use the tool symbol tokens since they’re printed directly on the playmat!

Finally, the playmat is DOUBLE SIDED. On one side it supports the marketplace for the multiplayer game. On the other side it supports the marketplace and The Machine’s factory compound for the solo game!

Quiz

Itching for something fun to do? Check out our faction quiz, if you haven’t tried it already. Looking at the summarized results, it looks like Deep Blue and Turtle Tech are neck to neck as the most popular factions. Feel free to post which faction you got in the comments!

- Joseph
 

Let’s talk about factions and upcoming Reddit AMA
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 01:47:45 PM

Happy Tuesday! I hope your week has started off well. We’re at nearly 3,500 amazing backers!

Factions, factions, factions!

One of the nice things about the Manufactions expansion is you can mix and match whether you want to include just the factions with the base game, just the cards, or BOTH. This update I wanted to showcase some of the factions we’ve included in this expansion.

Huemintek

Who doesn’t like rolling extra dice? With this faction, you’re always rolling at least 5 dice each work phase. The catch is that you don’t get to keep all 5 unless you pay 2 energy. This faction can be handy when building cards that care about a specific value of die -- when you’re rolling 5 dice, it’s more likely you’ll get the right numbers. And if you can get enough energy production going, you can have your cake AND eat it.

Frontier Freight

If you’ve ever felt like you find the right moment to discard a card to hire a contractor then Frontier Freight is the faction for you. Frontier Freight lets you take a blueprint card AND hire a contractor during the market phase. To take full advantage of this ability, you’ll be hiring contractors left and right. But what if you don’t have the right tool symbol? Well luckily you can actually take a blueprint from the marketplace and discard it to hire the contractor all in the same market phase!

Turtle Tech

I’ll be honest. I love turtles, and I’ve always wanted to find some excuse to put turtles into Fantastic Factories, and I’ve finally done it. Turtle Tech is probably the most complex faction of them all. If you end your work phase with no metal, you gain 1 metal. If you end it with no energy, you get 2 energy. This faction encourages you to spend ALL your resources by the end of the work phase, and figuring that out every turn is no small feat. You’ll need to carefully decide where to invest each worker and which blueprints to build in order to take full advantage of this powerful resource-granting ability.

GoodLife

GoodLife is all about the vitamins. Every time you get a match bonus through your Headquarters board, you also gain a free bonus vitamin! You can then use these vitamins to manipulate your way into more matching bonuses. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. This feedback loop is extremely satisfying to pull off.

Reddit AMA

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Reddit and the r/boardgames subreddit, it’s a community-driven discussion site where users share news and talk about board games. On October 15th, 10 AM Pacific time, I’ll be hosting an AMA (ask me anything) there where you’ll have an opportunity to ask me anything -- whether it’s about my favorite card in Manufactions, how I became the artist for the game, or what my favorite ice cream flavor is (it’s Moose Tracks).

Other awesome projects

Continuing with Kickstarter train, there are a couple more projects I wanted to mention. Once again these are projects I’ve personally backed and are really excited about.

Kabuto Sumo

This is a really unique design from a friend of mine, Tony Miller. A game like none other, Kabuto Sumo is a disc pushing game where you play as beetles trying to force your opponent out of the ring! It’s easy to pick up and has great table presence -- not to mention it’s illustrated by Kwanchai! (besides designing Kabuto Sumo, Tony is also publishing a game on KS called The Science and Seance Society, asymmetric 2 player game)

Board Gamer-isms Enamel Pins

I’m a sucker for hard enamel pins, and these are some of the best designs I’ve seen with board game themes. I don’t personally know Michelle of Pollia Designs, but I know she’s a fan of Fantastic Factories, and I’m a fan of her designs! These pins are a great way to show off your love for the hobby.

Thank you thank you thank you

Can’t say it enough, but thank you all again for being a part of this community and supporting us and our passion.

- Joseph
 

Why two expansions and livestreaming Subterfuge solo!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 08:01:51 PM

3000 backers!

We’ve reached over 3000 backers and our funding amount in just 1 week has already surpassed the entire amount we raised in the original Fantastic Factories Kickstarter campaign! I’m really so thankful that so many of you chose to back early and provide us with this incredible momentum as we head into the second week.

Why two expansions?

I wanted to talk about the Subterfuge expansion and why we chose not to combine it with Manufactions. When Justin and I were playtesting the original Fantastic Factories with people, we discovered there were two different kinds of players.

Many players love the puzzly nature of the game and how you can discover new combinations of cards to build your point engine. The fact that their engine couldn’t be disrupted offered a stress-free play experience that a lot of people really enjoy.

On the other hand, some players craved more player interaction. They could see that their opponents had built strong combinations of cards but had no way to stop them from snowballing into an inevitable victory.

It’s due to these two very different play groups that we decided to split the expansion into two parts, allowing groups to pick and choose what kind of experience they wanted. Note that the Subterfuge expansion also expands the solo rules slightly to include the sabotage mechanic in the solo game.

Industrial dominance… at any cost!

Let’s talk about Subterfuge and highlight some key aspects of the expansion!

Sabotage

Saboteurs are a new kind of contractor. When hired, they allow you to place a sabotage token on an opposing player’s building, disabling it and preventing it from being activated for at least one round. ALSO, the saboteur draws you 2 blueprint cards from the deck. As a game designer, I wanted to make sure that if you chose to employ the Saboteur, you wouldn’t fall behind as a result of initiating the attack so in the end, your hand size would be the same as if you simply chose a blueprint to acquire.

Sabotage does several things for the game:

1. It prevents players from running away with the win if they have a fast start.
2. It encourages you to check out what others are doing and how their strategy works.
3. It forces you to diversify your strategy so you can’t win using the same cards over and over again.
    

Powerful blueprints

Because sabotage helps keep powerful engines in check, this also allows us to introduce some new and really powerful blueprints.

Assembler lets you “cheat” cards into play -- completely ignoring the metal cost of what you’re building as well as the tool requirement! Nothing feels better building a Megalith for just 2 energy.

Empire is a powerful card that can churn out points as long as you build each round. It tends to be a very attractive target for sabotage.

Airport lets you “send” your workers over to other players. You have to be careful with both what value die you place and who you send that die to. In my experience, Airport has the tendency to add quite a bit of table talk to the game!

Another Livestream

If you missed it last time, you can find the video on demand HERE of 2 solo games. This time we’ll be playing through the solo game using the Subterfuge expansion. Subterfuge brings something new to the solo game. You can now sabotage The Machine! But be careful, it can strike back as well… Tune into the Fantastic Factories Twitch channel at 12 PM Pacific time on October 7th to watch. I’ll be answering any questions anyone might have as well. I also sometimes stream art for Fantastic Factories in the late evening. I only have a couple more cards to finish, so if you’re interested in seeing that, be sure to follow the channel!

Other awesome projects

So one of the amazing things about being part of the board game Kickstarter community is all of the amazing creators and game designers you meet along the way. I’ve been fortunate enough to have met many -- in particular in the Seattle / Portland area -- and somehow everyone seems to be launching their projects on Kickstarter this month!

I just wanted to take a moment to give these two a quick shoutout. These are legitimately awesome projects that I am personally backing and are designed and/or created by people I deeply respect. If any of these projects seem interesting to you, I encourage you to go check them out!

Cascadia

Cascadia is a Pacific Northwest themed game featuring a two-layered spatial tile drafting game. The mechanics of the game are very different from Fantastic Factories, but with its light interaction but thinky puzzly elements, I think fans of Fantastic Factories will find this game equally as fun. I’ve known both Shawn from Flatout Games and the designer, Randy, for some time now and know exactly the amazing quality of games they make. I can not stress enough how good this game is and how amazing the team behind it is as well.

Studies in Sorceries

You’re studying the dark arts, but as a poor student you must dig through graves for the ingredients you must need in this winston draft, recipe fulfillment card game. Weird Giraffe is an awesome indie publisher, and Chris Glein is a prolific game designer. He won the LUCI award a couple years back, just as Fantastic Factories did. Studies in Sorcery is Chris’ first game to be published, but I’ve played many of his excellent designs, and I’m very confident he’s a rising star. Get in on his first game while you can!

Thanks again!

Time for us to get back to work! Those goods aren’t going to manufacture themselves!

- Joseph