Hello, Miners!
It’s time for an update to the Deep Rock Galactic - The Board Game project. We have received the first testing samples from the factory and we are getting closer to a date for the Kickstarter!
A couple of months ago we announced that a board game adaption of Deep Rock Galactic is in the works. And everything is progressing smoothly towards launching a Kickstarter for the project in the next year. Actually, we now know that this will happen already in Q1 (so sometimes between January and March), so if you haven’t already signed up you can still do it here.
When we announced the board game, we could see that some of you were concerned if the board game project impacted the development of Season 01 and Deep Rock Galactic in general. The short answer is: the board game project does not impact internal development on DRG. As we stated in the first blog post, most of the work on the board game project is done by our partners at MOOD Publishing and the board game designer, Ole Steiness. Ghost Ship’s role in this is primarily to give feedback on the project and participate in some playtesting. Our main goal is to make sure that the board game aligns with our vision for Deep Rock Galactic and what we believe will be the expectations from you, the fans.
Unpacking The Samples
As we showed you in the first blog post, the first many months of development on a board game is done using whatever components you can scavenge from other games and quick-and-dirty print-outs glued to some cardboard. But now where the design is more or less settled, we are moving into the next phase: the production of the first samples. MOOD Publishing has done a lot of work in finding the best partner for producing the board games and ended up with a factory that has produced many other quality board games. And in parallel with this MOOD Publishing has worked together with an experienced miniature sculpturer, David Arberas, to get the 3D files just right for factory production.
And last week we finally received the first samples from the factory and the quality is just through the roof! In the video below, you can get a quick overview of the sample and all the components. Take note that this is an early sample, so the final look and feel of the plastic miniatures will be slightly different. Also, note that some of these components might end up as stretch goals depending on how we end up pricing the game (btw, using a Kickstarter is quite normal for board games filled with expensive minis since it helps estimate the production cost and distribution for a product that would otherwise have a hard time coming to reality)
That video was recorded at the MOOD Publishing office, but a few days later we received our own samples at the Ghost Ship office and we had a lot of fun just unpacking them. And we got even more excited about the quality now that we could feel them in our own hands.
We took pictures and videos which you can all see here:
During the unpacking we got a little carried away and started playing with the miniatures :-)
(the video is best with sound on)
Unpacking the board game for the first time was a really special experience and we now look forward to getting the Kickstarter set in motion, so that we can get the game into the hands of the backers. We’ll return early next year with more news on this.
And don't forget to sign up for the Kickstarter here.
With love
The Ghost Ship Crew