A witchy roll and write game and some mischievous cat plushies!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
🦔Happy New Year from Charming Games!🦔
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Dec 27, 2024 at 04:07:03 AM
news: life, plushies, game, schedule, PM, other projects
👶🏻Life!👶🏻
Please welcome the newest member of Charming Games Collective, Kaiya! Born at the end of November, a couple weeks early, we've been busy getting her used to basic human stuff like breathing and eating and sleeping in a bed. Sorry for not updating meanwhile. :)
🏭Plushies News🏭
The first plushie prototypes had big problems with their shapes and colors, so we sent them back with lots of feedback. I just got the second batch of plushie prototypes a couple days ago. The shapes are all perfect this time!.
The next round of changes will be to make the fabrics perfect. Cathulhu is good. Kaiju Kitten is great, but I might change the tummy color to off-white instead of cream.
I need to make a new pattern for Star Cat. The first pattern was low resolution, but I only sent it to the factory as inspiration for them to find a similar fabric, but they just printed it out as is. The second pattern I sent them had a very high resolution file with a lot of small details. Most of the stars were tiny and the oil paint brush strokes were visible. But all the fine details were lost in the fabric printing and it's a blurry mess. The next Star Cat file will only use big stars and higher contrast backgrounds.
🎲Game News🎲
I haven't done any updates on the game since last month. I also only got one feedback and would love more! The first feedback was that the combination of goal cards aren't balanced for solo. I'll fix that by releasing officially balanced 'recipes' and by preparing daily or weekly challenges (which were planned before the comment, but delayed for release).
🚚Manufacturing and Shipping Schedule🚚
My goal now is to finish the files to start printing after Lunar New Years, so February. The factories are super busy before then, so there's no need to rush. Then manufacturing will take a month or two. Since the Otter kickstarter is scheduled in May, I need all Doom Cat fulfilled before then, so hopefully the timing all works out.
🐝Pledge Manager🐝
We are closer to opening the Doom Cat PM! No date yet, but we'll let you know when it opens!
🎉Other Projects🎉
Park Life: Storm expansion and new hedgehog plushie was successful last month. We are finishing the new plushies now and shipping out right before or after lunar new years. Late pledge is open now, but you can also add Park Life stuff to your order when the Doom Cat PM opens or next month during Pintopia. But if you just want the games and no new plushies or pins, the preorder page is the fastest way to get them! https://park-life.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Capybara Crush: Do you enjoy Sagrada, Azul, and Splendor? Capybara Crush is a match-3 card game, where each card has three critters in a column and you're matching them in a row or diagonal. The value of the critter resets when someone scores it, so you can either rush to score the high value critters, or wait and score multiple lines at one time. PNP and solo friendly! https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/dce19590-8a51-4c16-b1dc-89db597ab6af/landing
1st Capybara Crush PNP Prototype
Otter: You start with a big hand of critters you need to put on the bellies of picky otters. If you match the rules of the otter and suit of the last card played there, you can play there again. Draw a card to change the rules of the otters to set up big combos! Play your entire hand three times to win! https://www.hiveinteractive.net/projects/otter-210?ref=doom
Otter coming soon!
So many projects going on! Luckily I've been working on them all year, so next year should be a breeze, even with the new kid! As always, thanks for the trust and support and I hope you are playing some great games this holiday!! -dylan
🐱Don't miss the Park Life's new expansion and new plushie!🐱
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Nov 09, 2024 at 06:29:13 AM
news: park life's new expansion and plushie. doom cat production, pledge manager
🌩️Park Life: Storm🌩️
A long time ago (May 2024), I published my first game as Charming Games Collective, Park Life! It's a cute trick taking game where you're trying to make money as a park merchant with turbulent weather.
The new Storm Expansion adds options for even more chaos, or more control. Or both! There's also a new hedgehog plushie to hold three pocket sized boxes (or one deluxe box)!
Come play right now! The tutorial is on boardgamearena (I didn't make the tutorial, so please rate 5 stars to help thank Nekonyancer!). You can play with and without the new Storm expansion there too!
If you're new to trick taking games, the Hedgehog Edition is a good place to start as it's more stream-lined. If you've played trick taking games before, jump right to the People Edition for the full game with added set collecting and tableau building. The Storm expansion works for both (alone or everything combined for big hand sizes or up to 8 players!!)
🏭Doom Cat Production🏭
The new Doom Cat plushie samples should be ready in the next couple weeks. Once they are approved, we can start production! But experience taught me working with factories can be a long creative process. For transparency, I plan to post all the steps here, good or bad. I personally find all the little problems entertaining, maybe you will too!
I still need to finish the last batch of cards, the campaign stuff, and final rule books for Doom Cat before I request samples for that. You'll get PNP files for each step as I complete them!
🐝Pledge Manager🐝
We plan to use the Hive pledge manager again. When I get a better time frame for when production will finish, I will open the PM to collect your address as well as shipping and VAT fees. Thanks for waiting!
-dylan
🐱Over 1,000,000% funded!🐱
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 09:00:11 PM
🐱We did it!🐱
Next steps!
Finish PNP files (Campaign stuff and Eldritch Cards)
Make Plushies
Manufacture Games
Pledge manager (expect an email from Hive within a couple months)
Shipping!
I'm super excited to share Doom Cat with you all! To keep up with daily updates, please:
You're the best and I can't thank you enough for believing in Doom Cat! -dylan
😺New Kaiju Cat plushie?😺
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 08:23:50 AM
🦖Different Plushie?🦖
Since the start of the campaign, Kaiju Cat got less love than Cathulhu and Star Cat. I've finally got to update the design to see if I can fix that. Especially for the people who already backed the Gift Set, which Kaiju is your favorite? A is the original giant mouth kaiju cat. B is the new kaiju kitten.
🎞️Making the Animation🎞️
Aviya shared some of her process making the Doom Cat animation! It was a fantastic experience working together. If you like the Doom Cat style, you better head over to her page and check out her hand drawn animated horror series.
🔓Share and unlock a whole stretch goal!🔓
If you tell some friends today or tomorrow about Doom Cat (like sending them a link or posting on social) and let me know, you'll unlock an entire stretch goal by yourself! I would really appreciate the help! :D
We unlocked Shubby and Dagon cards (art is posted on the main page, but it's still WiP). We have a lot more goals to unlock in the next 2 days, but I know we can do it!!
❓Question of the Day❓
Which one is your favorite? A- original kaiju cat B- new kaiju kitten
🐱Asymmetric Player Powers!🐱
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Oct 26, 2024 at 08:11:54 AM
news: asymmetric player powers, new sigil card, eldritch cards, stretch goals, QOTD
🐁Asymmetric Player Powers🐁
One of the most requested features during playtests was for everyone to have Asymmetric Player Powers. Now they are available! The familiar cards we unlocked could either give everyone at the table a power, or players can take turns picking one each.
Complexity and VP costs were added to each, as some are more powerful than others.
If you want to help do some final playtesting of the familiar cards, they are now available in the PNP files. Even just looking them over for clarity would help.
👻New Sigil Card👻
We unlocked the tentacle Sigil Cards! These have candles in a grid and often block straight lines. This is fun because it allows you to draw slightly curved lines to your destination, giving you a choice which way to curve around the blocking candles. You still need to draw the most direct path, so curves can't go all over the place. But the extra flexibility should be fun!
Additionally, the sigil cards have new features: dividers and stars. The dividers enable new scoring conditions like using candles on one half, making enclosures in one quadrant, or intersecting a divider as much as possible. Stars also enable new scoring conditions, like not trapping them in enclosures. More star conditions will be in the next group of stretch goals!
When choosing Sigil Cards, everyone gets matching sets, like 1 tentacle card and 1 gem card. There are two more posted as stretch goals: spirits and lavender!
🖨️PNP Update🖨️
Familiars and tentacles cards added. The rules were expanded to 3 pages. UI and typos fixed. A ton of work went in this week!
🐙Eldritch Scoring Cards🐙
We unlocked all the familiars which leads to our next reveal: eldritch scoring condition cards! They will be more challenging than the current cards! Here are a few of my favorite:
❓Question of the Day❓
We have one week left. How can we get more people to know about Doom Cat?
And we have a lot of comments and shares to go to unlock all these new cards! And we're in the second chapter of the collective story. There's no limit to how much you can post a day! Lets do this!
