Progress Report

Hey, backers! How’s it going?

In an effort to keep up on our communication, here’s another update for ya!

A couple weeks ago we had our whole team fly out to Indianapolis for Gen Con. Our team is mostly remote so it was really great to get everyone together for the first time to work the con, do some planning, get to know each other, and have some fun.

Everyone on the team attended except Brooklynn. Uncomfortable with the idea of taking a week off design to work the convention, we all decided it was the right move for him to stay back. Determined to keep up the momentum and get this campaign wrapped up, he locked himself in his basement and did nothing but design.

This is what he’ll continue to do until we’re finished!

We’ve learned a lot in the past few years. And running a campaign like Middara’s is complex and difficult. It’s easy to get side-tracked, overwhelmed, grid-locked, and distracted by a million things that need to get done. We realize that our project management has been rough but we’re tackling these issues, getting more organized, and focusing on what matters, which is designing the best dungeon crawler ever!

Talk is cheap, that’s why we want to show you.

Focus Shall Not Fail!

Due to Middara’s size, its primary designs are made asynchronous of each other. Meaning, lots of little things come together to create individual encounters. We will be piecemealing encounters and content for feedback on our Discord in beta-tester’s channel on a regular basis over the following months.

Our first batch of content was released last Friday, and starting this week, we’ll have new content for Wave 2 items (Act 2, 3, etc) uploaded every Friday.

Despite our designs being done in a non-linear fashion, we’re going to share them in the order players would naturally play them in. That way, the feedback we get feels more organic.

The earliest encounters are already shared with our community. Alongside 30 unique Combatant Cards from Act 2, the entirety of Vile Variations (another 31 Unique Combatant Cards.), the complete Bounty Pack: The Cave Sickle Queen, and the complete Bounty Pack: The Pit Boss.

If you want to take a look at the state of items, and give us feedback, don’t hesitate to hit us up on Discord for an invite to the beta-tester’s channel.

This Friday there will be another injection of updated content from future products. This trend will continue weekly until we’ve shared everything we’ve decided needs sharing for feedback from our community.

Beta Content Shared Last Friday!

• Updated the Encounter “Brawl on Deck” to reflect final artwork and layout. (this includes the gridded sheets and tiles required for this encounter)
   
• Spell Checked the Encounters Brawl on Deck, Night Raid, and The Sprawling Cavern.
   
• Uploaded the first of many new encounters, “The Sprawling Cavern” for community review.
   
• The newest version (mostly community implementations and final passes) of Cave Sickle Queen. (42 page adventure book, 34 Combatant Cards, 29 Items, 36 mini american sized cards.)
   
• The newest version (mostly community implementations and final passes) of The Pit Boss.(48 page adventure book, 49 Combatant Cards, 37 Items, 36 mini american sized cards.)
   
• Uploaded the current version (pre-graphic design) versions of all of our Epic and Legendary Items for Act 2 and Act 3. (340 standard euro sized cards!)
   
• Organized all of the dropbox files shared with the community to ensure that these files are in one place and updated in a single place. This should make looking through the current content easier to follow as they are all time stamped.
   
• Organized and linked the Feedback Document in such a way where all issues can be assigned, shared, and followed by the community to determine what has been implemented vs was hasn’t vs what is still outstanding.
   
• Uploaded the final version of the current Rule Book. (the one we went to print with).
   
• Uploaded the newest iteration of the Unintentional Malum: New Rules Book. (A brand new book included with Act 2.)

This Friday we plan on sharing (via our Discord Beta Testing Community):

• Another Encounter, “Demon Shrine”.
   
• The entirety of KS2 Promo Box.
   
• Updated graphic layouts for all the tokens, tiles, and diagrams in Night Fighting and Sprawling Cavern.
   
• Three new Combatant Cards. (two new variations and a brand new Esper.)
   
• A set of new rules associated with newer encounters in the Unintentional Malum: New Rules Book.
   
• The entire set of new Disciplines for Act 2 and 3, including all of the current iterations of Keystone Disciplines.
   
• Updated layouts for all 30 Unique Combatant Cards already shared in Act 2. These represent a closer look at final graphic layouts.
   

Gen Con 2023

This year’s Gen Con saw record-breaking attendance and it was an amazing experience seeing so many passionate board-gamers in one spot. We met so many fans of Middara there too!

There were also tons of people interested in playing Middara that had never heard of it before. Unfortunately, since our production for Wave 1 hit delays, we didn’t have any Core games to sell them which is a real shame.

Production and Logistics

Wave 1

While attending Gen Con, Alex and Pete met up face-to-face with our manufacturers. Concerned with the production delays that have already occurred, Alex and Pete grilled them about what deadlines need to be hit.

Our next big convention is Essen Spiel in Germany and our manufacturers have assured us that Wave 1 will be ready to sell by then. This means that by early October, Wave 1 will be fulfilled / fulfilling to backers, and all Wave 1 products will all be available on our webstore for purchase. 

(That’s 10 different items/SKU’s that have been out of print for over a year!)

Wave 2

Just because we’re still designing parts of Wave 2 doesn’t mean that we’ll be waiting around to start mass production. Far from it. Many pieces of this campaign are 100% complete and we’ll be feeding all finished files to the manufacturer as we complete them. This will happen at the same time as we’re finishing design on others.

By far, the most time-consuming part of production is creating the mold for the plastic miniatures.

All our sculpting is complete so production of these molds is already underway.

Our goal is to deliver all files to the manufacturer by late October / early November, and fulfill this campaign by Q1 of next year.

We have a lot in the hopper for Succubus, but the truth is that none of it matters if the delivery of this campaign is still pending. This means that these deadlines more or less have to happen for us!

Webstore

We sold out of most of our resin kits last week.  If you placed an order that still hasn’t been fulfilled, this is why. We’re in the process of producing more kits to fulfill orders. We expect all pending orders to ship within the next two weeks. 

With that said, these Resin Kits are still limited by the amount of boxes we’ve physically printed. Once those are out, the Resin Kits will be temporarily out of stock while we determine how and if we want to provide another run of resin in their current configuration.

If you missed our Vestalia event, go check it out here!

Sign Off

We’re getting down to the wire here and we know that more consistent updates will hopefully build confidence and trust in the community. So start expecting more regular updates!

We love you all and thanks for all the support! See you on Friday!