Hope rises, the Generator is running at over 300% efficiency and all citizens have a cause to celebrate!
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 11:31:29 PM
Wow! Just wow… you wonderful people smashed through that funding goal and our stretch goals like a sledgehammer!
Now it is time for us to repay the kindness and your patience!
Difficulty Levels
Many of you are wondering about the difficulty of this game (Adam’s famous cruelty towards his players has become something of a legend 😊). To ease the nerves of those who think it will be too difficult for them, and to calm those who are eagerly awaiting the challenge, we’ll start with explaining our approach and how the stretch goals influence it.
The best way to learn about something is to try it, so we give you access to two different scenarios on Tabletop Simulator.
The first is the main scenario with a full playthrough experience. It takes a while and is definitely too challenging (it represents the Hard mode - you will find more information about it below) for those of you who are just starting your Frostpunk adventures and haven’t had a chance to play the video game before.
This is why we are also giving you access to the second scenario that each of you will find in the game once it arrives at your doorstep. This is a short, introductory scenario that lets you learn how Frostpunk: The Board Game works, and gives you a better chance of surviving - winning the first time you play it. Also it's much shorter and with limited content, because our goal with this scenario was to give you something that will prepare you for the full game experience. Below you can find both links:
Short Scenario
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2235140236
Main Scenario (Hard Mode)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2248807820
As we are on the topic of difficulty, we would like you to know that there are plenty of things that will modify it in the final game (initial setup, scenario specific components, etc.). The main method to set the difficulty level with are the Starting Cards. They present both a narrative introduction on how your group reached the Generator, to set a certain mood, and give you an idea about the condition of your society. The Starting Card will, for example, indicate the social mood (Hope and Discontent) of your people, currently available Resources and Population. For now, there are 4 Starting Cards in the game box, and they are all in the Hard mode range (one of them was used to set up the table at the Tabletop Simulator for the Main Scenario). Have no fear, there will be more and - in fact - there already are, since this is one of the stretch goals you've unlocked. The Frostlander expansion (available to all full KS backers for free!) offers a third level – the Survivor mode (completing it awards you with Adam Kwapiński’s nod of approval, and trust us on this - it isn’t easy to get one).
Day 1 Stretch Goals
The stretch goals unlocked so far are:
2 new Hard Mode cards for the Starting Cards deck, a whole new deck of 6 Starting cards for Normal Mode (we could call it an Easy mode but that would simply be a lie - there is no such a thing as Easy mode in Frostpunk: The Board Game).
The Frostlander expansion (free for all full pledge backers during the Kickstarter campaign) is given 6 Scenario Cards with the Survivor mode - the highest difficulty level in this game. We call this deck Survivor mode - exactly like the highest difficulty level in the original (video) game. Plus the wooden pawns for the Generator board, to let you to operate this tremendous machine in style!
But this is definitely not all!
Thanks to your engagement yesterday (thank you for sharing the news with your friends!), we are also unlocking component upgrades for all pledge levels!
So now the Wood and Steam Core cubes become custom made wooden pieces!
For those of you who went with the Deluxe version there is a special treat. We are adding a model of the top tier shelter for your citizens - the House. In the previous version there was one building to represent both Bunkhouses and Houses, and now you have 8 additional miniatures to distinguish between the two for every Deluxe pledge.
We are listening to your voice and some of you wrote that the board tiles and rims look quite empty (which was not so weird when you imagine the snow-apocalypse landscapes), so we decided to upgrade the whole board, which will be created from scratch to meet your expectations. To turn it all into a neat, esthetically beautiful board, we decided to also create upgraded illustrations for all the buildings. Our artists have already started working on them and we are sure that we will show some of that goodness to you during this campaign, so that you can compare the upgrade to the previous aspect of our game.
The amount of comments and feedback is staggering and we appreciate it all! A lot of you mentioned a 2mm thick board and a potential upgrade to double layered cardboard for all the boards, and we have sent the specifications to our manufacturer to get a quote on that. We will let you know as soon as we can, but please be aware that for some of the boards dual layers won’t have any impact on their functionality. We will address that once everything can be calculated and weighed, as it would naturally influence the size of the box and its weight. Know that we heard you and are thinking about our options 😊
Day 2
Using this opportunity we would also want to remind those of you who have not seen the previous update, that we will run this campaign in the daily unlocks fashion. So here is a little sneak peek for tomorrow:
- Frostlander expansion gets a set of new events with new challenges that your society has to face!
- A new building that lets you control the mood of your society better.
There might be something more coming tomorrow 😉 but let us see if you – Citizens of New London can help us reach even higher! Please share the news about the campaign with your friends and fellow board gamers! You can simply paste this link: https://frostpunk.glasscannonunplugged.com/kickstarter
It's an honor for the whole team of Glass Cannon Unplugged to be on this journey with you!
Stay Frosted!
Jakub Wiśniewski & GCU Team
