A New Dice Color Vote and Stretch Goal Reveal!
about 3 years ago
– Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 12:45:23 AM
Hi backers and friends!
Leading off today's update, looks like we're due for another vote -- Superman boss dice color! Go vote on Facebook through the following link or in the comment section below with the number of your choice and we'll tally them all up together:
https://www.facebook.com/cryptozoic/photos/a.216997881645996/4054618861217193/
Also, we passed the $270k mark so your Engraved Batarangs and Dice Stretch Goal is unlocked -- woohoo! The next one is set at $295k and it is a Kickstarter Exclusive mini of Commissioner Yindel for the Deluxe level backers! Let's get it!
A special thanks to everyone who shared their excitement with us and the board game community about our funding and 1v1 mode gift. We're working hard to make this the most awesome game it could possibly be for you!
- The Cryptozoic Team
Funded! Plus an Announcement!
about 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 03, 2021 at 09:57:31 AM
Thank you all for helping us reach our funding goal! And now for a special announcement from our co-designers:
Hey there fellow Bat-fans,
When we first were bouncing the idea of a Dark Knight Returns game around we really wanted the player to sit in the driver’s seat as Batman and experience the story as it unfolds in the books. In a narrative like Dark Knight we felt it should be all about Batman. If you as the player were stuck playing sidekicks, while your friend who bought the game got to be Batman, the experience would be really disappointing. We wanted the player to be like the reader of the books, sharing the intimacy of watching the story unfold at your own pace.
As much as we love Carrie, she is a sidekick in the Dark Knight series and isn’t in the first book much at all (which is why she isn’t in our first book in the game). Dark Knight Returns is about Batman. Once we started designing it as 4 individual books to play through consecutively, the idea of playing each book in isolation came up. In the stories, the antagonists meddle in different ways and in the base game we wanted them all to feel like different experiences to reflect the tasks that Batman needed to accomplish and the drives of the villains. At that point, we figured that it might also be really fun to play the antagonist if you were playing the books on their own.
We were at a stage where we decided that we wanted to write on the board and so we tossed a bunch of elements out, and rethought the design to incorporate all the different ways writing on the board adds to the fun. During this we realized that there was space that we could put into the design that would also allow for a head-to-head two-player game.
It was always more important to us to create the solitaire game that we wanted, but we also kept discovering as we were designing that the villains could play with a lot of what we were creating. Batman could have a similar kind of experience as the solo game while the villain player would be playing an asymmetrical design with the same goal as the AI from the base game: to grind Batman into submission and for Gotham to fall into chaos.
We wanted Batman – The Dark Knight Returns The Game to fund as a solo game because we believe in our design. We want people to know that we poured our bat-hearts into making a unique solo game to tell one of our favorite stories. But since, as it turned out, it seemed possible to create a head-to-head version, we are excited to share this modification with you.
We are excited that it can come to light, rather than always knowing that people could have had it. This is our extra gift to you.
Thank you for being here with us!
Morgan Dontanville & Daryl Andrews
So our celebratory gift to our wonderful backers is that a 1v1 mode will now be added to everyone’s games for FREE! It is under development and we’ll be sure to update you on how the additional cards, components and instructions are coming along.
In other news, the results are in from our first vote. We counted ‘em up on Facebook and in the comments section of the last update, and can tell you that the decisive winner on the Joker dice color is…Purple! Way to make your voices heard – we’ll make that change. Keep your eyes peeled for the next vote we’ll be posting, most likely on Monday.
And speaking of dice, for all of you that voiced concerns over the balance/distribution of sides on the batarang dice, we can tell you that we made prototypes and tested them thoroughly (tossed them a few thousand times) and the differences between roll results was negligible. Plus these are d4’s with 2 possible results, not 4 (each result is on 2 of the 4 sides), so that reduces any possibility of variances even further.
Have a great rest of the weekend, and be sure to check back in soon!
- The Cryptozoic Team
The Game Designers Speak and a Stretch Goal is Revealed!
about 3 years ago
– Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 11:36:49 PM
We here at Cryptozoic enlisted acclaimed game designers Daryl Andrews and Morgan Dontanville to bring the dark and gritty world of The Dark Knight Returns to life, and their passion, creative chops and technical know-how really shined through. In fact, let's hear them tell it themselves -- here's an hour and a half of them talking to Board Game Coffee's Mark Maia about how they approached the tall task of tackling this classic story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPaHPEBJYsM
Also, we're excited to reveal your first awesome Stretch Goal! It's an upgrade: everyone's batarangs and custom dice get engraved! Check out these beauties:
Be sure to pop back in tomorrow for some more exciting announcements!
- The Cryptozoic Team
Great first day!
about 3 years ago
– Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 09:06:57 PM
Holy smokes - what a first day! Thank you all so much for making our launch so successful. We’re really proud of this game and can’t wait to share it with all of you!
We appreciate all of your feedback and addressed some of your biggest questions in the FAQ (Why a single player game? What’s up with the EU & UK VAT? What’s the replayability?). We've got a lot of cool stuff planned over the next 24 days, so stick around -- first Stretch Goal reveals coming soon!
And a final thought: one backer mentioned that solo games are a smaller market and have a narrower appeal. While that’s traditionally true, we’re here to mix things up. Channeling one of Batman’s badass moments in The Dark Knight Returns, “this is an operating table - (KRAKKKKK) - and we’re the surgeons!”
