Happy Holidays from The Shivers!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 12:18:58 AM

We wish you all a happy and healthy (and may be a little spooky) Holidays!

It's that special time of year, and we're honestly just happy to be safe and healthy. We hope you are as well...keep up the social distancing so we can all sit around a table together and play games soon. Bonus activity: can you spot who's making a guest appearance in the above image?

A few development updates:

• We're entering an exciting new phase of work for our game: the finalization of all-new pop-up room artwork and paper engineering, and printing of our new Gen 3 prototypes. We'll use these new game prototypes for internal game and episode testing. 
• If you'd like to be a beta game test subject, and live in the Ventura County area of California, let us know. We'll work out how to best hand-off the game samples with Covid safety in mind. 
• We're also sending out for manufacturing quotes this week, to four different overseas manufacturers. We hope to get pricing back by mid-January, and select our partner by early February. 
• It looks like we'll be opening our Pledge Manager and Pre-Order store around the end of January, so keep an eye on your inboxes for information about your pledge. 

Thank you all for helping make The Shivers a rare bright spot in the 2020 year, and see you in the New Year!

- The Shivers Team

Another development progress report, and Happy Thanksgiving!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 02:46:30 AM

The Shivers continues to get even more amazing...

The development team has been hard at work this month, developing all aspects of The Shivers. 

• Matt has been refining game mechanics (introducing a new structured hint system that will really help our Storytellers navigate their adventure), and even integrating new Fail/Save states so players can enjoy the sweetness and consequences of good boneheaded decision.
• Jared is editing the episodes written by our writing team; we have 12 out of 16 completed so far, and working through the logic and complexity of each adventure is no small task. He's also ensuring we  strike the right balance between simplicity/complexity and age-appropriateness. 
• Renee has been going back over all 8 rooms and doing edits to the pop-up structures. We're down to refining the last 3 rooms (Parlour, Library, and Laboratory) this month, after which we'll be printing our new room prototypes for full play testing. 
• Aris is refining the graphic design elements of the game, particularly the new Episode Guide format. We've greatly expanded the Notes section to allow for a huge array of notes, books, inscriptions, dialogue, and events to populate that area
• Darcy and Larry have mostly completed their set of episodes, and have prepared some amazing adventures that are totally unique to their writing style and background. You'll be frightened, you'll be amazed, you'll be befuddled, you'll be laughing (even more so than watching Cats)!
• Bill is powering through all the incredible illustrations featured in the games. From the new room layouts, to the playable Shivers characters, to the NPC creatures you'll encounter along the way, all feature his unique signature artistic style. 
• Andy's managing and contributing to all of the above areas, which is about to make his head explode. 
• Heather's continuing to build our social media presence...drop by @TheShiversGame and say hello!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a tough year for everyone on this lonely blue marble. We're thankful for each other's hard work and passions, good health, dear friends and family, and the support of each and every one of our fans and backers. Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

- The Shivers Team

Another work-in-progress update for The Shivers
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 01:33:56 AM

Here's a sneak peak at the 2D  artwork for the new Expansion room, the Children's Nursery!

Our incredible illustrator Bill Tiller, working together with the ridiculously talented paper engineer Renee Jablow, have almost finished developing this final Stretch Goal pop-up room. Here's a glimpse of some of the die line artwork: 

An interesting note on process: the pink lines are where the paper will be cut (a "die line"), and the blue dashed lines are where the paper will be creased/folded to construct the pop-up room assembly. 

Our writing team is also coming up with some diabolically mind-warping episodes to feature this seemingly-innocent-but-hauntingly-creepy new addition to Fogmoor Manor. 

We wish you and your family a spooky Halloween!

Halloween's a big deal around our house, and if you're a fan of The Shivers we're guessing you love all the haunted thrills too. We're confident that by next Halloween in 2021, you'll be enjoying your copy of The Shivers and making it a regular part of your spooky traditions!

A peek into The Shivers game development process, and Pledge Manager update!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 03, 2020 at 12:06:29 AM

As we're knee-deep in development, we thought you'd like a glimpse of what we're working on: 

We have over 10 team members working on various aspects of The Shivers. Here's a sample of a conversation between project lead Andy Logan and lead illustrator Bill Tiller, regarding how much time and effort should go into the illustrations of each creature standee (with visuals!):

Andy: "Bill, we have over 30 creatures and characters to draw, what level of fidelity should we shoot for?"

Bill: "Well, here's a quick sketch" (see A below)

Andy: "That's a cool bee monster. But we'll need color, and tighter details"

Bill: "Here's a tighter line drawing with basic cell shading" (see B below)

Andy: "Better sketch, but the color is pretty flat and boring. Make it look amazing!" 

Bill: "Here's amazing, but it took me about 2 days." (See D below)

Andy: "Yes, that's definitely amazing! But at that rate, it will take you 2 months to finish all the characters, meanwhile you'll have many other game assets that need your illustration skills...What can you do in a few hours?"

Bill: "OK here's a version that only took about 6 hours." (See C below)

Andy: "Perfect! Lets do this level of fidelity for all our standee artwork!"

It's so incredible to work with such a talented team of creative pros that can also comfortably work within the real constraints of schedule and budget. 

One of our writers, Darcy Coates, is hard at work on the episodes for Expansion#1, titled Fangs! Can you guess what that series is about?

A great game mechanics suggestion from our lead game mechanics designer, Matt Fantastic: making a specific hint system so the Storyteller will be able to give meaningful scripted hints when players are stuck. This takes some improvisational burden off the Storyteller's plate. Genius!

Update on Pledge Manager: it will open later in the year.

Based on conversations we've had with reputable distribution/fulfillment partners in regions worldwide, there's a very high level of uncertainty right now. With the pandemic, the pending US election, changing EU import laws, Brexit, potential tariffs, and standard yearly shipping cost inflation, these factors all make it difficult for us to pin down exact shipping rates to charge our backers. So hang in there a few months, we'll open the Pledge Manager when we are better able to estimate exact shipping costs, so we're not under- or over-charging you for sending you your game. 

That's it for this week's update, stay safe and well out there, Shivers fans!

- The Shivers Team

We're knee-deep in development, and a new character sneak peek!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 02:21:26 AM

Here's what we're up to this month:

The glow of last month's incredible Kickstarter is starting to ebb, replaced now by serious nose-to-the-grindstone task management as we work towards the goal of getting our game to you by next summer. Our team is hard at work on the following tasks:

Backstory development, episode development, Shivers character illustrations, non-player character illustrations, game mechanics refinement, episode mechanics testing, and box size/weight calculations. 

New character sneak peek!

Here's a first-ever reveal of one of our new characters from illustrator Bill Tiller, named Autumn Lark: 

Update on Pledge Manager launch

We'll be opening the pledge manager (BackerKit) soon, we're just waiting on more accurate box size/weight calculations so that we can nail down exact shipping costs. Once we have these cost estimates from our distribution partners, you'll be able to calculate shipping to your address and manage your pledge. 

That's it for this week!

- The Shivers Team