We're prepping for Freight Shipping
over 1 year ago – Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 04:17:24 AM

Happy Holidays Friends,

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Four Souls Shipping Time! That's right friends, we're in the final stretch of manufacturing. The final assembly is happening right now and the games are being palletized for shipping.

As a reminder here is the timeline:

English Games, English Games only + Merch, Merch: Shipping to Backers in MARCH

Translated Games, Translated Games + Merch, Translated Games + English Games + Merch: Shipping to Backers in APRIL

If you need to update your address, please start doing so, knowing that games will begin shipping in March and in April. Please note, it will take about 6-8 weeks for each fulfillment center to ship out every single box, and there is no specific order in which they ship things beyond Kickstarter backers first then pre-order backers.

Here's how you update your address:

"Start by going to https://boirequiem.backerkit.com/backer/review. If necessary, request a new login link via email.

Once you're in, on mobile you can click the shipping info drop down to edit your address. On desktop there's an edit your address button in the top right corner."

Cheers!

~The Maestro Team

Translation Timelines & Lots of Product Pictures
over 1 year ago – Thu, Dec 01, 2022 at 03:01:39 AM

Hi All,

To our American friends, I hope you've recovered from any Thanksgiving overindulgences. As is tradition here, I'd like to start with what I'm thankful for. I am truly thankful for this great group that joined us along the journey and stuck with us. There were A LOT of you that helped out in the comments, answering other people's questions. Your faith and patience is truly appreciated. Another huge thanks to those in the community that visited us during conventions, it was great getting to meet you all and play games with you! And an enormous thanks to those fans who became demoers at those conventions, you're all amazing and it was great working with you.

Ok, as Buzz says at the end of Home Alone 2 enough of this gooey shhh.... show of emotions, let's dig in.

French, German, Italian, Spanish Game Timeline

Thank you for your patience, for backers who have a pledge or add-on that includes Translated games, here is the timeline:

• Late January - The games are finished printing
• February - The games are on the boats to fulfillment centers
• Late March - The games reach the fulfillment centers (this fluctuates slightly depending on the port and distance from origin)
• April - The games ship to backers

There are obviously less of these, with the bulk of them heading to the EU, so fulfillment will go quicker. 

So to lay this out again:

English Games, English Games only + Merch, Merch: Shipping to Backers in MARCH

Translated Games, Translated Games + Merch, Translated Games + English Games + Merch: Shipping to Backers in APRIL

We spoke with the factory today, as some of you may know there have been protests amid a new zero-Covid lockdown, they are all safe and currently unaffected. The timeline is holding true.

Pictures!

Up first, we wanted to show you all the results of our sleeve tests of the newly reprinted boxes.

You asked for more pictures of the games and merch, here they are! *Some photos may show Kickstarter exclusive items that are not included or were not available in pre-orders.

And finally THE GAMES in all of their glory:

~The Maestro Team

Essen, Box Updates, Timeline and more
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 04:02:31 AM

Hello Friends,

It's been a time of travel, back and forths, negotiations, face to face meetings for the first time with our manufacturing partner at Essen (stupid travel restrictions to China), two holiday themed Four Souls Challenges, and a new timeline for delivery.

Buckle up, it's probably going to be a long one. 

Chapter 1: Essen

Chapter 2: Box Updates

Chapter 3: Timeline

Chapter 4: Four Souls Challenge

Chapter 5: Next Post

Essen

In October, part of The Maestro Team traveled to the amazing town of Essen, Germany for Internationale Spieltage SPIEL '22, or Essen Spiel, which Duolingo tells me means food game, so I think I'm doing really good with my lessons.

I first want to say the largest and most heartfelt thank you to the demo team, you know who you are and we love you. The group came together in the last two weeks before the show when Floodgate Games allowed us to take some of their booth space for Four Souls demos. A huge thanks to our friends at Floodgate Games as well. Their latest Kickstarter, Sagrada Artisans, will be on Backerkit for presales soon. We also want to say a massive thank you to the fantastic team at Trick or Treat Studios, whose generosity with their booth space allowed us to quadruple the size of the Four Souls demo space over the weekend - and what a busy weekend it was!

Check out the pictures of the game below, and if you'd rather watch, check out our Essen recap on Youtube.

And we're heading to PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia December 2-4. If you're in the area, join us for one final fan look at the game before release, we'd love to see you!

Box Updates

Let's dive into solutions. We talked in the last update about the sizing issues/coloring with the boxes. Happy to report that these have been worked through and the factory has sent us White Box samples, that have a blank art wrap, of the boxes to ensure that the sleeved cards fit. With this approval, they're starting to reprint the boxes. Our next step is to receive the print run samples so we can verify the colors and that nothing funny happened between the White Box and Print Run. (This has happened, stay tuned to the next update!) 

With this extra time, we also made a decision to improve the quality of the Big Boi Boxes as well. Our inserts were necessary, but I don't think anyone on the team was thrilled. They held the cards well, kept things secure, but they just looked.... unfinished to us. As we went through our quality checks it became clear we needed to do something. We also found that 4 of the new wider Requiem boxes fit snugly into the Big Boi Boxes (widthwise) and so we've decided to remove the single piece insert for a full print copy of 4 inserts. This gives players more freedom in storage customization. The big key, this doesn't add extra time to our timeline.

Timeline

Let's get down to the technical. We estimated Q1 in the last update and our official timeline holds true to that.  The production run copies have also arrived as of Friday, I can confirm that those look amazing and there are no issues (I'll get pictures for the next update, I didn't want to delay this update any more). The final hurdles that could effect that timeline are as follows. Freight shipping, there's always something that could happen on the water. The nice thing is that freight will happen right in between holiday freight and Lunar New Year. And finally there's the ports. There was recently a strike in England, there's about a 3 week delay currently in Savannah and a 10 day delay in Long Beach but these estimates fluctuate week by week so it's not possible to predict this in a few months. Thanks for sticking around, here's the English version timeline!

• Late December - The games are finished printing & Safety Testing
• January - The games are on the boats to fulfillment centers
• Late February - The games reach the fulfillment centers (this fluctuates slightly depending on the port and distance from origin)
• March - The games ship to backers

What does that mean for the translated versions?

We will have a better timeline soon, but as of today, it looks like translated versions will be 4-6 weeks behind. Since the majority of these orders are centered in the EU, freight shipping will be less complex and slightly quicker. I'll be back when we know more!

What does that mean for Merch?

The merch is complete and is being held at the factory as we wait for our cargo ship to come into port. Any orders with just Merch or Merch + English version of the game will ship according to the above timeline. Any merch + translated game will ship with the translated games.

Four Souls Challenges

As the holiday's approach, the Experience team, with Yuggy leading the way, has developed a trilogy of holiday themed Challenges. The first is already available:

A chill in the air… A shiver down your spine… A gnawing sense of dread… The Haunt is in a playful mood! The Haunt’s favorite game to inflict upon unsuspecting victims? Trick or treat! You’ll have to guide your characters through The Haunt’s mischievous tricks and steady your nerves to avoid being overcome by fear. Take solace in the fact that there’s no trick without treat, but don’t be fooled - there’s only so long before he gets tired of just toying with you…

Head over to www.maestromedia.com and play some trick-or-treat today!

Dropping this week just in time for Thanksgiving in the US, we have Fatty's Feast... more to come when this drops on our website on Thursday, November 24th.

And stay tuned for one more holiday themed Challenge in December!

Our Next Update

Thank you for your patience, the delay in this update came from the factory letting us know that the production sample was ready and was shipping to us. At that point, the thought was it was silly to send an update with a Timeline that could be pushed if we found a mistake with the production sample. As of Friday, we received that production sample, Ed and Maestro approved the sample, and we're now full steam ahead!

I'll be back with a better timeline for the translated versions, the estimate is 4-6 weeks behind the English versions. There's also been requests for more pictures of the merch and games. I will be taking some pictures this week and will post a photo heavy update next.

~The Maestro Team

Production Issues
over 1 year ago – Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 12:39:57 AM

Hello Friends,

Thank you for your patience for those who have been commenting asking for more clarification about issues Edmund mentioned on a livestream 2 weeks ago. Our number one goal and guiding light with this project is the quality of the finished game. As such we've spent the last month pouring over every single card and the boxes since we noticed differences between the pre-production and production copies of the game.

Last month we went to Gencon and our manufacturer sent us 6 copies of the 2nd Edition Base Game, Requiem, and the Big Boi Box (3 Full Collections and 3 Big Boi Tiers). We sent copies to Edmund, used a couple for demos at the show, and sent a copy to Javon. Almost immediately, we all noticed a couple issues. The first, big one was the color seemed off. We weren't able to compare with the pre-production copies immediately, but something seemed off. When we were able to compare, the production copies were definitely different, faded.

As you can see from the pictures, the top boxes have deeper, richer colors.

Our second issue is the size of the box, the production copies were 2mm thinner than the pre-production copies. This meant that sleeved cards didn't fit perfectly in the box.

The Big Boi Box has a similar issue with spacing in the middle two rows, they're literally 1mm too narrow to fit a sleeved card. We also want to address the stability of the cards to make sure they stay secure in the closed box. More to come on those solutions soon.

As Edmund said in the stream and people have been talking about in the comments, these issues will cause a delay in the delivery of the game as there are 42,600 boxes that are affected. 

Before we give everyone an update on the timeline, we're waiting for new production samples to be delivered to ensure the quality of the game is up to our standards. We will be back soon with a better timeline update, right now we're looking at late Q1 2023 for the English language and Q2 for localized copies. With the retail release happening after the Kickstarter and pre-orders have been delivered.

We're sorry about the delay, but our biggest concern is that our backers get the highest quality game, so the focus on these small things is important. In the meantime, here's some pictures from the manufacturer of the cards, which are just waiting for those boxes to be reprinted!

~The Maestro Team

A Deeper Look at Localization
over 1 year ago – Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 03:42:11 AM

Hi Friends,

Thank you for your patience as we worked through translations with our localization partners. Our friends at Funforge, Pegasus Spiele, MS Edizioni (Magic Store), and SD Distribuciones have delivered their files to the printer and we have our hands on them now as well. These are the final files, and we know that some of you will want to swap languages after seeing this. You'll be able to swap languages until AUGUST 31st, 2022. To swap your language please head here https://maestromedia.com/pages/contactus and open up a ticket with our team. We'll be happy to make that swap for you!

Without further ado: 

Funforge - French

You've seen these cards before, when Jérémie took over Update #78 but since I'm talking about the others, I wanted to make sure everyone got to see these as well.

Pegasus Spiele - German

MS Edizioni (Magic Store) - Italian

SD Distribuciones - Spanish

Thanks for sticking with us!

~The Maestro Team