Hello Cherry Picked Fans,
Apologies for the radio silence on the blog. We’ve had our heads down over the winter break; noses buried in dog pictures and rule books. But, you deserve a quick update on our two production efforts: Hair of the Dog and Far Away. Read on for the latest progress report.
Far Away
Boda Games has begun production on the second edition prototype. As mentioned in the previous blog post, we submitted our updated files and they’ve received everything. The biggest news is the creation of the fabled inlay: a plastic tray for easy storage and sorting. Here’s the fabrication design:
We’re excited to get our hands on that tray, as well as the rest of the v2 game. We are expecting that prototype shortly after the Chinese New Year holiday concludes. Assuming we give the go-ahead, we expect another month of manufacturing and a few weeks of shipping. Of course, there’s a global shipping crisis that compounds these estimates, but we’ll make 2022 the year of optimism.
Our expected fulfillment timeframe is still Q2 this year (Q2 of the calendar year, not the fiscal – don’t stress out corporate overlords). If things change, we’ll let you and all the pre-order customers know as soon as we do.
Hair of the Dog
Our three-headed Cerberus of a production team is in high gear working on the components. We have most of the custom content planned out (if you paid for your dog to be in the game and haven’t heard from us, check your spam folders). We’re digitizing the dogs as quickly as we can.
Concurrently, we’re ironing the wrinkles out of the game design. Our main playtests have graduated from testing rules to testing the rule book. Several games have been run without us teaching the system: brave players are succeeding in the daunting task of learning a brand new game and explaining it to their friends. If you haven’t lately, check out the print-and-play to see the rule text for yourself. Please run a game and let us know how things go. We’re still doing the $5/survey donations to the Humane Society, so be extra sure to share that feedback.
We’re also working to complete the stretch goal modules. These include Puppies, Cats, a Chameleon, and solo mode. Our Puppies rules have been successfully crate trained and are awaiting art assets for public adoption. The others are still being designed and tested. Expect more news in our February Kickstarter update.
That’s all for now. This work is keeping us busy for the moment, but we’re always happy to answer any questions you have about timing, production, design, or dogs.
--Alex