What went wrong in the Midway? New survey to find out!
over 3 years ago – Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 03:39:32 PM

Hey everyone! No news from manufacturing except that it is still on track. But that doesn't mean we don't have fun news: While we wish we could just give you the Promo Pack ASAP, we can do the next best thing: All backers will receive a special code to nab a free copy of the "Dubious Employment" promo pack next summer. All the more reason to keep chatting about that, as it'll be yours at your request.

As for the pack, thank you for your responses to the survey. You have... colorful imaginations, to say the least! While we will still be a little tight lipped on the staff card responses, we did come to a conclusion for our favorite ride idea...

Introducing: The Midway

Now, that isn't its name, but a few of you suggested various sideshow games like crane machines, duck pond fishing, air rifles, dunk tanks, and more, and three of you specifically mentioned just doing a whole dang thing! We immediately imagined that the staff in the park weren't paid very well, and perhaps skimmed a little off the top by running some can artist stands of their own. We are somewhat settled on the ability, pending a bit more testing, but just so you get an idea of the progress:

But what does that mean?

We can fill you in a bit more on the promo pack, specifically how the Staff Badge cards currently work. At the start of the game, each player draws two Staff Badges and chooses one to keep face-down, returning the other to the box. Each Staff Badge gets 5 coins placed on it, and has a special ability that costs some quantity of coins to use. The ability can be used at any time by flipping the card over and reading the quote out loud, paying the cost from the 5 coins on the card. Therefor cheaper abilities can be used multiple times, while more powerful abilities may only work once. No fear when it comes to change- leftover coins on the card at the end of the game are added to your score.

Note that dear Stanley here is a stand-in for now, although we are coming to adore him very much.

This means that the Midway (whatever its name turns out to be) will be great for 'refilling' these Staff Badges, while the player who played it gets the added bonus of a ride that doesn't start with any danger on it (oh how valuable!)

But that's not all...

We keep saying that the ride is unnamed, because we need your help once again. Here is the link to the new survey: Link!

What will you think of next?

The Park Is Hiring!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 09:12:18 PM

Hey folks! No news from the factory front- manufacturing continues to manufacture, and no adjustments to our timeline as of now. So, perhaps something more exciting?

The Return of the Survey

We LOVED working with backers on contributed rides and improvements. Many of them have become favorite cards, from the dexterity mini-games of Rotten Apple Throw to the inanity of Reflection Misdirection. Well, as noted before, we are making a promo pack of cards to release next summer as part of our commitment to building on a game we love. While we have a laundry list of ideas, we wonder, what will backers think up? Somehow it is always a tiny bit stranger than what we thought was acceptable.

Click here to open up the survey. We will be making 12 special power cards called Staff Badges, as well as a new ride to interact with this card type in a specific way. What will y'all think of? Once we got some feedback, we will roll out some fun teaser images and such as we approach release. And, if it helps, here is a peek at what the cards are looking like so far:

Stay dangerous,

Story Machine Games

Time To Feel Dangerous (On Twitch)
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 12:46:41 AM

Hey folks- smaller update than usual. We will have nice little things to report on to fill the time between now and fulfillment, especially since the game is just in production at this point. So this week we have a little something you may be interested in...

Thursday Game Night (on twitch.tv)

Since the pandemic became a thing, we host weekly game nights that we stream at 7:30PM Eastern Time every Thursday. This week we will be playing Danger Park. Well, not just playing. We will be opening up the box (the cool kids call it an 'unboxing'?) and messing around with all the finalized components, talking about the inspiration behind the project, and playing through a full game, explaining things as we go. We will also be responding to questions and ideas in the chat, and those who catch on quick can do a little bit of backseat playing (please help me beat Jakob he is very good). We will also chat about the summer promo pack, which (we are 99% sure) will be Staff Badges, cards with special abilities that you can use a certain number of times during the game (and that count as a few bonus points if you don't).

So we hope you will join us? Again, this is tomorrow (Thursday) September 10th at 7:30PM Eastern Time, and the video will be left up for those who can't make it. All on our channel at twitch.tv/storymachinegames. Your support means the world to us.

Jono

Pictures, Tabletopia, and Other News From The Park
over 3 years ago – Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 11:49:23 PM

Hey folks! First and foremost, things are moving along- the game is in manufacturing and we are simply, well, waiting. Not too much news, you'd think? However, there is, in fact, lots of news (mostly good, some suspect, overall we'd rate the news a 9.1). Here we go!

Latest Photos

To start off, since everything has been finalized, we can show you some pictures. A major note to focus on is that the final prototype versions of the Gametrayz were delivered in black, albeit they will be orange in the final version. We colorized (perhaps somewhat haphazardly) a tray to give you a sense of what is going on. Let's get to it (keep scrolling past the photos for more news!):

Card Upgrade & Promo Pack

To start, we have been accepting late pledges since February, and since we have had a nice number of them, we were able to upgrade all game cards to a linen finish. We thought it would be a nice additional touch.

We have also begun discussing promo packs for our game lineup, including Danger Park, to have mid-year next year. If you want to be part of that conversation, we are posting it as a topic in the Discord today. You are welcome to swing by.

You may ask: How can I think of promo cards if I still haven't played?

Danger Park: Tabletopia Edition

So, we felt bad about the pandemic and all that getting in the way of the original delivery date. However, with some excellent help from a friend (who also happens to work with Extra Life - check out their work if you get a chance!) we have implemented the current version of Danger Park (including backer-designed cards) in Tabletopia, for free, for all of you! If you aren't familiar with Tabletopia, it is a virtual board game space where you can play board games in your browser without having to download anything. It is fantastic and exciting, and it means that Danger Park is now yours to experience immediately. It is a bit fresh and may have an issue here or there, so please message us or hop on the Discord to pass along any feedback.

The link to the Tabletopia edition is here. We hope you enjoy it!

Shipping Update (insert sad face emoji here)

We are still aiming for fulfillment in December. However, we have been notified that there are rising issues with shipping this holiday season. Due to the pandemic, a lot of manufacturing delays and shortages have pushed back a lot of shipping overall, and things can and will continue to get backed up. We are going to therefore update our delivery dates on our website and Backerkit to January 2021 to be safe, and to make sure folks who are interested in pre-ordering the game know it may not arrive in time for the holidays. This doesn't change our target of December, but we realize that the current target date may lead to some folks getting very stressed out about buying presents, and everything is just a little too shaky right now to provide anything close to a guarantee. If there is a possibility of split or reasonable rushed shipment, we will ensure all backers get their copies before any other pre-orders are handled.

Class Action Park

We were super excited that the producers of this documentary about the infamous Action Park shouted us out a bunch during the campaign- a not-insignificant number of you may have heard of this project through them. For those of you with access to HBO Max, we recommend you check it out. The stories of this place was a major influence on Ben as a designer of this game, as well as a common experiential thread for a ton of our playtesters (who each had their tale of horror to share). Here is the trailer, if you want to learn more.

As always, reach out with any concerns. You are all fantastic and patient, and we really appreciate it.

Jono, Ben, Jakob, Bobby

News from the Park (Fun and Not So Fun)
almost 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 06:39:02 AM

Hey folks!

Short version: Not worth it to beat around the bush, but we do have some unfun news: Danger Park will be coming to you later than we had planned. Not by a ton- we are now expecting it to arrive before December 4th rather than by the end of September. We are all sorry that this is happening, and it is not ideal for our first Kickstarter as a new team & company, but we have 1) learned a few new things and 2) definitely couldn't beat the effects of a global pandemic.

Long version: We had included a grace period in our original estimation of September 2020, and actually expected to deliver early in August. However, these estimations were based on a life that seems many years ago. We saw our grace period get consumed by the delays in factories reopening, in completing final art assets and graphics with people in multiple parts of the world, in delays in pre-production and nit-picking a million small details, in being unable to playtest the final product with the added cards as fast as we wanted, for safety. We also know we could have approached some elements of pre-production more efficiently, and presume to keep it in mind rather than default-blame a global crisis (we would prefer to get something out of this rather than bad luck).

The good news is that the game is fully finished and, pending a few final confirmations in the next two weeks (allow for shipping time for components from China), the game will be in full manufacturing, and will still make it to you before the holidays. I also know by saying this, something else could potentially happen to delay it further, but that is always the case, and the December date has time built into it presuming the estimations are far from perfect.

We do like to keep this process transparent, and encourage joining our Discord channel (https://discord.gg/zaNnSNk) where we would be happy to get further into the details of what goes into production, and how it can be messed with by forces within and without.

Fun News!

So, on the other hand, we have some more fun news:

First, with almost everything finalized, we will be showing off the final look of the game with GameTrayz (which will notoriously take the longest to get a sample of, due to their complexity) as soon as they arrive to be approved. We are looking forward to this greatly.

Second, with the exception of the storage section, the final submitted rulebook is now available here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3ppe6ikjn7pmq6/DANrulebookinprogress.pdf?dl=0

Third, we are participating in Gen Con Online! If you haven't checked it out, it is a virtual con with a ton of events and activities- we will be running a Twitch channel to demo our games and chat about things, and have some of the times posted to the event calendar already. The one to keep an eye out for: Danger Park! We will be streaming a full game at 3:00PM Eastern Time on Saturday, August 1st on our Twitch channel (twitch.tv/storymachinegames). We will also leave up additional information about more games over the length of the con.