We posted 566 comments on the Streets Kickstarter page and all we got was this lousy...
about 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 12:56:39 AM

...bag.

Hello people - I hope you like the bag we got you!

It was only yesterday that I posed some questions and challenged you to answer them to get us from 434 comments to a mighty 1000! You did not disappoint, and in a little over 24 hours we hit the magic number. I had so much fun reading & replying to your posts - do please comment on this update and let me know if you enjoyed it too, because I'm tempted to do it again for a future challenge unless enough of you beg me not to :D

Several of you have asked about the storage plan for the game, and it's an interesting puzzle because there isn't really room for an insert that works with both standard and deluxe versions. So this money bag is part of the solution, and there is more to come. We originally wanted to do a box for the money tokens as we did for the wooden coins in Villagers. Ideas that we considered for the Streets money box were a briefcase, a safe, and a safety deposit box. But of greater priority is that all the components and extras fit neatly inside the game box, and a box for the money would just take up too much of the valuable remaining space. I think the bag is a nice compromise, and it's still a good transport solution for using the tokens in other games should you wish.

Wood You Believe It?

In the interests of logistical simplicity we are not making extra sets of wooden money available on this campaign, but we are planning a future campaign which will be just for wooden coins! Backers of Villagers may remember a poll we ran to find out what the most wanted themes would be for new Coin Chests: the winners were medieval fantasy and sci-fi, so we'll be offering those in addition to the original Coin Chest from Villagers and the banknotes from Streets. The aim is to run a short Kickstarter campaign for this early next year.

New Alternate Consultant Art!

Our first unlocked upgrade was alternate art for all the Consultant cards. We've only showed you two of them so far, so it's time for another. Today we unveil the alternate Entrepreneur!

Dave & Haakon on the Zatu Show

Tomorrow night (Wednesday 9th) from 8-9pm GMT+1, Haakon and I will be joining a livestream on the Zatu Games Facebook page. We are being interviewed by Nick Welford from Board Deck & Dice, who did a rather lovely unsolicited preview video & review of Streets on his YouTube channel.

If you go to this post on the Zatu page, you can leave a question which we may or may not answer, depending on the question :)

More Things? More Things.

We are less than 350 backers away from unlocking two new Consultant cards for the free promo pack, and I am kicking myself for not splitting them up and making the target lower, but you live and learn, AND WE WILL GET THERE! The intervals after this one will be shorter, I promise.

We will be introduce another mystery upgrade and related challenge on Thursday. For now, let me know in the comments what questions I should have asked on the last challenge!

In other news, we shipped out all our outstanding website orders today, and I see that lots of you have been ordering Villagers goodies so many thanks for that!

Be well, and play copiously!

Dave

Perform The Task: Unlock The Thing!
about 4 years ago – Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 12:04:42 AM

People!

I hope you had as excellent a weekend as it is possible to have, and that you are all safe & well. I have a whole heap of tasks on my plate today, so I am going to share one tantalising morsel with you and then be swiftly on my way.

We're a little over 500 backers away from unlocking two new Consultant cards for the free promo pack, which isn't quite as daunting as it was on Friday. I have confidence that we'll get there soon! But in the meantime...

It is time for another upgrade challenge!

This is a nice upgrade, there are no two ways about it. But if you want to know what it is, there are things that must be done...

We'd like you to get the total number of comments on this project up to 1000! You can talk about anything, but as a prompt, maybe you could answer one or more of the following questions on the main comments section of the Streets Kickstarter page:

• Who is the most famous person you've seen walking down the street?
• What is the highest value banknote you've ever found in the street, and what did you do with it?
• For the rest of your life you are only allowed to visit one restaurant, one store, and one leisure destination. What are they?

Only comments on the main page will be counted for this. We're interested in that little green number that currently says 434. Any comments that are just random gibberish will not be counted toward the total - I already thought of that one :p

And finally, if you're in a good mood, please pay a visit to the Streets Community page on Facebook. Among other things, the good folk in those parts have been helping us playtest and proof-read the game prior to the Kickstarter launch, and it will be the main social media hub for all things Streets going forward. Hopefully see you there!

Be well my friends,

Dave

Our First Upgrade... Revealed!
about 4 years ago – Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 07:23:37 PM

Hello again people!

I'm still finding my feet with the pace of this campaign, so it's not going to be a normal occurence to post two updates in a day.

The reason we're here again is that the little upgrade unlock task I set earlier today was obviously WAY too easy because you smashed it in about half an hour. We asked for 250 fans on the Streets BGG page, and we're currently at 490 (by all means please keep them coming). But it's all good, we'll put it down to teething trouble and move on with our lives. You won't have it this easy next time though!

Enough talk. Let's see what's under those pixels...

This makes all the Consultant cards double-sided in every copy of the game we'll ever print. Haakon has only shown me two of the new ones, as we see here, so there will be five more to show as they come in hot from Haakon's mighty pen / brush / whatever he uses, I don't actually know what his process is!

What next? On Monday I'll post a new mystery reveal with a new task. I'm thinking "build a working space elevator" might compensate for the ridiculous ease of the last one.

Anyway, thanks so much everyone - you are crushing it!

Stay safe & play games.

Dave

Let's Get To Work
about 4 years ago – Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 09:59:57 AM

Dear people,

Hello!

I hope you're having as good a weekend as is possible whilst adhering to the public health advice in your area!

We're all good here. This morning we took our boy (who just turned 2 in August!) out for a session on his swing and a walk in the woods where he was amused by some pigeons, a butterfly, 3 dogs, some interesting rocks, and a stick. I wish I was still 2 sometimes. He is an amazingly well-behaved (if noisy) child, but he does have his quirks. One of these being that he refuses to go down for his afternoon nap unless we go for a short drive in the car. Something about poorly maintained country roads really helps him get his nap on. It was during today's car ride that Carly and I came up with the beginning of a plan to spice up our timed reveals. This subject came up because I was questioning my decision to set the next stretch goal to unlock at 5000 backers, which might have been a few too many. But nobody's perfect, and we'll get there. Onward and upward!

So, instead of simply dropping timed reveals on you every few days as we originally intended, we're going to make you work for them. Not actual work, sometimes it might even be fun! And before anyone groans, we're not going to make you do annoying things like share posts on social media. We'd love you to spread the word about Streets of course, but it feels a bit spammy to specifically incentivise it.

Here's your first task, we've made it an easy one: if we can get 250 fans for Streets on BoardGameGeek, we'll reveal a really cool upgrade for the game.

If you're not sure how to become a fan, I'll show you. It couldn't be much easier, although you do need a free BGG account first. Just visit this page, be logged in, and click the heart.

If we're already at 250 when you visit, please don't let that stop you clicking! The more attention we generate on BGG, the more people will notice the game and potentially come to Kickstarter to back it, which help us towards that lofty 5000 backer goal. Who set it that high?!!

I'll keep an eye on BGG and do the reveal directly on the project page when it's time. We'll be back with a new task and a new mystery upgrade in due course. Feel free to speculate in the comments if you think you can figure out what's behind those big pixels! And tell us what upgrades you'd enjoy - we're 99% finished with our product design, but it's not too late to integrate particularly good new ideas.

Right, that's about it for now. The campaign is going great and everyone at Sinister HQ extends a very warm welcome to our new backers. We really appreciate your support!

Stay safe & play games,

Dave

Stretch Goal Unlocked!
about 4 years ago – Sat, Sep 05, 2020 at 01:52:23 PM

Dear people,

We've only gone & unlocked our first stretch goal! 

Here's what we were aiming for:

Unimaginably, we hit 3500 backers (it felt so far away when I typed it in yesterday!) while I was having lunch, and not even an important milestone like that can stop me enjoying a delicious bagel, so I made you wait a bit. If it's any consolation, I haven't washed up my plate yet.

So now you want to know what 's under those tiles, right? Let's do it...

Can anyone else smell Easter eggs?

Haakon is still working on the valuations (the scoring formula that appears top right of every building) for these, but he tells me they'll be different from all the existing ones. That's exciting! We'll show them off when he's finished.

And that leads us neatly into our next stretch goal! I'll just leave this here, and on the campaign page, obviously...

Play Streets Now!

The information is kind of buried down the campaign page a bit, but did you know you can play Streets online right now? It's not quite as simple as that, because you need Tabletop Simulator (TTS) which is paid software, but everything else you need to play Streets is completely free of charge. Haakon uses TTS for rapid prototyping and and it's really been invaluable to us for playtesting during the pandemic.

You can find the files to play Streets with 1 or 2 players here, and for 3 & 4 players here. You'll need a PC or Mac computer to run it on. There's even a virtual reality version!

Sinister Fish Discord Server

If you'd like to find other backers to play with on TTS, why not try our Discord server! We have text and voice rooms for people to arrange games, and we'll also be streaming some live games soon. Get involved!

And that's it for now.

Stay safe & play games!

Dave