Mass production copy arrived! Production finished!
about 1 year ago – Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 10:19:23 AM

Hello Dodino island! 

We are so happy to share with you that production has finished!! 

Not just that, but the games are already on their way to fulfillment hubs! You can see pictures and videos below. But first, a quick update from Will:

We are in the final stretch!! Freight shipping has started and once our partners receive the cargoes, fulfillment will begin. 

•  USA, Canada & Mexico — The games have left their factory to the port in China and will embark within a week. Estimated time of arrival to fulfillment hub is December 16th (providing everything moves smoothly without port congestions). And fulfillment to start around the holidays. 
•  Europe,Africa & South America — Coordination to pickup the games from the factory is in progress. These will embark soon to Happyshops in Germany and from there we will forward a pallet to the UK too.  
•  Asia — Games were shipped from the factory to VFI Asia last Thursday. Once we enter the fulfillment queue, fulfillment will begin!  
•  Australia — Coordination to pickup the games from the factory is in progress. These will embark soon to VR Distribution.  

We will have more news on all shipments soon and you can expect updates to be posted more constantly at this stage! Thanks so much for your incrediblepatienceandoverwhelming support!

Time to see some videos and pictures!!

We received the Mass Production Copy and the result is what we expected, amazing! I was so excited that I made a video (Ok, I made more than one), please see the following for the unboxing of Dodos Riding Dinos: Dodo Dash! 

I wasn't able to jump in excitement because the baby was napping, but we (Will and I) were super happy that we even setup a place to record everything. 

In the following, you can see the expansions Mayhem Crossover Pack, The Avian Trilogy cards and Servit&Aureus. 

Finally, War for Chicken Island 2nd Edition is here too! The new box is the same size as Dodos, Dodo Dash, and Kiwi! 

And I'm just gonna brag here but Arya LOVES her plushie and she even sleeps with Reynaldo and Osborn: 

And she loves her two Baby Dodo plushies, which help her to balance in her very first steps without holding hands. This picture is from last night!

The games were palletized last week.

Within the next days, they will be on ships and one step closer to you! 

And speaking about ships...

 Will have been posting some spoilers about our next game: Party Panda Pirates in our Discord and he just shared a picture for the prototype turtle ships. 

Join us and other 1600+ members on our Discord, we are having so much fun there, and we would love to bring the Creature Kingdoms' party to it!  There you can also reach out directly to us to talk about any of our games, share ideas, stories or pictures of your painted miniatures once we host a painting party for Dodo Dash—just as we did for the original Dodos Riding Dinos!. Also, I'm sharing memes and we are super active there, we love talking with you and sometimes Kickstarter comments doesn't allow us to properly keep a conversation. 

TOP GOLDEN MEEPLE - Awards to the best in the tabletop industry in Mexico

The Top Golden Meeple Award votes are now open and you can vote for your favorite publishers, content creators, stores and board game cafes from Mexico! Draco Studios and Detestable Games are nominated as best publisher (mejor editorial) - the first category in case you want to vote for us or for any other you may know.

Vote here!

As Will mentioned above, the next update will come very soon once we have more updates on logistics. Thanks again for all your support! Until next update, ROAAAAAAR! 

Nearing end of production
about 1 year ago – Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 02:28:48 PM

Hello Dodino island! 

We have been working hard and have many updates for you, here's what you will find in this update:

• Production status (with pictures!!)
• Finalizing shipping address
• Follow up in our conversation about promos

Production status: Almost finished!

These past weeks, we have receiving pictures of several components to approve or make revisions and it seems we are very close to wrap production! Hurray!  

The pictures below are for the new content (Dodo Dash, Servit & Aureus, and Mayhem crossover) because the rest of the items in this campaign are a reprint.

Plastic tray: Note that it how it fits Servit & Aureus plus the Mayhem crossover content!

Miniatures: And as promised, these will come in different colors! They look stunning! Once again, we are super happy with the result.

Cards: These are all printed and ready to be assembled.

Punchboard and Game board: There's a special treatment on these that is not visible in the fotos but you will notice it once you have your game in your hands! 

Game box: Printed!

Last Friday, the factory reported an issue and while we dislike delivering unfortunate news, we are committed to be fully transparent...

As we are nearing the end of production, our manufacturing partner discovered some defects with the greyboard material. While doing the quality control checks on these items, the manufacturing team deemed that the material was not up to the quality standard established by them and us—specifically the sturdiness and rigidity of the material was not up to code. The good news is that they discovered this before all of the games had finished and shipped, the bad news is that some reprinting and additional quality control are needed to isolate affected pieces and rectify the issue, resulting in a 2-week delay with end of production in November 14th.

Fulfillment is still planned to start on December for some regions and January for others, providing there are no port congestions.  Which brings us to the last stage of this Kickstarter: shipping.

Finalizing shipping addresses

Before production is finished we must prepare a thorough shipping document and resume conversations with fulfillment partners for a swift delivery.

This past month we have been working in a huuuuge shipping plan to make sure all hubs have the appropriate amount of items, plus leftover copies (in case replacements are needed) and distributor copies for the items that are not Kickstarter promos.

IF YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED YOUR BACKERKIT SURVEY, PLEASE HURRY UP!

If you need to update your address, you still have a small time window to do so in your survey.

• You can locate/retrieve your survey here.
• If you still have problems locating your survey or need any assistance, reach out to [email protected] with the subject "Dodo Dash survey"

We can't send your rewards if we don't know your shipping address or if you haven't paid for shipping fees and VAT (if applicable).

PayPal is enabled.

Make sure you click in the button "Place my order" otherwise, your survey will remain open and won't appear in backer lists for fulfillment.

IMPORTANT: If you do not complete your survey on time, your rewards might have to ship at a different time and have extra shipping costs. Please avoid this hassle and complete your survey. We are here to assist you!

Promo cards (continuation)

Let's continue our conversation about promo cards. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts! We truly value your shared enthusiasm.

It seems there still was some confusion even after the update... so we let us be clear:

We are not doing any event-exclusive promo cards. Not now, not in the future, not in the past.

We were always considering for promos to be available in future campaigns and now, thanks to your feedback, we are taking more actions to have them widely available and without the need of pledging in a campaign that you may be not interested.

Please understand, that these new promo cards were never part of the initial development and scope of this project. These were ideated, quoted and produced after development for Dodo Dash finished and moved into prepress with the factory. 

Some promo cards are intended for partnerships with content creators, friendly local game stores, magazines, loyalty rewards in future Kickstarters, and yes, events too. But after having an initial release in these outlets, you will be able to get the whole set of promo cards online for an inexpensive price (available in all continents). 

We do not want to feed FOMO. The only difference will be the timing, whether you want to get them earlier or wait for the whole promo batch to be released. 

We will also keep BoardGameGeek updated with all single promo cards so that it is easy to keep track of them. And at least at this time, we do not have plans of creating new promo cards beyond 2025.

Let's continue our conversation and please share with us your thoughts in the comments. 

Coming soon...

This project is not over and we won't rest until it is completely fulfilled like all our past projects.

But if you have been with us in the past, you know that we like to introduce our next title once we are nearing fulfillment of the active project. This allows us to shape some aspects of the game along with the most enthusiastic members of our community!

We have received more and more messages in social media, BGG forums and emails asking about Party Panda Pirates, our game inspired by Mario Party...

And while it is still in development stage (art and game design), we are starting to share more about it in our Discord channel for this game. So if you want to discover more in advance, feel free to join the talk on Discord! Or subscribe in the Kickstarter page to be notified on launch.

Any luck guessing which pirate we are talking about? There's a hint in the image caption... The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. 

––

That's all for now but November's update will be a good one. Stay tuned!!

ROOOOAAARRR!!!!!

Let's have a friendly conversation about Promo cards, we want to hear you.
over 1 year ago – Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 02:05:55 AM

Hello Dodino island!

Manufacture is still in progress so we have no additional news to share. Timeline remains the same: 

• Mass production to be finished by the end of October.
• Freight shipping in November-December.
• Fulfillment to start in December-January.

Next time I expect to have some pictures from the factory and the advance production copy!

Today I want to talk with you about Promo Cards...

Not promo miniatures such as the ones included in this and past campaigns, but the type of single cards that you see in other game titles at special events such as conventions, organized play, or even in the BoardGameGeek store.

It is a HUGE topic and your input will shape our stance so that you can be excited about Promo cards (2024-2025) once you receive your games in a few months!

Let's introduce the subject today and start a two-way conversation that might take a couple of updates to wrap up. 

Please bear with me during the next few weeks to engage in a friendly dialogue between backers and creator. The goal is to understand our community expectations better and set a clear course of action that is deemed acceptable by most of you (with the mutual understanding that satisfying everyone might be an impossible endeavor) within healthy and responsible limits.

First, I offer a sincere apology

I now understand that the previous project update with news about the first event promo cards being available at Gen Con left a sour taste for many of you, and some confusion for other backers. For that, I deeply apologize. I also appreciate that you spoke loudly about the discomfort because here we are today looking for ways to improve as a creator.

Now, some context

It is important for you to know all of the following:

Last year, after this project was funded with such a passionate community, we started internal talks about Organized Play (tournaments and qualifiers) and Promo Cards to keep this game alive with ongoing support from us to you.

In January, we officially started Organized Play for Dodos Riding Dinos. We also materialized a plan for (10) promo cards of Dodos Riding Dinos that would be released from 2023 to 2025. We decided to also include Promo Cards for Kiwi Chow Down (9) and War for Chicken Island (8). They were only considered in English and Spanish. 

Since the inception, we considered for the cards to be available in other channels such as conventions (to reward the effort and expense from the attendees). Supporting content creators from the tabletop space, friendly local game stores (FLGS) or resources such as BoardGameGeek store. And of course, as loyalty rewards, free for returning backers, worldwide.

We were not expecting a delay in the fulfillment for this project... the original plan was to have all rewards in this Kickstarter fulfilled before Gen Con, when we planned to release the first Promo Cards.

We still went ahead with it because attending to Gen Con as exhibitors requires a large investment for us (traveling from Mexico) and also for attendees (most people who received promo cards were backers of this campaign or from our other games).  Plus the organized play and qualifiers have been running the whole year.

The promo cards we gave at Gen Con were just advance copies (only 120 units air-shipped for the convention) but the plan has always been for those promo cards to be widely available for you, our backers, in the several channels where we plan to distribute them (mentioned above). 

For full transparency, it is important to mention that the first set of promo cards we gave at Gen Con consisted of 1 Dodo Dash Curse card, 2 Season cards for Kiwi Chow Down, and 1 unit card for War for Chicken Island. A total of 4 different promo cards.

What's the plan now?

Let's start reiterating that all promo cards in our release plan will still be widely available for backers in multiple opportunities. 

We don't want you to feel left out because you can't attend to an event or because you can't afford to pledge in a future project at a given time.

We are now considering the other 3 languages offered in this campaign (DE, FR, IT)... although they will most likely be available at a later date than the English/Spanish version. 

I'm also planning to publish a list of all the promo cards so that you can keep track of the ones you want/have, as well as where/when/how to get each of them.

Remember that the spirit of these Promo Cards is to provide ongoing support and excitement to your Creature Kingdoms games.

And even if we ignored that, it is not possible to include in your pledge the Dodo Dash promo card that was distributed at Gen Con mainly because of the fact that ALL the Promo cards (for all games, in both languages, and for 2023 to 2025) need to be printed together to be cost-effective, but they are planned to be released at different occasions... So assembly times would increase the ETA of your rewards and we don't want this project to delay even more. 

For Essen Spiel 2023, we don't have advance copies like in Gen Con. 

At this point I can confirm that the first set of promo cards distributed as advance copies at Gen Con (first set) will be available in the following occasions. 

• Kickstarter for Party Panda Pirates (free loyalty reward)
•  Gen Con 2024 and Essen Spiel 2024
• Local events in Mexico during 2024

You can expect more alternatives (we are currently fine tuning details) that will be shared as they are confirmed.

Crossover promo cards

During brainstorming phase of the promo cards, we thought of another type of Promo cards that would become first available (but not exclusively) along with new game releases rather than with Organized Play or attending to events. We couldn't resist making them into a reality.

The idea with these "crossover promo cards" is to show existing characters from the original Dodos Riding Dinos game or Dodo Dash but with a new ability and art that echoes the newly released game's mechanics and theme. Providing inspiration to paint your miniatures differently or just play with your favorite character with a different ability. We plan to include cards like this in the games developed by Detestable Games and released in 2023-2025.

The whole set of cards shown here is a free loyalty reward included in the preorder of any of the new games of the link below.  And because these games will be arriving to fulfillment hubs at the same time as Dodo Dash, as a backer of this campaign you get free shipping on these new games if you decide to get them. The preorder deal is also very appealing: you get 1 free game, a total of 3 games for the price of 2 ($49 total).

This are the kind of deals/added value that we only offer to returning backers, so you can count on opportunities like this to get promos on Kickstarter if you are not able to attend events. These promo cards will also be available in future opportunities for our backers from this campaign (although the free shipping and 3x2 deal are usually only available in the crowdfunding/pre-order stage of the new games).

To avoid diverting from the topic of promo cards in this update, more info about the games can be found here where you can join the preorders.`

Your turn!

I mentioned at the beginning that I wanted this to be a 2-way conversation. Now's your turn to let us know in the comments your first impressions after reading this update (all of it, please).

I'll start shaping ideas after reading all of you and next time we continue our dialogue about promo cards, I'll have more concrete actions and most likely a survey to measure the overall preferences. 

Important to note...

A few backers complained about the items we sold at Gen Con. 

This Kickstarter is for Dodo Dash and we did not sell Dodo Dash during Gen Con because it is currently being mass produced at China.

Remember that the original game of Dodos Riding Dinos was already Kickstarted in 2020 and released in 2022. Kiwi Chow Down and War for Chicken Island were offered as add-ons in this campaign with an extra discount, but those games were also released in previous years. 

The products we sold at Gen Con were all already released in the past. They were the last leftover items in our warehouse that were originally intended for replacement of damaged copies but fortunately were not needed.

In the risks & challenges section of our campaigns we mention that items available Kickstarter might be available (in limited quantities) at special events such as gaming conventions. Still, the best way to secure any Kickstarter promos are while a the campaign is live.

––

Thanks so much for your attention reading this update, I'm excited to keep learning your expectations about Promo cards for great games like this one!

ROAAAAAAR!

FREE Promos at Gen Con + US Championship + Preproduction copy arrived!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Aug 04, 2023 at 04:57:46 AM

We have great news! 

Preproduction copy arrived, all files in all languages have been approved, and mass production is starting! You can see pictures below...

But before, check out this info if you are at Gen Con today or during the weekend to get some FREE PROMOS and the chance to win a round trip to Roll a Game Expo in Guadalajara (the land of tequila, in Mexico).

Everyone who enters into the US national championship tomorrow at 10am in Hall D : White : 13--20will secure a set of promo cards! 

But we will also have them at the booth #1449 so please come and say hi and let us know which games you have backed. 

If you can't attend to Gen Con, you will have more opportunities to get the promo cards but at least for now, this is the first time we have promos (outside of Kickstarter) and that's something exciting for us! 

Yesterday we had such a great time meeting many backers and we are truly grateful for your understanding and patience while we fine-tuned all the production aspects for Dodo Dash and the reprint of the other games. Please swing by our booth to meet us and even take a picture with Corazón who is wearing a dinosaur costume every now and then!

 Pre-Production copy is here!

Please take a look at the pictures. This is for the paper / printed components since we already received the wooden and plastic samples for the other components. We are just waiting to receive some variants for the board and punchboard with the special deluxified treatments in the coming days. 

(Pictures of the gameboard and punchboard in the next update... coming soon!)

And the factory has already started layout of the tray and confirmed to us that our plan to fit the new promo racers (Servit & Aureus + Mayhem crossover) will fit in the box! 

You can check more about how we managed to make the promos fit in the original Dodos Riding Dinos box here

So here's the current estimated timeline:

• Target Mass Production Start: August 8th
• Estimated MPC Date: October 9th
• Estimated Final Assembly Date: October 23rd
• Estimated fulfillment start: December/January

We know this delay is frustrating... trust us, we are the very first ones to deliver the games to you so you can start playing, but we won't sacrifice quality and game experience over time. While this is delayed, it is the project with the least delay from the Creature Kingdoms series and that's an improvement for us. We will keep working to be better and faster. We are very thankful for your understanding and patience! We are getting there, and we have a good track record of delivering over 25 projects already (combined from all Draco Studios endeavors).

Don't forget to join to the US national championship!!

We will be in touch soon with more news! 

Plastic Samples on the way!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 12:32:41 PM

Hello Dodino Island!

Let's start with great great news! We are sooo happy to see the pictures of the miniatures for Dodo Dash and the Mayhem Crossover pack!  Last time we shared our own 3D printed copies (to adjust size and detail). These ones are the factory's PU samples which come in grey but will be in color in the mass produced copies. Some slight tweaks were needed but with these approved, mold making can begin!

We are so pleased with the miniatures and we are sure you will love them too!

We also received the wooden samples from the factory and have it in our hands. Last time we shared pictures directly from the supplier but now we have received them and after some slight color adjustments, these will be perfect.

We are also moving forward with digital proofs for all 5 languages offered in the Kickstarter and we are awaiting a few ones to approve in a few hours, this means that digital verification will be finished this week and we can move to mass production! 

Our timeline looks like this: 

• Design Verification: In process, near completion 
• Pre Production Copy: July 17
• Target Mold Making Start: July 24
• Target Mass Production Start: August 1
• Estimated Mass Production Copy Date: October 9
• Estimated Final Assembly Date: October 23

Organized play

Some game stores are currently running qualifier tournaments of Dodos Riding Dinos! Ask to your friendly local game store if they are hosting one. Even if they aren't, we expect to support organized play next year along with some sweet promos. The national US championship of Dodos Riding Dinos will be held at Gen Con...

Gen Con 2023

We are so excited to be at Gen Con this year, premiering in a corner booth! Come say hi to booth 1449 and see the progress we have made with Dodo Dash. We expect to have the Preproduction copy with us so you can play a demo round with the new game boards and characters! 

 See you there! 

ROAAAAAAR! Before we say good bye... I wanted to share something that I'm excited for, but I will say nothing about it (yet)... It is just a teaser of a new game developed by the same people behind Dodos Riding Dinos: 

 ROAAAAR!