Human Interface: Verspätungen und Update

There is no need to wait anymore! That’s what today’s update should have been. We would like to write that, very, very much; but cannot just yet. Why? For several reasons. The first and foremost is quality. Quality rules and quality product: preparing artwork, elements of design, and polishing them to be more accessible and clear, and last but not least, working on the rules and testing every aspect of the game. All these elements required constant quality checks, to make sure that we are taking a step forward, not a step back, creating solutions instead of new obstacles. Every game needs to be thoroughly checked both inside the company, and outside of it. All of this led to tweaks and development of the game, but took time as well.

A very important aspect of development, especially when concerning the board game industry, is the quality of the final product. How well is it made, how does it look on the table, and what were the components used during the manufacturing process. During the campaign, we have showed a ton of marvellous artwork and miniatures that are unique in their cyberpunk atmosphere. As for all the paper components of the game, we do not have any doubts concerning their specs: they will be of supreme quality. The board game tiles made from top notch thick cardboard, cards made of high weight paper, all the manuals in high quality print. In the beginning though we had some doubts regarding the plastic manufacturing process. Thats why we decided to take our product to one of the biggest and most notable manufacturers in the board game industry.

Your miniatures have been designed in very dynamic poses, and during the process of preparing these sculpts for production, we have beed faced with a choice. We could either redesign them in a drastic manner, or we could keep the dynamic looks and the design that we showed you during the campaign, but take in additional costs at the final stage of production – the assembling.

For us the choice was clear. It is a game, that gets to be made thanks to you. It is you who deserve the best possible product. Therefore, you are going to get the most dynamic and clearly cyberpunk sculpts that exist on the market. It’s quality that matters.

Here come several questions though. Let’s start with: where do we are right now?

The stage of designing the elements of the game is completed. Everything has been prepared for production, and every odd error that is still found sometimes, is corrected on the production files.

The plastic elements are in the process of preparing the production tools – the moulds. Because we would like to obtain even better quality for our miniatures, we have decided to change the material used for production, to avoid the risk of bending. After all, nothing kills the pleasure of taking your minis out of the box, like the sight of a katana sword becoming a sickle.

That’s why all the elements subject to any possible defects due to shipping issues, will be produced of ABS, and not the PVC. No twisted swords. Quality first.

The manufacturing process of metal miniatures is for the most part complete. Their production will finish in September.

Our schedule for coming months looks as follows:

– End of September/October – tooling, small corrections, molding
– October – Essen Spiel – we are going to have with us the production prototypes
– November – mass production and gluing
– November/December – game mass assembling and shipping

What are doing to avoid any further delays?

There is but one answer. Control. We are constantly informed by our manufacturer in China about the progress in production. It is already at such an advanced stage that no-one is interested in delaying it, and keeping several thousands of cubic meters of game boxes in warehouses and generating storage costs. On the top of it, you are keeping us in check with regular updates.

Could we have made it quicker?

Probably we could. If we went more towards a compromise regarding the design, the shipping would have probably started at the date announced in February. But the approvals took too long, and the procedures in the manufacturing plant are merciless for the developers. We couldn’t imagine a situation where it took so long for you to finally get the game, and it wouldn’t meet your expectations. It all took so long, so we could assure the top notch quality of your product.

On our part, we do sincerely apologise to you all.

What can we give you in return?
– Additional cards and elements facilitating the game.
– Dynamic miniatures without big changes that would be forced by the PVC production process. That will be generating additional manual work and assembly costs, but we did it for you instead of explaining that we need to resculpt the poses, because of the production technology demands. Nothing like that!
– Additional production process to avoid the problem of flimsy parts where it would be most probable.
– Shipping of the game, expansions and Kickstarter stretch goals at the same time.
– Additional game testing to improve the quality.

At what cost?
– Nail-bitting wait for 3-4 more months.

And the last but not least. Did we mention an additional box inlay tray for the miniatures and game elements? Not yet? Then we would like to announce that you will be getting one from us.

We are hoping that our communication here is as transparent as it could be, and the rewards square and straight.

That’s all for today
The HINT team

Quelle: Human Interface bei Facebook