Riposte! and Cell Bock 18 are officially in production! We went back and forth with the factory to get the packaging just right, but now that is settled, and the games have officially entered the queue. Both games should be complete and packed for freight by mid-November.
After that, we have to ship them from China to the US, and fulfillment can begin. Our originally expected delivery date was around mid-February, and we are ahead of that schedule. We would love to get them to you in time for Christmas, not to mention our appearance at PAX Unplugged at the start of December.
So we are looking at our options to ship these by plane, or potentially split the freight between air and sea, to get some games in early and get them out to you. However, it's going to be tight, and we still have customs to deal with. Either way, you can expect backer surveys to go out in the next week or two, and we'll keep you apprised of the shipping plans over the next two months.
If you didn't get a chance to back Cell Block 18 and Riposte!, or you know someone who wants to order copies, they can still pre-order at a reduced price. Once we start shipping orders, the price will bump up.
We have received our physical samples, and they look amazing! The color really pops on the Mylar bags and the cards look great. We are super happy.
We still need to thoroughly review everything to make sure we haven’t missed any issues and to send over any revisions, but we went ahead and did a quick photoshoot so we can share how they look.
This is a big step toward final manufacturing, which we expect will start next week or so. We are reaching out to get a solid timeline for that and for final delivery, so we should have that information for you soon. That also means we should be sending out the backer surveys within the next few weeks.
We’ve taken the next step towards getting the games into full production. It's taken a little longer than we had hoped, but about what we had expected. The Mylar bags are a newer packaging option for our manufacturer, so there was a bit of back-and-forth to ensure our graphics are set up correctly and that they are configuring their templates to the correct sizes. But as of today, we have sent them formal approval of the digital proofs, and the next step will be to manufacture the physical proof for our review.
Those will likely take another week or two to be created and shipped to us. But once we have them, we will share photos. Assuming no changes or corrections are needed at that time, we should roll right into full manufacturing, which should take roughly three to four weeks. However, some of that depends on the factory's schedule. But we are currently on track to have the games heading to the US before the end of the year.
We can’t make any promises yet, but we are doing our best to have them in your hands in time for Christmas. But since we all know delays can happen, our official timeline is still to have them delivered to you all by February.
We will leave you with this video of David playing Cellblock 18 and Riposte! on our friend DC’s livestream a few weeks back. They started playing the card games at about an hour in. They also played Mirror Agents and talked about Winter Rabbit on the front end of that stream if you want to check that out.
Things continue along pretty smoothly here. We had to make some minor revisions to the art files, but they are back with our manufacturer, and they are working toward the next step in the process. We are hopeful to get on the production schedule starting either the end of this month or early August.
While we wait for those logistical issues to be resolved, we have received the sticker sheets from a US-based producer. They came out looking great, as you can see below. We really love the work Ali did on both these games. Everything just pops.
Each sticker sheet has five stickers. One is the game logo, and then four stickers featuring art from each game. Those who backed multiple collaborating Poketopia campaigns get these for free; many of you also grabbed these as add-ons. If you missed them, don’t worry, you will still have the chance to add them to your order when we get the surveys out in a month or so. And then if we end up with any left over, we plan to take them to conventions next year.
Riposte! and Cellblock 18 Sticker Sheets
Hopefully, when we send the next update, we will be fully into production. Until then, thank you again for helping us make these games a reality.
Wanted to give you an update on things. By now, all your cards have been charged, and Backerkit has sent us the funds. We have sent our files to our manufacturer for review, and things are moving along fairly smoothly. We are now waiting for them to complete the digital proofs, which, once approved, will then be followed by physical proofs before we move to full production.
Barring any issues with the files that we might need to clean up, we expect the game should go into manufacturing sometime in the middle to late July. So we are currently on time and on track.
We will, of course, let you know if we run into any issues that might cause delays. But we are fairly confident that you should all receive your games by, or possibly a little earlier, than our expected February 2027 delivery date.
In other news
If you follow our social media, you probably already heard this, but our previous game, Winter Rabbit, got some exciting news on Friday. We won Light Strategy Game of the Year at the Origins Awards. This is absolutely huge for us.
Photo from the Awards presentation at Origins, where Winter Rabbit won Light Strategy Game of the Year.
For Winter Rabbit, Cellblock 18, and Riposte!, we want to once again thank all the backers who have made this possible for us.
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