Pre-Orders Store | Class Outlines | Devils | Oh my
Greetings, Operatives. I am your substitute Duty Manager, Operative Mill. I’ll be handling updates for the foreseeable future, while Operative Slightly attends to some urgent matters overseas.
What urgent matters? Well, we’ll have to keep that on a strict need-to-know basis for the time being. But I am authorised to tell you that Operative Slightly will be at Tokyo Game Show this year, if any of you fancy finding him and saying hi. Regrettably, files we have at HQ indicate that ’Tokyo Game Show’ is a massively popular video game convention and trade fair, not a hilariously cruel TV show.
Shame. We'll just have to do this when he gets back.
Anyway, on with the update!
Pre-Order Store
The pre-order store is now open! Check it out for all NS:DD pre-orders, and spread the word to anyone you know who would love this game but missed out on the crowdfunding campaign. You can also pick up our first game, RÅŒNIN, and pre-order its upcoming expansion, RÅŒNIN: Densetsu.
Just to reiterate a point from the last update; add-ons and pre-orders will be charged when you add or order them, while shipping costs will be calculated and charged later, as close to the actual shipment date as possible. This is pretty standard in crowdfunding these days, as international shipping costs remain difficult to predict in advance with any greater accuracy than a magic 8-ball.
Player Character Classes
After wrapping up our creative meetings on the PC classes, we now have a final outline for each of the classes that will be featured in the Division book, including what powers and techniques they’ll possess.
Next up comes the detail work: nailing down all the precise wording of each class’s features and abilities, and getting the balance right between them all. We want beginners to have all the options and support they need to just jump right in and create the anime protagonist of their dreams. At the same time, we want to make sure savvy players can feel rewarded for cunning character builds, without leaving any glaring, game-breaking exploits in there. It’s a tricky balancing act, but rest assured; we have top men on the job.
Trust us. That's an order.
Creative Meetings: Devils
Next on the docket, we have more creative meetings booked in to go over Devils, the main antagonists you’ll be fighting and the raison d’être for the Division itself. The central concept of ‘beings created from the fears and negative emotions of humanity’ gives us licence to go absolutely hog wild, frankly. This will be fun.
We won’t be tilting our hand too much this early in the game. But if you want to join in on the speculation, we have a channel on our Discord called Devil Dossier, where members can discuss their fan theories, pitches and homebrew about which Devils will be stalking the streets of Tokyo. And without giving too much away, some of the guesses already on there are correct…
Community Highlight
And speaking of the Discord, we already mentioned in the last update that we’d be posting OC art from the lovely folks over on our Discord. If you want to showcase your OC art, head on over to the Art channel there and share away. This month we have this creature sketch from the very talented Myco. They also dropped some awesome music in the same Art channel recently, so go check that out!
It's like if the Jack of Hearts was also a harbinger of the apocalypse.
See you next month.
// Operative Mill and the SRG Tactical Response Unit out.
Classes Have A Plan. Pledge Manager & Pre-Order Store Is Going Live.
Hey Operatives. Busy month. Let's get into it.
Creative Meetings: We Have A Plan.
We've now wrapped the creative meetings for all the classes, Contractor aside, and we can say with confidence that we know what this game is going to be. Every class has a direction. The Hybrid sessions got heated at points, genuinely heated, but we pushed through and came out the other side with something we're all excited about.
Actual footage from SRGHQ
Across all the classes we've identified 12 roles that each class draws upon in different ways. We're not going into detail on those yet as they'll make a lot more sense once we start releasing actual materials, but they're the backbone of how the classes will feel distinct from each other at the table.
Now that the creative direction is locked we can start designing abilities and doing real game design work in earnest. Once I've had four to eight weeks with the material I should have a much clearer sense of when we'll be ready to release things for public playtesting. We'll keep you posted.
The best part of wrapping these meetings was the feeling in the room at the end. Everyone walked out on the same page about what Night Shift: Devil Division is and where it's going.
Pledge Manager and Pre-Order Store.
The smoke test has gone out, so a select few of you will have already seen your surveys land in your inbox. No issues so far, which means the rest of the surveys are going out today.Keep an eye on your email!
Any add-ons or pre-orders will be charged when you add or order them, exactly like a traditional pre-order.
Shipping is a separate charge and will be collected later, as close to the actual shipment date as possible. International shipping is, as everyone is aware, an ongoing chaos situation and what looks fine today can look very different tomorrow. Charging shipping as late as possible means you get the most accurate costs and we don't end up absorbing unexpected differences down the line. This is standard practice in crowdfunding at this point and nothing out of the ordinary, but we'd rather explain it clearly than have anyone surprised.
Any questions on the pledge manager, hit us in the Discord.
Community Highlight
We're starting a thing where we'll be posting OC Art from the lovely folks over on our Discord. Here's this months by fish.
Welcome to the first of our monthly post-campaign updates. We said we'd go quiet for four to six weeks, we managed about thirty seconds, and then everything sped right back up again. Classic.
So, what have we actually been up to?
Creative Meetings: Classes.
We've kicked off a series of creative meetings covering the classes and the first few have been genuinely great. The format is simple: everyone gets pizza, everyone says what cool things they think players should be able to do, and somehow a game gets designed. It's a good system.
We've got a solid sense of direction for both the NDOs and XOs coming out of those early sessions. Next up we'll be covering Baselines and Hybrids, with the Contractor following once we've got the Devils outlined, since that class is built around what's captured and we need to know what's being captured first.
More detail on specific class directions as things solidify.
Pledge Manager.
We're tinkering away on it steadily and the current plan is to have it open for pre-orders and add-ons by the end of July. We've got a lot done on it already so it may well be done sooner than that just depends how long it takes for our logistics partners to review everything.
More updates to come as the months go on. Hop in the Discord if you want the more day-to-day stuff in between these.
Over £269,000/$360,000 raised in a month. Our biggest project to date, and it isn't close.
Obviously the amount of people and funds raised are amazing but for me personally, the best thing has been seeing our little community grow even bigger. I used to be able to pop into the Discord every day and have a sense of everything that was going on. That's not possible now, and I mean that as the best kind of problem to have.
Being a community led game company has always been our goal. Your feedback, your suggestions, your questions, your arguments in the server about which School is best, all of that is going to be a core part of how this game gets made. The playtesting journey starts with you and we intend to lean into that hard.
What Happens Next
We're going to go a little quiet for the next four to six weeks. There's a lot to plan: the pledge manager needs setting up, the next year needs mapping out, and the team needs a breath before we go heads down into production. We've earned it. So have you, frankly. Our commitment for all our projects is at least one update every month so look forward to them!
That said, the Discord will stay active throughout. If you're not in there yet, come and join us. That's where we'll be.
Thank you to everyone who backed, shared, commented, posted, and dragged a friend in by the collar. Thank you to everyone who asked questions in the Q&A, voted in the polls, and told us what you wanted to see. Thank you to Matt Colville and the MCDM team. Thank you to Tonton Revolver. Thank you to Dushan and the OMM team. Thank you to Grant and Raya. Thank you to Dave Thaumavore. Thank you to everyone who showed up at UKGE and said hello.
Here's to what comes next!
"As long as the Earth, Sun, and Moon exist, everything will be alright."
£250K! We Unlocked Solo Rules and Foundry Is The Final Stretch Goal. Five Hours Left!
Jesus, that was fast!
£250,000. Solo Rules are confirmed and going to be developed for the game. Thank you, genuinely, for the absolutely relentless pace of this final stretch.
New Stretch Goal: Foundry Support at £300K
We heard you all campaign on Foundry and we're putting it on the board. £300K unlocks full Foundry VTT support for Night Shift: Devil Division.
Yes, we have five hours left on the clock. Yes, we also have Overtime. We're not ruling anything out. You've surprised us at every single milestone of this campaign so let's see what you've got for the finale. Share the page, upgrade your pledge, make some noise, and let's go out with a bang.
Overtime — Live Now / Starting Soon
We're live streaming the Overtime Period from 10am PST / 6pm BST. Come hang out, ask questions, watch the counter move, and help us push toward £300K in real time. Watch either on the BackerKit page or over on our YouTube channel.
NEW ART: Shibuya Scramble
Check out this new art from our environment artist, Hachio! Shibuya Scramble and it's UT-Zone counterpart.
Apologies for the slight delay on these. I wanted to iron out a few minor issues and dot some i's before putting them in front of you. I've almost certainly not caught everything, so if you spot any mistakes or have questions, come find us in the Discordand we'll sort it out.
These are a work in progress and deliberately slimmed down. They are not feature complete and they're not a full picture of what the two main books will contain. That said, there's still 100 pages of content in here and more than enough to get a real feel for how the game plays. Dig in and enjoy.
The final stretch of this campaign has been something else. We cruised past the custom music stretch goal which means battle tunes and original music in the style of the trailer are coming. Speaking of the trailer, it's just crossed one million views. One million. That's fucking ridiculous and we're still processing it.
Solo Rules are the next goal and they are within reach if we can keep the pace up through these final hours. It was one of the most requested additions we saw throughout the campaign and we'd love to be able to confirm it.
Share the page, send it to one more person, and let's see if we can get there
On Foundry: we saw the requests and we hear you. It's not a current stretch goal but it's something we will endeavour to support down the line. We wanted to acknowledge it rather than leave it unanswered.
OVERTIME — Tomorrow, We Go Live
Just like in the World Cup, when the clock runs out we're going to extra time. Tomorrow we'll be live streaming the Overtime Period right through until the backer train pulls into the station. It could be ten minutes, it could be longer. Either way we'll make those ten minutes count.
Come by, ask questions, chat with us, and let's close this thing out together. The stream link should be live on the page and will go live at 10am PST/6pm BST.
Games We Love: Nine Tails
While we were at UKGE I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely couple from Japan who run a board game shop in Shinjuku. They have a new board game launching on Kickstarter soon called Nine Tails and it looks brilliant.
You are an ancient yokai spirit, friend and mentor to the forest foxes. Help your foxes improve their skills, use tricks upon rival foxes and villagers, and earn the nine tails they need to ascend to heaven.
They're a small outfit and they'd genuinely appreciate the support. We'll be backing it ourselves. If that sounds like your kind of thing, give them a follow and keep an eye out for the launch.
Firstly I wanna say I don’t want to request a refund as I love all my projects I’ve ever backed from slightly reckless games but my dog isn’t doing to well and I can’t afford the vet fees and am trying to recoup any funds I can. Would there be anyway I could refund this order for now and I do want to let you know I intend to pick up a base variant (hopefully a limited edition if available second hand) later on when things are better with my doggo. Much love guys you truly make good content and I’m a fan for life and I’m sorry to make this request
Greetings, Operatives. I am your substitute Duty Manager, Operative Mill. I’ll be handling updates for the foreseeable future, while Operative Slightly attends to some urgent matters overseas.
What urgent matters? Well, we’ll have to keep that on a strict need-to-know basis for the time being. But I am authorised to tell you that Operative Slightly will be at Tokyo Game Show this year, if any of you fancy finding him and saying hi. Regrettably, files we have at HQ indicate that ’Tokyo Game Show’ is a massively popular video game convention and trade fair, not a hilariously cruel TV show.
Shame. We'll just have to do this when he gets back.
Anyway, on with the update!
Pre-Order Store
The pre-order store is now open! Check it out for all NS:DD pre-orders, and spread the word to anyone you know who would love this game but missed out on the crowdfunding campaign. You can also pick up our first game, RÅŒNIN, and pre-order its upcoming expansion, RÅŒNIN: Densetsu.
Just to reiterate a point from the last update; add-ons and pre-orders will be charged when you add or order them, while shipping costs will be calculated and charged later, as close to the actual shipment date as possible. This is pretty standard in crowdfunding these days, as international shipping costs remain difficult to predict in advance with any greater accuracy than a magic 8-ball.
Player Character Classes
After wrapping up our creative meetings on the PC classes, we now have a final outline for each of the classes that will be featured in the Division book, including what powers and techniques they’ll possess.
Next up comes the detail work: nailing down all the precise wording of each class’s features and abilities, and getting the balance right between them all. We want beginners to have all the options and support they need to just jump right in and create the anime protagonist of their dreams. At the same time, we want to make sure savvy players can feel rewarded for cunning character builds, without leaving any glaring, game-breaking exploits in there. It’s a tricky balancing act, but rest assured; we have top men on the job.
Trust us. That's an order.
Creative Meetings: Devils
Next on the docket, we have more creative meetings booked in to go over Devils, the main antagonists you’ll be fighting and the raison d’être for the Division itself. The central concept of ‘beings created from the fears and negative emotions of humanity’ gives us licence to go absolutely hog wild, frankly. This will be fun.
We won’t be tilting our hand too much this early in the game. But if you want to join in on the speculation, we have a channel on our Discord called Devil Dossier, where members can discuss their fan theories, pitches and homebrew about which Devils will be stalking the streets of Tokyo. And without giving too much away, some of the guesses already on there are correct…
Community Highlight
And speaking of the Discord, we already mentioned in the last update that we’d be posting OC art from the lovely folks over on our Discord. If you want to showcase your OC art, head on over to the Art channel there and share away. This month we have this creature sketch from the very talented Myco. They also dropped some awesome music in the same Art channel recently, so go check that out!
It's like if the Jack of Hearts was also a harbinger of the apocalypse.
See you next month.
// Operative Mill and the SRG Tactical Response Unit out.
I was listening to the that night shift devil division burned cd on Spotify again and i am wondering and hoping will you guys be making more of these i need more of these i cant get enough of the mix between Japanese and American 90s bands
We've now wrapped the creative meetings for all the classes, Contractor aside, and we can say with confidence that we know what this game is going to be. Every class has a direction. The Hybrid sessions got heated at points, genuinely heated, but we pushed through and came out the other side with something we're all excited about.
Actual footage from SRGHQ
Across all the classes we've identified 12 roles that each class draws upon in different ways. We're not going into detail on those yet as they'll make a lot more sense once we start releasing actual materials, but they're the backbone of how the classes will feel distinct from each other at the table.
Now that the creative direction is locked we can start designing abilities and doing real game design work in earnest. Once I've had four to eight weeks with the material I should have a much clearer sense of when we'll be ready to release things for public playtesting. We'll keep you posted.
The best part of wrapping these meetings was the feeling in the room at the end. Everyone walked out on the same page about what Night Shift: Devil Division is and where it's going.
Pledge Manager and Pre-Order Store.
The smoke test has gone out, so a select few of you will have already seen your surveys land in your inbox. No issues so far, which means the rest of the surveys are going out today.Keep an eye on your email!
Any add-ons or pre-orders will be charged when you add or order them, exactly like a traditional pre-order.
Shipping is a separate charge and will be collected later, as close to the actual shipment date as possible. International shipping is, as everyone is aware, an ongoing chaos situation and what looks fine today can look very different tomorrow. Charging shipping as late as possible means you get the most accurate costs and we don't end up absorbing unexpected differences down the line. This is standard practice in crowdfunding at this point and nothing out of the ordinary, but we'd rather explain it clearly than have anyone surprised.
Any questions on the pledge manager, hit us in the Discord.
Community Highlight
We're starting a thing where we'll be posting OC Art from the lovely folks over on our Discord. Here's this months by fish.
Trying to complete my survey, and I am struggling to find information on what the VTT options entail, and how to make an informed decision. Can someone point me to the info?
