Evil Dead 2: The Official Board Game is a tile and miniature based survival horror game for 2-6 Players based on the classic movie.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Production Update 7/1: Dead(lines) by Dawn!
almost 7 years ago
– Sun, Jul 02, 2017 at 12:42:25 AM
Hey Deadite Slayers,
Just a brief update today to give you some dates and what our upcoming steps will be:
3D Printing: The manufacturer is currently printing 3D models of all our figures. Once these are all made, they'll review the physical copies with meticulous scrutiny to make sure everything is looking really frickin' awesome. This step will be done by 7/3.
PU Sampling: PU (a common phonetic expression of something stinky, here meaning "polyurethane") Sampling is the step where the manufacturer produces the figures as they'll be manufactured. There's about 98% mass shrinkage from the figure the model is made from and the final figure, so we have to make sure the final figure is the correct size and looks like we want it to. This will done by 7/10.
Printer Proofs: The manufacturer is printing up all the flat components—boards, cards, rules, tokens, etc—as they will be in mass production to assure quality. This step should be done by 7/30.
The only step after these is full speed ahead on mass production. We've been working very closely with the manufacturer to cover every base to get this game right and production running smoothly. Not every manufacturer offers this level of support; we count ourselves fortunate to have such a wonderful partner.
Speaking of, pictures from the factories are incoming from on all of the above which we'll be sure to share with you! Until then, happy Independence Day to our American backers and happy month of July just in general everyone!
Have a Groovy weekend,
Team Space Goat
Production Update 6/15... Someone's in Our Fruit Cellar!
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 01:44:43 AM
Hey Deadite Slayers,
Just a quick update for you tonight. To recap last update's "real talk," our expected retail delivery date is October and we're making sure backers begin receiving their copies before retail. We've decided to target the spookiest month for release, ensuring we have enough time to produce a high quality game without the risk of having to incrementally nudge it back. We'll continue to update about this process; we've begun the PU sampling for the figures and should have some pretty cool pictures to share in the next update.
For this update, we have all our print files for the Fruit Cellar Freakout expansion. These are laid out as you explore the basement, triggering unique events just for this underground maze.
Taking a step down in the world.
A dead end in every sense of the term.
Climb up some roots and out of a tree in the forest. Surely nothing bad can happen...
Big open spaces: good for running, good for chasing.
It's a crappy way to get around, but these pipes will take you up to the bathroom.
Secret tunnel!
If enemies have you feeling in the pits, try this ace in the hole: hiding in this tile allows enemies to pass without noticing you.
What a refreshing underground stream. Now, is that color from healthy minerals or... something else?
That's our update for tonight, folks. Let us know if there's more expansion content you'd like to see along with future production updates.
Groovily yours,
Team Space Goat
Production Update 6/2
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Jun 02, 2017 at 11:55:31 PM
Hey Deadite Slayers,
Let’s real talk production and delivery dates. We’ve been working in project management for over a decade, so many of these issues we’re encountering are not only familiar to us, but systemic to creative industries like games and comic books. Kickstarter provides, for better or worse, the unique experience for backers to be a part of this process from the early stages instead of just receiving a final product at the end of it all. We’d like to explain some of what’s been going on throughout the project; some of this has been mentioned before and some wasn’t announced until it had been brought under control.
Since this is a pretty wordy update, there are some cards mixed in that haven't been seen yet.
These Events are added in the Director's Cut set, which is included in all standard versions of the game.
We’ve been working with some wonderful vendors, but we’ve also had some services not fulfilled as agreed upon. The onus is on us, the developer and publisher, to see this game through, so it’s not at all our intention to cast our vendors in negative light. With that context, let’s go over some of the major delays that’ve forced us to write updates like this during the time period we expected the game to arrive on doorsteps.
Director's Cut Items: mix 'em into the regular items or not. They're inspired by deleted and behind-the-scenes content.
Figure optimization: When we began production with the manufacturer, we were informed our figures would need to be optimized for plastic molding and production. We hired the sculptor recommended to us by the manufacturer and we were quoted one month to fix all the figures after review. This process ended up taking six months instead. A number of other, non-SGP projects and travel interrupted his work on our Evil Dead 2 figures.
We’ve avoided this issue on Terminator by provided all of our sculptor notes and fixes on the Evil Dead 2 figures to our designers, so they were able to anticipate many issues we didn’t know about for Evil Dead 2. We’re also using a team of sculptors that work directly with one of our manufacturing partners to work more efficiently.
Fruit Cellar Freakout introduces tile laying basement exploration; each new tile plays an extra basement Event.
Likeness approval: All of the Bruce Campbell art was finished during the campaign, but we couldn’t submit any for approval until all Bruce Campbell likeness were complete, which included the Ash figures that were grossly delayed. Only once they were complete could we begin the lengthy process of having Bruce personally approving his likeness.
As above, we’re able to anticipate and expedite much of the process of likeness approval ahead of time. The way the Terminator cards use art means far fewer unique actor faces we’ll need to get approved.
Explore the labyrinth of the cellar, risking danger for extra goodies that spawn underground.
Painted figures: Since the initial response during the campaign for painted figures, we’ve done everything we could to keep them, including all the incoming figures, looking good. We originally only announced Combat Ash and Gooseneck Henrietta as painted, but excitement for full paints inspired us to expand. As more and more figures were added, the process became much more complicated and expensive. We’re working with our manufacturers to ensure high quality without being prohibitively expensive. There’s a lot of back and forth throughout this process, but every step is a step forward.
Terminator won’t have painted figures specifically because of this process. We have some exciting alternatives planned for future games, but we’ll be much more discerning when it comes to painted figures.
Those three issues—figure optimization taking significantly longer than we were told, likeness approval being accordingly delayed, and painted figures being more complex than what we originally committed to—have been the main culprits in the delay of delivery. The good news is that we’ve been making constant forward progress through all of the above and have completed most other aspects of production. That said, we will have a later delivery date than we’ve announced so far.
Secret Soul Sucker features hidden roles with tasks for players to complete throughout the special mystery scenario.
So as not to rush production on our first game and make any avoidable mistakes trying to get the game out “as soon as possible,” we’re deciding to have our retail release in the horroriest of months, October, and pair our launch promotion with the Halloween season. It’s very likely that backer copies will arrive sooner and we’ll definitely announce once the games are in the boat. What we don’t want to do is string you along with incremental dates without any hard updates.
Some roles remain hidden the whole game; others are revealed once a task is complete, confirming beyond a doubt that character isn't evil—or at least didn't start that way.
Thank you so much for joining us on this project. We’re incredibly passionate about this game and a part of us is going totally crazy not being able to share with you all yet. We weren’t able to film us playing the expansions since the last update, but we’ll definitely have a couple of previews and walkthroughs in the coming weeks.
SSS's scenario includes Acts that escalate, forcing players to seek out the traitors among them, until the fateful showdown.
Don’t forget that if you have any questions or concerns, you can feel free to contact us through the Kickstarter messages or at [email protected]. We try our best to go through all the comments, but we sometimes miss concerns due to the sheer amount and places where people can comment.
Stay Groovy,
Team Space Goat
Production Update 5/16
almost 7 years ago
– Wed, May 17, 2017 at 01:25:20 AM
Hey Soul Suckers!
We apologize for the delayed update, so let's get right into it!
As mentioned last time, we were hitting some turbulence with Bruce Campbell's likeness, since each card that features his face is treated with more scrutiny than even the covers of one of the comics. We knew this was going to be a time-consuming process, but could not begin the actual approvals until all Bruce faces were ready to submit—which means it couldn't be started until even the models were painted, which in turn couldn't be done the figures were optimized for manufacturer. We prioritized Ash in all phases specifically because of how much time the approvals would take, so there haven't been any unnecessary—just a couple unforeseen—hangups.
Fortunately, we were able to get most other aspects underway so as not to bottleneck all of production, but until the game is 100% out of our hands (it's about 95% there at this point), we won't have that final delivery date. As soon as that's locked in, we'll be yelling it from rooftops and you all will be the first to know.
Also from last time, there's been a very positive response to the Evil Dead 2 comic book omnibus and Art of Evil Dead 2 books. We'll keep you posted on details of those in the coming weeks and months. If you'd still like to put in your word, the survey form is accessible at this link.
Just a short and not-so-sweet update this week, so we'd like to share something fun in our next big update. Which add-on would you like us to dive more deeply into and talk about? Let us know in the comments!
Groovily yours,
Team Space Goat
Bonus Update: How's Production Going?
almost 7 years ago
– Wed, May 03, 2017 at 01:28:13 AM
Hey everyone!
We're super happy you're digging the paints on the minis. Some folks were hoping for more production and scheduling info in the last update, so we're back to give a peek behind the curtain.
Here are the main obstacles we've been working through:
Final figure adjustments took far longer than quoted for us. Mohamed is a fantastic sculptor, but he's had several unforeseen scheduling conflicts which have delayed the fixes on a couple figures (we need more detail on Apple Head, remove the base from the Classic, Annie needs a bigger Kandarian Dagger). We've moved forward with machining some of the molds ahead of time, but we will need all figures locked in to finish. We're working with the manufacturer to build up a bigger team of sculptors to prevent this from being any further of a delay—or one in the future.
Bruce's face is simply too handsome. We have Bruce Campbell's likeness rights, which means we can make Ash actually look like Ash. What this also means is that every card and figure that has Ash's face on it needs to be sent to our licensor, who sends them to Bruce's agent, who sends them to Bruce, who personally gives a thumbs up. I, for one, hope it's a literal thumbs up. Much of the art we used is from internal panels from our comics which, though also based on Bruce's likeness, don't need to go through as strict of an approval process. This iterative process took a while, mainly because we were unwilling to submit all instances of Ash's face with the exact same drawing pasted in, as was asked of us.
And that's it. We've begun every other forward-moving process on manufacturing except for what was held up by those delays. We'll continue to take in the information our vendors and project managers give us and report back our best estimates on delivery until we're totally sure those estimates no longer reflect reality.
As an extra little bonus, JD and Carter (the stretch goal intern) will be at Crypticon in Seattle, WA, this upcoming weekend! They'll be playing Evil Dead 2, talking on some panels, and showing off previews of The Howling board game and comics. If you're in the area, stop on by.
Lastly, we want to continue checking in with you all to get your feedback on upcoming projects. We have a responsibility to you, as our backers and fans, to make things you actually want, so our question for now: what do you think about a Kickstarter campaign for a box set of hardcovers of an Evil Dead 2 Omnibus and an Art Book, both for our comics? This campaign would be in July or August, after—or, worst case, while—board games are arriving to you. These books will be 100% ready to print well before the campaign launches; the campaign would be to spread the reach and to fund fancy printing features. Please check out this simple survey and let us know what you think: https://goo.gl/forms/oulmk7PKz8DpQaSY2
Thank you for your support. We're so excited for you to be able to play this game and to make many more great things to come.
