Logistics and well-deserved thank yous
Dear Frostlanders! Happy New Year! May 2023, bring you love, joy, and games!
I wanted to write something like: “the weather outside is sunny and does not befit Frostpunk theme at all” but the weather in Poland is nowadays gloomy and cold and is less a match for Frostpunk and more for Resident Evil or some E. A. Poe novel…
But fortunately, the rest of the news is rather positive so dive in!
Shipping update
We’ve finished the English Kickstarter pledge shipping and the pre-orders/late pledges through our webshop and PM (the ones ordered before June 26th, 2022, that were to be sent along with the KS copies. The remaining webshop orders will be shipped once the Kickstarter backers will receive their pledges) for all destinations. In the warehouse, we still have English editions that are a part of an order for a different language edition (for example if you took a German edition and wanted another copy in English that’s the case) so these we do not count towards the English edition fulfillment. If you backed only for the English edition of the game and the package has still not reached you, please:
- Check the mailbox of the email address that you used in the Pledge Manager (it was Backerkit) and check your Spam folder as well to look for an email with a tracking number.;
- Please check the Pledge Manager (https://frostpunk-the-board-game.backerkit.com/) and/or on your Shopify account (if you pre-ordered the game from our website before June 26th, 2022) if your delivery address and contact details provided are valid and if the shipping charge has been paid;
- If all of the above are checked, and you’re sure you’ve completed the steps correctly, and still there was no email from us or our logistics partners regarding your parcel, please contact our Customer Support team: https://glasscannonunplugged.com/customer-support/
- Orders from our website that were placed after June 26th, 2022 will be shipped when all Kickstarter pledges have been shipped – according to our plan this will happen by the end of Q1 of this year, but we hope to have finished it by the end of February.
As for the 6 European language editions (CZ, DE, FR, IT, PL, SP) the games have safely arrived at the warehouse and take up an impressive amount of space.
The shipping has already begun, and we intend to have the majority delivered by the end of this month. Over 3500 packages are in delivery or have already been delivered, and the remaining 2700 will leave the warehouse this week. We’re using different courier services depending on the country, for France, it is Colis Privé, for Germany, it is DHL and FedEx, for Poland it is Inpost, for Spain we have Envialia, for Belgium it is Bpack, and for other destinations a mix of FedEx and DPD.
We have about 300 packages with languages other than English bound to US and Canada, and they will also be shipped by the end of the month, but since their route is longer, it may prolong to the first weeks of February. FedEx airfreight will be used to send these.
We’re finishing the resin casting of the Edge of Kinship miniature; the team that makes them for us will create the final batch next week, and these will be sent to the backers straight after.
Complaints
Returns and customer complaints due to manufacturing errors or shipping damage due to bad packaging – we kindly ask you for a little bit more of your patience; we want to start sending all those we’ve received straight after we’re finished with the pledges. For now, we have less than 1% of such cases, which is a very good result, especially so for such a large and complex product! Once our Customer Support Team is done with solving all the issues and requests connected with the deliveries, we will have the capacity to embrace the returns fully 😊.
That’s all as far as the logistics are concerned for now, but there’s some more news we’d like to share with you.
Manufacturing update
The Korean edition is being manufactured, but due to a severe new wave of COVID-19 in China, we won’t be able to finish it before the Chinese New Year. The situation there is tough, and we keep our fingers crossed and send out wishes of quick recovery to our Chinese partners. We hope that throughout the next month, the situation will be maintained and that business will commence as usual. We’re sorry for this. Unfortunately, this situation is out of our and pretty much anyone’s control.
Nevertheless, here are the digital printed samples of the Korean edition boxes:
Approved by the partner and ready for printing! 😊
App update
All the language partners are doing their best to deliver us the translations necessary for the localization of the app to be possible. Some have already sent us finished translations, and others are still in progress. The ones we’ve received allowed us to prepare a test build of the app that will be checked by the partners, and once we get their feedback, we will implement those language versions into the main build of the app. The whole process is going smoothly, one of the rare cases when things are ahead of schedule 😉 and if no unpleasant surprises occur, we will have the app localized to French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese languages by the end of February. The remaining languages (German, Polish, Korean, Chinese) should follow shortly and be published by the end of Q1 2023.
We’re overjoyed that the app meets your expectations (judging by your feedback and ratings) and that many of you use it to add theme and help organize your gameplay. We can’t wait to hear about your playthroughs with the Trade module!
A thank you to our manufacturer
Now that our game has reached well over half of the backers, we can see here, on the Facebook group, and on Boardgamegeek that you are mostly happy with the manufacturing quality of the game components and of the outer packaging (also prepared by the team of Eastar Game Manufacturing). We’ve asked them for a photo of the crew that was responsible for delivering such amazing quality. We are extremely grateful to them for their effort and thankful for what they manufactured. So, a big THANK YOU, Eastar team!
There’s also a short article on the manufacturer’s blog about what challenges our posed to their team and from their perspective: https://www.eastarboardgame.com/Board-game-news/333/How-The-Most-Popular-Pieces-in-Frostpunk-Are-Made
In spite of many challenges we had to face while delivering this game with the Eastar GM team, the whole cooperation was in the spirit of mutual respect, partnership, and a shared goal. We highly recommend working with Eastar GM to any creators out there. Thank you!
Gameplay videos and video reviews
Our friends from Gaming Rules! and Rolling Solo have prepared more content for you, mostly focused on mastering the rules and easing newcomers into the experience of Frostpunk: The Board Game:
Gaming Rules!
Soon, the one and only Paul Grogan will publish a full rules video for Frostpunk: TBG which he has been working on, so please be sure to subscribe to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GamingRulesVideos
Rolling Solo
How to Set Up video
Playthrough video
And here you will find a really thematic and great quality tutorial by Totally Tabled:
Even tough Frostpunk: TBG had a late delivery we did manage to make our way into a few TOP summaries for 2022:
Quackalope https://youtu.be/N-wErPI6pAM
The Broken Meeple https://youtu.be/3sB3lzLnEHE
Not Bored Gaming https://youtu.be/L8luFOPgZQ0
Board Game Quest https://www.boardgamequest.com/top-10-board-games-of-2022/
There’s also a lot of content for the game published by… you! What a wonderful community <3 there’s been some heartwarming stuff created by the Facebook group members (https://www.facebook.com/groups/frostpunktheboardgame) and by the BGG community https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/311988/frostpunk-board-game
We wholeheartedly invite you to the aforementioned portals as more and more great content for the game is being published there, and the community members are extremely helpful and always ready to answer questions as are we! It is a real blessing to see you and your gaming groups live through the experience, lose and triumph over the challenges of the frozen world of Frostpunk! We are proud of you for the determination you show in making sure the last city on Earth sees another day! To see that when you lose, even a few times in a row, only to triumph with a wild roar, ah this is the stuff that drives the team to make such games! Thank you <3!
Jakub & GCU Team
PS
Rafał and the Team are working on some content that will be published for free as PnP materials that will be gladly received by the less experienced players 😊 More info in the upcoming update.
