The advance copy has arrived at Game Salute's headquarters in New Hampshire, and been approved, so the presses are officially rolling on final production. (In fact, they might be done rolling already; this was a couple of days ago.) We've still got to ship the finished games from China to the United States; the plan is to include them in a shipment with one or two other Game Salute titles, roughly two weeks from today.

In the meantime, we've got some photos to show you! Rather than lazily dump all 14 photos in this update the way I did last time, I've uploaded them as a photo gallery here. Here's a small and bandwidth-friendly taste of what's in that gallery:

Pretty nice, eh?

Unreminder: Address updates

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: If you've changed addresses in the past year, don't worry about it. We'll get your new shipping address as part of the backer survey, which will go out once the boxes are ready to ship.

Good news from the production front this past week. Richard Lee of Panda Game Manufacturing says that the advance copy of Colossal Cave: The Board Game has shipped via FedEx from the factory to Game Salute's HQ in New Hampshire. It's supposed to get there about May 15 — a tiny bit ahead of the schedule I'd estimated in my last update.

Attached to the bottom of this post are a whole bunch of photos Richard sent me of the advance copy, which is to say, the first 100% complete and actual game of the print run. (Yeah, the photos are blurry. Sorry about that.)

The rest of the schedule hasn't changed: figure 10 more days of printing; followed by the packing and shipping of the whole print run, via shipping container, to Game Salute's fulfillment department; followed by my sending out the survey and collecting your addresses; followed by your getting your rewards!

XYZZY Awards winners have been announced

In interactive fiction news, the XYZZY Awards for 2012 have been announced. I've only played a few of the finalists; you can find the full list of winners here (and a full list of the nominees here, for those of you who are seriously into random reinforcement). Unfortunately the most polished traditional-parser entry, Emily Short's Counterfeit Monkey, is too big to play online.

Plug for Eight-Minute Empire

In Kickstarted-board-game news, I recently got the copy of Eight-Minute Empire that I'd backed. It's a really fun game, and short — not eight minutes, maybe, but easily 15 to 20 minutes — and its component quality is great. Find yourself a copy!

Well, it's been a little over a month since the last update... and there is concrete news to report on the production front!

The "hard proofs" from Panda Game Manufacturing arrived at Game Salute HQ in March, were inspected, and were forwarded on to me; the box arrived on my doorstep on March 30. A "hard proof" doesn't consist of a playable copy; instead it contains
  • samples of the various materials without any printing (i.e., similar to the Emperor's New Clothes board game, at least when viewed by non-gamers)
  • low-resolution versions of all the assets, life-size but on regular cheap paper, for checking the cut lines
  • high-res versions of the assets on glossy sheets, for checking the colors
Putting them all together into a life-size, high-res, glossy and sturdy product doesn't happen until the advance copies arrive. Panda's Richard Lee tells me that the advance copies will take about 35 days to produce. After that it's only another 15 or 20 days to finish the production run... plus the shipping time from China, which will depend on what else Game Salute is shipping at the same time (if anything).

Here's a photo of the low-res life-size box, next to a stack of my favorite games.

Final week for the Flash Point Kickstarter

See that copy of Resistance: Avalon in my "favorite games" stack? That's a great game by Indie Boards and Cards. And for anyone who hasn't heard, the third expansion to Indie's other excellent game Flash Point: Fire Rescue is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. It's in its final five days and comes with a ton of extras, including the option to pre-pre-order the fourth expansion for only $12. Check it out before it ends!

Unreminder: Address updates

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: If you've changed addresses in the past year, don't worry about it. We'll get your new shipping address as part of the backer survey, which will go out once the boxes are ready to ship.

Good news from Game Salute and Panda: the PDF "soft proofs" have been approved and Panda is beginning to produce the printed "hard proofs", which will be air-mailed to Game Salute and myself and approved once more before the actual production run begins.

Now, here's a major update: We've decided that it makes more sense (economically and gameplay-wise), rather than shipping the ADV550 expansion separately, to turn it into an in-spansion. This means that every copy of the game, whether through Kickstarter or in stores, will now come with a copy of ADV550 inside. (The expansion will still be clearly marked in its own little tuckbox, inside the main game box.) So, if you backed at the $17, $20, $22, $30, or $40 levels, you'll be getting the ADV550 inspansion for free!

But wait — there's more! For backers in the $55 tier: Your extra backing made the production of ADV550 possible (not to mention doing the lion's share of funding the game in the first place). So we're adding to your rewards your choice of a comparably priced Game Salute game (titles to be determined, but we're talking about games such as Vampire Werewolf Fairies) or a $25 gift certificate to shop.gamesalute.com. You'll choose your bonus game as part of the backer survey, which I'll send out only once the physical games are ready to ship.

Both Game Salute and I thank you again for bearing with us while we make Colossal Cave: The Board Game the best game it can be. If you have questions about the inspansion, please post a comment below.

Bonus eye candy

The base game's cards will have their own little tuckbox, too, inside the big box that you've seen before. Here's the front and back (and one side) of that tuckbox. Katie's artwork still looks good, doesn't it?

You are in a chamber with golden walls and a high ceiling. Passages lead south, northeast, and northwest.
There is a promotional copy of “Colossal Cave: The Board Game” here.

Congratulations to backer Sam Gafkjen for finding the fourth (and penultimate) scavenger hunt item in Adventure 550! Sam's been holding me to my promise to produce an update each time a scavenger hunt item is found. But even Sam hasn't yet found the last box, which is located far along the path to a winning game. As always, please let me know if you stumble across any (potential) bugs in Adventure 550 while looking for the remaining box.

Unfortunately there's not much news this month. :(  Partly this can be blamed on Chinese New Year, which is a big deal in China (where Panda's factory is located); pretty much all work stops between February 20 and March 1. But basically things are still moving at their usual glacial pace. Last week's big news was that Panda and Game Salute had figured out how to fit the 108 cards onto six printing sheets (108 being 72 + 30 + the 6 promo cards). Which, you know, you'd think they would have figured out in about three minutes rather than three months. On the plus side, the wooden meeples and plastic disks looked nice, right? I really don't get what's taking so long with the paper and cardboard parts, which I had originally thought of as the easy stuff.

In other interactive fiction news

I may have mentioned this before... for those of you in the Bay Area (if there are any of you), you might like to mark your calendars for the Bay Area Interactive Fiction Meetup, which takes place in Oakland once a month. This past weekend, we tried out Emily Short's latest, and also Andrew Plotkin's fantastic Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home, which I highly recommend to anyone who was, like me, raised on a combination of text adventures, Arthur C. Clarke, and Swallows and Amazons. (Heliopause is of course two and a half years old at this point, so this is probably not a revelation to anyone who actually keeps up with the interactive fiction scene; but this was the first time any of us had played it.)

Hopefully there will be happier news about the paper and cardboard game components soon.