Production has 100% finished! This is amazing news because it means we're on the home stretch. Currently, the games are sitting in a warehouse in China and are awaiting the fulfilment team's instructions. The next time we speak, your game will be in the middle of the ocean somewhere (on a boat, of course, I don't mean floating aimlessly...)

I asked my project manager over at Boda Games to snap some photos of production for you all. Here's what she sent through (I've covered the faces of the factory workers because they're hideous...nah jokes, I covered them because I don't know if they want their faces sent to 1000 people).

I know these are unlabelled…but you’ll have to trust me that Mothership is in these boxes!

Are we still on track for a February Delivery?

Yes...ish. The games will make it on the boats by the end of next week at the latest where it then takes about 1 to 2 months to get to their destination and start the end-user delivery process.

If you've done your maths right, you might have figured we're pushing a Feb delivery date. It's more realistically looking like you will get your game in March (sorry! 😣). It's so annoying because I was one month out on my first Kickstarter campaign and I really wanted to nail the month this time...eh anyway.

The reason for this delay is no doubt the extra time spent on quality control. Most of it was little things that kept the emails going back and forth. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things, and I'd rather delay the game than send out a product that I wouldn't be happy to receive myself.

There were only two major quality issues:

1. Artifact token colours in Into the Vortex didn't match the colours of the artifact tokens from the base game. This was fixed with a reprint. That caused a delay.

2. The other issue was...

Plastic Stand Problems

The clear plastic stand is a piece that fits into the bottom of every other plastic piece and allows it to stand up on the board. I reused some of my moulds from the previous campaign, so I had them couriered over from the old factory.

Unfortunately, one of the moulds was damaged in some areas which caused issues with the 'Mothership' piece, specifically where the stand fits into the hole.

Instead of telling me this before the Mothership pieces were made, the factory produced all the pieces and sent them to me for quality checking without mentioning the issue at all. After having a look, I found that the piece was so loose it just fell off the stand.

The only solution to this, short of paying another 4k USD to produce another mould, was to create a stand piece with a little 'notch' on the tip to increase the tension. Aaaand that's what we did.

My ideal situation would have been to keep all the stands the same, and have everything fit together perfectly...but we didn't have 4k to blow on that. So, this was the next best thing that we could do.

To explain the difference, one of these little notes will be added to every game:

A little note that you'll find in all base game copies

Yeah, it's not elegant, but it gets the job done and you won't know any different after you put the pieces together for the first time.

2nd Edition App Released

This has been a huge undertaking and looking back, it's crazy that I did it again...I make board games, not apps!

The 2nd Edition companion app has now been released and is available on Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

A heads up to those who have the 1st Edition app, this will not update over the old version. Instead, is listed as a separate app.

Here's the features list:

Use this app to replace 1x player's Control Panel and Tech Tree.
The app includes a dice roller that automatically calculates the correct dice to use for each ship and will add all corresponding buffs based on your energy levels, Tech Tree purchases, Class selection and controlled artifacts.
Perfect for those who want to play Mothership but don't want to keep track of adding buffs to their dice rolls.
The visuals are designed to match the physical version as closely as possible.
The artifact screen allows you to Develop planets and automatically calculate their planet defence.
Dice roller includes Random Event Dice and Bonus Dice.
The app also includes a full card list and board layout gallery.
Available on iPhone and Android as 16:9 screen ratio, or on iPad as 4:3 ratio. While the app was designed primarily for use on 16:9 devices, for the best experience it is recommended to use the 4:3 iPad version where possible.
The app is also very useful for print and play backers as it will mean they have to print fewer materials to play the game.

Here are a few screenshots: