Getting ready to print some vegan hot dogs
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 04, 2022 at 02:57:27 AM

Today is our 25th Update! 

But alas, twenty five updates are far too few among such excellent and admirable backers. We don't know half of you half as well as we would like and we like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

While waiting for a copyright infringement lawsuit for this intro, we are going to talk about manufacturing and shipping date, content revisions and we'll close with a design diary about Jessika, the most irritable vegan among vegans with cannibalistic tendencies.

Manufacturing & Shipping

As we told you two weeks ago in our newsletter, BangWee sent us the list of corrections required to make the 3D sculpts mouldable. Since then, we managed to find a 3D modeler with good experience in the manufacturing process. We are working in a very interactive way with him and our project manager at Bangwee to make sure everything goes smoothly and the design remains as close as possible to the original. Out of our 32 models , 8 have been re-submitted and 7 are being revised now. We are swiftly moving on to the remaining ones. 

We are very satisfied with how quickly we are going through this process, nonetheless it will take us some more weeks and we were already on the line to deliver in February. 

We have to assume our delivery will be postponed to March/April. 

We apologize for this, we should have changed manufacturer in Spring when the first problems started arising. We'll keep you updated as soon as we have more info! 

Revisions

While the 3D sculpts are getting fixed we are finalizing the files for printing. In the usual folder you will find a new version of the rulebook (v16). This is almost final, so if you want to comment this is your chance! Please note that the images still have to be updated, so please focus your comments on the text :) Thanks so much for your support!

In the meanwhile, Dario is doing a lot of little improvements and redrawing. These were not really planned but we thought some of the artwork was a bit muted in our previous version, hope you like how things are turning out.

Design Diary

Last time we spoke about Zack, this time we are back with the one and only Jessika, the most feared animal-lover in the Island!

Jessika is a core hero, so no matter what package you got, you will have a chance to play her. Lucky you!

Jessika represents those who behave in a certain way not because they think is right, but because they want to feel better than the others who don't.

Always been a fervent vegan, when Jessika arrived to the Island and saw that everybody else was as well (the Kabula revives monsters after they are killed, no time to eat them!) she had a nervous breakdown.

Since then she goes around with a big flail, the Schlong Crusher, and her special power is being Irritable, which allows her to move one Part in her rage Box every time she Rests. This ties up very well with Under My Heel, an attack allowed by her Leather Boots. This attack is not as powerful as the Schlong Crusher, but it's an action which does not end your turn, which means you can combo it with other attacks, or simply go on with doing something different after attacking an enemy. Jessika is probably the most aggressive and damage oriented hero in the game. Unfortunately, she starts with the lowest hp and no active defense, which makes her very bad at surviving dungeons. Only hitting her on her boots (aim at Legs) will trigger some passive defense!

violent/creepy: The most iconic of her three personalities is maybe the Cannibal. With this personality she unlocks the power to eat her enemies, and recover 1 hp for each 1 hp of damage that she inflicts on other heroes.

generous/naturelover: At the absolute opposite of the spectrum, she fully embraces the naturelover in her to become a real forest princess! With this personality she unlocks the possibility of taming monsters as familios without killing them. This is quite a unique skill, and the only one in the whole game which allows to get a familio AFTER the Kabula has been stolen, when reviving is not an option any more.

lazy/practical: When good intentions clash with the effort required to hold true to them, it's when this Undecided personality arises! Opening a monster shelter is a great idea, but a costly one. Turning those who don't get adopted into sausages is a good option to sustain the business! With this pretty realistic personality, Jessika unlocks Repressed Anger, which gives her attacks a +1 damage for each Part in her rage Box. Pretty good power to have, when you are already Irritable to start with!

As a side note, the last two cards sync in a very peculiar way until one of the two personality is unlocked. Usually, placing one hashtag on a card, unlocks a power to get more hashtags on that same card. For example if you start being creepy or violent, you will get a #creepy every time you attack a hero. On the other hand, when you start being generous/naturelover, you will get a #lazy any time you attack a monster. To get a #naturelover, you will need to spawn a monster and not attack it, but this is a power which you unlock in the lazy/practical card!

Once again, the path of the just is not as easy as it looks!

New Games

As already announced through our newsletter, we started working on two new games! 

One is based on the same Universe as Kabula, but will be mostly card based and with completely different mechanics. 

The other one is a story driven campaign with dark vibes, and won't be ready before another 2-3 years.

We may occasionally give you some updates on how things are going with these projects, but you can believe us when we say that delivering Kabula is our first priority...we didn't even have time to give these projects names, as busy as we were getting things ready for manufacturing!!

Speak to you soon and thanks for your ongoing support!

Quickest update in Kabula's history!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 05:49:46 AM

Hi all,

Hope you are doing amazing! This update will be very quick as 1) we are super busy (mostly working for you!) and 2) we only spoke last week :) So we will skip the design diary, which will be back in the next newsletter! 

STL Bundle

Everybody who completed their survey and had the STL bundle in their pledge, should have received it! If that is not the case, please let us know. 

We are looking forward to see your printed minis, painted or not, please do send us pics!!

Chastity

As already announced, orders for Chastity are closed, for both backers and new supporters. 

Weretesticle

Though it was not unlocked, since we changed manufacturer we are looking into ways to fit it in anyway. We cannot promise anything beside the fact that we will do out best.

Pledge Manager/Pre-order store

If you are a backer and have not completed your survey yet, you can still do it.

Pre-orders are closed. After manufacturing is complete, they will open again with limited number of items.

Playtesting

We will have quite a few open play sessions throughout September on our discord channel and we would welcome anyone into joining us! 

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

Pledge Manager and Chastity
over 3 years ago – Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 08:20:55 PM

Hi guys, this update is almost the same as the newsletter we just sent!

We have too big of an update on manufacturing not to share it with you straight away :)

That aside, our Design Diary series will continue with our hero Chastity. Finally, we are going to remind you for the 700th time that our pledge manager is closing next week!

As a side note, due to our other activities, we had to take a break from online playtesting, we promise it will resume in September! To compensate, only few weeks after the move, Antonio is already spreading the word of Kabula in Belgium!

Manufacturing & Logistics

After much thought, we decided to change the company who will manufacture Kabula. We were drawn towards them by a great project manager who unfortunately quit right before our Kickstarter launched. After that, we changed 3 other project managers in the next few months and, every time this happened, our quote became more expensive.  Communication became a big problem as well and we could never seem to find appropriate solutions.

Long story short, Kabula will be manufactured by BangWee GM (they make In Too Deep!). They have a great track record and you can find testimonials from creators on their website. Overall, we really enjoyed communicating with them and they set a very realistic timeline for our project.
How does this affect you?

1) The only change in quality we forecast is a small increase in cardstock thickness (so it's a good one! We'll still use blue core cards)
2) With manufacturing scheduled for October, it is very likely that we'll keep the promise to deliver by February. Fingers crossed, we promise we are working very hard to make it happen!

Design Diary

After the chapter on Isolde in our most recent KS update, today we are going to talk about your favourite nun, Sister Chastity!

She will be included inside the core or huge box directly, and these packages containing her will be marked with an adhesive. Because of this, only one Chastity per package is allowed and she won't be available after Pledge Manager closes!

As soon as Chastity arrived to the Island and saw the monsters that inhabit it, she immediately "realized" what was going on: She had been sent to Hell to get rid of demons. With such a back story, Chastity couldn't but be the monster hunter among our heroes. Her blood thirst is ingrained in her gameplay mechanics. Her initial equipment includes the Holy Vengeance, a massive sword which gets stronger the more you use it. But here is the catch, to use it you need to discard one Part token, which means you'll soon run out of them. And what is the quickest way to get more Parts? That's right, butchering monsters!

Her unique power Bartering Paws and Tails leans in the same direction, she draws a common item any time she gets Legs or Butt at the roll for Aim, while attacking a monster.
Players can of course get a different weapon early on in the game and ignore these skills, but they are actually pretty fun :)

What about her three personalities? We'd say they are pretty divine.

Pride (generous/creepy): Delusion of grandeur can be pretty dangerous. With this personality, Chastity realizes that with the Kabula granting immortality, she can become a true Goddess. Her unlocked ability Domination allows her to "partially" control the Guardian attacks, and her new winning condition is eliminating all other heroes. She can speed up the development of this personality by attacking the Guardian, but do not overdo that, remember it is your future ally! If it dies, your winning condition can't be achieved!

Gluttony (lazy/practical): Well, this is just a normal nun!
Sorry, just kidding, I was actually at school with nuns, some are cool :) With this personality, Chastity gives herself up to the pleasure of food! And with her Imaginary Eating she heals every time anybody else on the map is healing. Isn't this OP? Well, all the powers are kind of OP, so it's kind of fine!

Lust (romantic/violent): Told you I was at school with nu...

...this is getting worse and worse!!
Chastity decides to scratch a hitch she couldn't scratch. Literally couldn't. Have we mentioned her armour is a chastity belt? Now you know! Metal Teeth always allows her to defend while also damaging the attacker. With this personality, she unlocks Guilty Pleasure, which means that every time she uses Metal Teeth, she Recharges a Part (maybe those same Teeth, so she can use it again?) and gets a Butt token (which she can use or discard the next time she uses her Holy Vengeance!)

A little curiosity: Chastity's miniature was heavily inspired by Guts swinging the Dragon Slayer. We consider it our little tribute to Berserk and Kentaro Miura.

Pledge Manager

Pledge Manager is closing on 31st August at 23.59 Pacific Time and we are still waiting for MANY backers to complete their survey. Unless something crazy happens, we won't send another update to remind you that, we know Backerkit is already sending plenty, but please hurry up :)

As usual, any support in spreading this link with interested people is hugely appreciated!

The next update is scheduled for September 5th, I guess we'll talk about Zack!

Thanks so much for reading, please comment for any question or feedback!

Antonio and the Kabula team,

at Stranger Games Studio

Isolde: Mother of 3D printed minis...wait what?
over 3 years ago – Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:25:24 AM

Hello everybody, hope August is treating you good!

At Stranger Games Studio things are going well, Antonio started a job in Belgium and Miguel is enjoying some time in Spain with family. Mario, Kyriakos and Dario are about to be free for some weeks, so they'll work harder to compensate for the others!

If you haven't done so already please make sure to complete pledge manager and send our pre-order store link to your old high school teachers.

STL Bundle

Here you have some stolen pics to please your regal eyes (literally stolen, they weren't supposed to be included in the update).

If you got our STL bundle (or the Huge Package!) you will receive a link to a google drive folder with all the sculpts as soon as your card is charged, after we close Pledge Manager on 31/08. We'll try to have this folder ready by next week, so if you got it during the campaign and want early access just let us know :) Most likely there will be some issue of compatibility with some software/printer, but we'll be here to solve them and will keep updating the folder following your feedback in the next few months! 

Looking forward to see all your paint-jobs!

Design Diary

In the last newsletter we told you about the Aim System and promised you more info on the individual heroes. Today we are starting with Isolde! 

Isolde is one of our most iconic heroes, a pregnant mother carrying with her an endless swarm of children. She is quite a tank, starting with the highest HP among our heroes and a protective bib which is effectively a shield, but she has way more to offer.

Monsters love her kids, and for this reason her unique power is to use any monster action by spending ANY two Parts. Imagine you have a super cool familio but you already spent the Brain needed to activate the amazing action you wanted to use now. With Isolde, you can just spend 2 Guts and use it anyway!

Not too bad! (FYI Guts are everywhere...Brains are not!) 

This is just the beginning, let's have a look at her possible personalities.

generous/romantic: Obviously, we all want Isolde to get over her past problems and stop trusting weird men who end up letting her down... Then why are you collecting all those hashtags on generous and romantic?!

You can speed up the progression of this personality by tipping the hot shop-clerks she always meets when shopping. Once you flip the card, you unlock "The Pacifier". 

By discarding a Part (not spending, discarding!) you can give The Pacifier to a hero who didn't have it the previous round, and this hero (player or automa) cannot use any attack action for that round!

violent/naturelover: This is a pretty positive outcome, for Isolde's little family: Sail to unexplored lands...after sinking the Kabula. She cannot really risk one of her exes to be summoned to the Island like she was! If she unlocks this personality, her Wind of Change will add an extra PUSH to all her successful attacks, in a direction of choice. According to the position of the target, this can be very relevant: Most of the times you can add one unblockable damage or a nausea token. Considering that her starting weapon (the nappies) already give the target some nausea, this means even more unblockable damage after the attack.

creepy/practical: If she was maybe a bit naïve initially, she is definitely going too far the other way now. Unlocking this personality, Isolde lets her kids fight for her. The problem is that they only have 1 hp and this doesn't really grant them a long and happy life. She doesn't care though! She can spawn 2 of them every time she Rests (and if she soaks the damage herself, she can usually save at least one even if they are attacked before they activate, at the beginning of her next turn). Fun fact: To progress this personality faster, Isolde can send one probing kid before her when exploring dungeons (which cancels all effect of the traps but her max hp decreases by 1!)

Overall, Isolde is not the easiest hero to use. She starts with low movement (only 2 Legs tokens, try to go around carrying all those babies with you!) which means you have to plan your turns a bit more carefully but, oh boy, do these powers compensate for the slower start :)

Next Update

Hope you enjoyed the update! According to schedule, we have a newsletter coming on 22/08 and a KS update on 05/09 but considering that Pledge Manager will be about to close, we'll definitely have an update before that, most likely tied to the newsletter on the 22nd.

We will talk about manufacturing and logistics and share something about Chastity!

By the way, about the updates and newsletter 2 weeks apart, how is this system working for you? We are sharing different content but backers are always getting all the info they need, so hopefully everybody gets the amount of info they want? 

31st of August Pledge Manager closes
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 01, 2022 at 11:27:53 PM

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