Time to update your shipping address for custom cats!
almost 7 years ago – Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 08:59:44 PM

Hello space cat rebels!

This will be a relatively brief update as we want to focus on something important: as described in the last update, we are currently in the proofing process for the custom cats. However, after conversing with a few backers, we realized that it would probably be best to get updated addresses from folks before shipping these out. 

If you've moved or changed your shipping address and you have a custom cat coming to you, please fill out this form to update your address.

Should you fill out the form?

• If you've moved since you initially submitted your address to us, please fill out the form!
• If you're not sure if you gave us the most up to date address, go ahead and fill out the form anyway - we'd rather be safe than sorry! 
• If you already submitted your change of address to us (or if you can't remember), we encourage you to fill out that form anyway. Again, we just want to cross our t's and dot our i's and make sure your cats get to you safely!

We are going to give people two weeks (July 31) to fill out this form, which will overlap with the remainder of our proofing process. Then, off to the presses we will go!

Until the next meow,

TESA

At the tail end: Custom cats are nearly ready to go to the printer
almost 7 years ago – Fri, May 31, 2019 at 06:42:14 PM

Hello space cat rebels!

Exciting news: The massive cat picture cutting process has been completed, and we are now in the thick of laying out the custom cats! That means we’re in the home stretch now, and we’re excited about it! 

During the picture cutting process, we did realize a small handful of pictures didn’t quite work with being cut out and then placed onto a starry-background. For instance, some people were petting their cat in the picture, which when we cut that cat out of its background, caused it to look like a dismembered hand was attached to that cat. While kind of funny, we figured people wouldn’t want to receive that! So instead, in instances like those, the full pictures will be placed directly onto the custom cat card, rather than the starry background. We tested it out, and it looks good, and we just wanted to let folks know! 

Thank you for your patience while we completed the cat picture cut out process - it was certainly a monumental task that took a bit of time. Now that we’ve completed it, our plan is to send the cats to the printer by the end of next week or the following week, depending on how fast the rest of the layout process goes. (Placing the cats onto the cards as well as finishing flowing your information onto the cards.) 

We will then receive proofs of the custom cats via mail from our printer. Each custom cat will have its own unique press sheet. For comparison, each copy of the base game of Space Cats is made up of three press sheets total - and for the custom cats, we are generating an amazing 400 press sheets! So this is a tricky process to set up and we need to take care that it is done correctly, and receiving the proofs is a critical part of that process. We won’t get a physical proof of each cat, as that would be impossible, but we will receive a couple of sample physical proofs and then a digital proof of every single one. 

Once we receive the proofs from the printer, we will hopefully give them our approval and green light to get printing. If we find any issues, we will report those back to the printer and make adjustments accordingly. Then, the printer will begin the printing process! Here’s how it will go:

• They will print each cat
• They will collate and assemble each backers’ cats into a shipping envelope for each backer
• They will send us a shipping container with all the custom cats, collated and assembled

And then we will mail them to you!

If there’s any silence over the next couple of weeks, that is not bad news - that just means we are working hard to coordinate with the printer to get these made and sent to you! We’re excited that these will be off to you as soon as possible, and you’ll be able to play SCFF as your own cats.

As always, thanks so much, and we can’t wait to get these cats into your paws :) 

Looking for Playtesters in the Chicago Area

Are you in the Chicago area and want to playtest our next game about labor rights? We’ll be running playtests throughout June and July, and we’d love to meet more of our community and playtest our game with you! Drop us an email if you are interested: [email protected]

On that note, here’s some of your space cat rebels that you submitted to us! (Selected at random - all of your cats are equally as cute in our eyes!). 

With eternal cat-itude,

TESA

Happy May Day! And custom cat progress and timeline update.
almost 7 years ago – Wed, May 01, 2019 at 10:12:17 PM

Hey space cat rebels!

We’re here with a quick update, primarily on custom cats! But first, we wanted to wish all of you a happy May Day!

Custom Cats!

We’ve brought on a design team to help bring us to the finish line! This has definitely been an exciting process, but we recognized we needed to bring in some allies to help speed up our progress. We continue to work on the custom cats every day, and we’re excited with how they are turning out. We hope to be able to send them to the printer in a few weeks! 

Here’s what we’ve done, and what is left to be completed: 

• As previously mentioned, we completed the process in which we laid out the galaxy’s largest spreadsheet, which we will use to flow your cat’s information (and things like shipping addresses) onto your custom cat cards, tokens, shipping envelopes, and so forth! 
• We’re about 2/3rds of the way through the process where we remove the cats from the backgrounds, so that we can place them on your custom cards! This has far and away been the process that’s taken us the most time, as each individual cat needs a pass. Due to things like whiskers, background objects, and so forth - some cats take 20 minutes to cut out, some cats take an hour to cut out. So there’s a lot of variability there. However, we’re very proud of the progress we’ve made, and seeing all of your adorable cats has kept us smiling the whole time!
• We’ve built the template on which we will put all of your custom cats, and then flow the data you submitted (name, background story, and so on) onto.  
• The final big task will be putting all of the cats onto the cards themselves!
• We’ve spoken with Community Printers, our manufacturer, and made a game plan for sending the cats to them to print and for how they will do the manufacturing process. So while we’re cutting out the cats, we’ve prepared the manufacturing plan - which means as soon as we hand the files in, Community Printers will be able to get rolling!

Thanks space cat rebels! We’ve done some truly unique things with this project, and we’re learning a ton along the way, and we’ve been so happy with our community’s reception. Seeing pictures of people playing and enjoying the game has meant the absolute world (or galaxy)!
 

For those of you who’ve had a chance to play, which cat has your favorite ability? 

We’ll have another update in the near future!

Best,

TESA

International shipping is underway, custom cat progress, rule FAQs, and more!
about 7 years ago – Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 08:30:01 PM

Hello space cat rebels!

Let’s leap right into it!

International Shipping

International shipping has begun! Hoorah!

We teamed up with a worker-owned print shop in Leeds, UK to do the fulfillment, since, as we mentioned in a previous update, our original distribution option fell through. It’s been great to work with another co-op on the distribution side of things, which we’ve never done before for a Kickstarter. More money into the cooperative economy - yay! There was a little more logistics than we originally anticipated, but those are all settled now. Again, thank you for the understanding as we both had to have some materials re-manufactured after some were destroyed by the California wildfire, and later after our international distributor snafu. We’ve worked our tails off to get these to you, and we’re so happy this is finally underway!

We hope it will be completed by either the middle or end of next week.

As a reminder for international backers, custom cats cards are coming later! There’s more of an update below on the custom cats, but we just wanted to remind you those are still in progress. You’re getting the base game and expansion now, and the custom cats will be shipped later when we finish them all.

Frequently Asked Questions About Rules

Now that we’ve had people playing the game, we’ve been able to assemble frequently asked questions! You can read it here: http://www.toolboxfored.org/spacecatsrules/ 

We’re a bit behind on making the how to play video, but that’s on the top of our to-do list, alongside continued work on custom cats, now that international shipping is underway! 

If you have any more rules questions, feel free to let us know (here or in an email: [email protected]), and we’ll clarify ASAP!

Custom Cat Progress

We are steadily chipping away at the custom cats, and this is something we are working on daily! We’ve just finished assembling and triple checking one of the galaxy’s largest spreadsheets, which has all of your custom cat and shipping data. It was super important for us to get this spreadsheet exactly right, as we will be using a process that flows the information you submitted for your cats into individual press sheets that have unique information for each backer. So we needed to make sure everyone’s information was lined up purrrrfectly in that spreadsheet. Because if even one cell was off, it could throw the whole thing off. 

Our manufacturer told us that this process is the most complicated they’ve ever worked on - even more complicated than major projects they’ve done for Fortune 500 Companies. We’ll take that as a badge of honor :) 

Now that the spreadsheet with each of your custom cat data is completed, we can shift into prepping the photos you submitted for your custom cats. Each one needs an individual pass, and we’re going to start diving into that… right MEOW! In the meantime, here’s a random selection of background stories for your cats that you all submitted, which kept us chuckling while we were making the spreadsheet:

• “This space pirate is on the authoritarians’ Most Wanted List. His crime? Extreme fabulousness!”
• “Infiltration and escape artist, favored targets are feet and fascists.”
• “Expert in sensing when fellow rebels are in trouble. Punky kneads away the hurt with her capable paws.”

What’s your favorite new power?

For those of you who have had a chance to play already, which of the new powers that you can learn throughout the game have stuck with you the most? Do you prefer to have sharp claws, or a sixth life? 

Until next meow,

TESA

International shipping under way, custom cats work has begun, fascism is being defeated
about 7 years ago – Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 03:03:08 PM

Hey space cats!

We wanted to make sure to keep everyone up to date on how the project is progressing!

All North American Games Have Been Shipped

With all Canadian games having been shipped in January, all North American games have been fulfilled! If you are in North America and haven’t received your game for some reason, send us an email with your shipping address and we’ll get you your copy! [email protected] 

International Orders Are On Their Way! 

Wooo! We’re glad we can officially say the international games have begun their journey across the galaxy and to your paws.

We apologize this took a little longer than expected. There was some fun (read: not fun) unexpected issues dealing with customs clearance. However, we believe we managed to resolve those issues. And, because this took longer than we anticipated, we’ve decided to pay extra to have the games ship via air freight (instead of ocean freight) to our international distributor. As a result, the games are currently scheduled to arrive to our international distributor on February 20th. (5 days from now!) Once they arrive there, the distributor will begin the process of shipping them to you!  

Custom Cat Progress

With our shipping work mostly completed, we’ve begun our work on making the custom cats! This is definitely one of the most laborious parts of the project, and we’re excited to dive into it! Here are the steps:

• Right now, we are creating the galaxy’s largest spreadsheet, using the information you provided us with to create a “data merge” that will flow into individual cards for each one of your custom cats.
• Following that, we will make an Indesign template document for the custom cats. The data merge will flow into this template, creating a new card for each cat!
• Following the data merge, we will individually place each cat picture you sent us on their custom card. This will definitely be the longest part of this phase of the project. 
• After every cat is placed, we will create one Mega Document that will include every single cat card. These will be sent to our printer who will print your custom cats, sort them, assemble them, and then get them ready to ship. 
• Then they will start their journeys to you! 

We've loved reading the background stories you sent along for your custom cats. It turns out we have some very funny and creative backers. We can't say we're surprised!

Which Space Cat is your Favorite So Far? 

For those of you who have had a chance to play so far: which cat has your favorite power? 

Until next meow,

TESA