November Update
6 months ago – Mon, Nov 06, 2023 at 04:47:20 PM

Hello Backers,

We are getting closer to the constantly shifting goal of commencing manufacturing! It is an exciting stage for us but unfortunately also means we don't have a lot news to share with you until the end of the process when we will start to see samples of finished products. This doesn't mean we haven't been busy though with the arduous task of proofing, revising, re-proofing and approving files. 

Don't despair though, we have saved a little bit of unreleased art to share with you in this update. Below we have the finished custom artwork for the individual player boards (unlocked at our $100K stretch goal) featuring a range of environments from the game. Now you will be able to find a suitable stashing location for any critter you choose to play!

Due to where we are in the process, we will move away from our monthly updates and instead update you whenever we have new information to share. As always we are available via email at any time and will regularly check in on comments to answer any specific questions you may have.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep gaming!

You can find out more about Dirty Rascal Games and Survival of the Fattest on our website or via Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.

Quick October Update
7 months ago – Sat, Oct 07, 2023 at 10:58:00 PM

Hello Backers,

Just a quick update this month to let you know that things are still progressing. We are in the process of preparing, proofing and uploading files for all the printed components. Once all the files are submitted and approved we will look to get a timeline update from our manufacturer, but at this stage we are hoping for completion and shipping in Q1 2024.

To all of those lucky enough to get to Essen this year (or PAX Aus for us Aussies not able to make it all the way to Germany!), we are very jealous but hope you're having an amazing time! Maybe we will be lucky enough to show Survival of the Fattest there next year. 

That's it for now, but we'll be back as soon as we have more details to share.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep gaming!

You can find out more about Dirty Rascal Games and Survival of the Fattest on our website or via Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.

Updated Rulebook and Upcoming Translations
8 months ago – Sun, Sep 10, 2023 at 02:20:34 AM

Hi Everyone,  It's update time again and we hope you are all doing well. 

Rulebook

This month we are excited to show off the latest version of the rulebook. We have been working hard updating, proofreading and editing. We have now incorporated all revisions and rule changes that resulted from our extended play testing and added rules for the Solo Mode and Mini-Expansions into the main rulebook.  As you can imagine, this is a very time consuming process but we appreciate games with great rulebooks and believe you will too!  We have tried to make our rules as clear and precise as possible but would love to hear any feedback or suggestions from our backers. If you'd like to take a look at the rulebook in its current state, you can download a copy here. 

Translations

Now that we have updated our rulebook we can begin the process of creating French, German, Italian & Spanish translations. These will be available as a digital download and include a card glossary with translated card text.  These were stretch goals unlocked during the campaign and we are exciting to be getting them underway. Once the translations are complete we will make them available from our website and the Survival of the Fattest BGG page.  Although Survival of the Fattest will only be published in English, we hope having the rulebook available in these languages will allow many more to enjoy the game.

Thanks for reading! We'll get back to you soon with more progress, but we'll leave you with a sneak peek at another one of our stretch goal upgrades... custom artwork for Player Boards!

You can find out more about Dirty Rascal Games and Survival of the Fattest on our website or via Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.

Something Eventful, Solo Mode & What's Next?
9 months ago – Tue, Aug 08, 2023 at 11:41:46 PM

Hello again backers, we're excited to share another update with you and show our progress so far. It has been an exciting month and we feel we are ticking quite a few tasks of our to do lists. Below we will talk about some of the main achievements.

Something Eventful

We have finished all the artwork and design for the final mini-expansion, Something Eventful (the first 2 were Extra Tricky and Fast Food). This set of cards adds a little variety into your games by shuffling a random event card into each foraging location at the start of each season. When one of these event cards are revealed, the game is paused, the event resolved (these events affect all players) and then play continues. Some events provide a nice little boost or benefit while others can make the life of a foraging critter rather more difficult!

Solo Mode

We have finalised the design, rules and artwork for the solo mode module! If you have been keeping up with our previous updates, you will know that our solo mode includes 3 levels of difficulty in the form of 3 opponents for you to challenge. After completing the rules and design tweaks we needed to complete a final phase of testing to ensure that we had the balance right, testing each critter against each level of difficulty. These tests went very well and we're happy to say we achieved the targets we were aiming for:

• Against Demort (easy), we achieved a win percentage of 78.5% (our target was 75%)
• Against Harriet (medium), we achieved a win percentage of exactly 50% (which was our target)
• Against Alfie (hard), we achieved a win percentage of 28.79% (our target was 25%)

Some other interesting data we collected showed that the lowest score by a player was 15 (which I am ashamed to say was one of my efforts!) and the highest score was an epic 51 from Alfie (there was also a very close runner-up player high score of 50!).

What's Next?

The next task on my list to tackle is a final review and re-layout of the rulebook. We have a few tweaks, changes and re-writes to include after our extensive play testing, but will also be expanding the size of the rulebook to include Solo Mode and mini expansion rules within the same document. 

We have some artwork still to finalise for custom player board art (which was unlocked as a stretch goal during the campaign). Final box layout needs to be completed, which includes ensuring that all the appropriate labels, barcodes, warnings and information is displayed correctly.  From there we're all set to make the final push to manufacturing.

While that all sounds pretty exciting, it does also indicate that we are bit further behind our schedule than we had hoped and our initial estimate of an October delivery date is not likely to be achieved. Unfortunately this falls on me, as I had underestimated how long it would take to complete all of the final illustration and design tasks before we could start the manufacturing ball rolling. We really appreciate your patience and understanding. We will aim to provide a more accurate timeline in the next update.

As always, thanks for reading and your ongoing interest in Survival of the Fattest. Stay safe and keep gaming!

Lee Smith - Creative Director 

You can find out more about Dirty Rascal Games and Survival of the Fattest on our website or via Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. 

Orders Locked, Cards to be Charged and a closer look at Rascal!
10 months ago – Tue, Jul 04, 2023 at 11:35:11 PM

Orders Locked

Orders for Survival of the Fattest are now locked in our pledge manager, but what does that mean? So that we can confirm quantities and begin the manufacturing process you can no longer make further changes to your order.  You can however still change your shipping address if needed, these won't be locked until just before we start fulfilment later this year. Pre Orders for the game will still be available for some time in case you know anybody that may have missed out on the Kickstarter campaign.

Charging Credit Cards

The next step we will take is to charge credit cards for any pre-orders, add-ons made during the pledge manager, shipping, and any applicable taxes (eg. VAT, GST). This will occur at the end of this week and will happen automatically, you don't need to do anything to complete this payment. If there are any problems collecting this payment from your registered credit card you will be contacted via email to remedy the problem.

Meet Rascal

You may remember that Rascal was an exclusive playable critter for the Deluxe Kickstarter Edition of Survival of the Fattest. Rascal wasn't included in any of our prototype copies that were sent out for reviews and previews so we thought you might like a look at him in a little more detail!

Here you can see Rascal's Critter card (double sided) and Trick cards (including his extra Trick from the Extra Tricky mini-expansion). As you can see Rascal's abilities are heavily focussed on collecting and stashing Traps. Unlike the other critters, Rascal can then gain victory points from those Traps at the end of the game. This gives Rascal a very unique playing style which reduces his need to compete with other players for victory points from the usual sources. Other critters should be pretty happy with Rascal in the game too, he's happy to take Traps from foraging locations or even from their hands! 

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep gaming!

You can find out more about Dirty Rascal Games and Survival of the Fattest on our website or via Facebook, Instagram & Twitter.