Holiday Hills

Race to transform the Jingle Bell Square into a dazzling winter spectacle, adorning trees with festive decorations and string lights!

292,235 USD
de 10,000 USD Goal
2,163
Backers

? Why Back On Kickstarter 

Joining us in the campaign will provide the Christmas magic we need to bring this game to life. Your support allows us to offer you special promos and pricing that we will never be able to offer anywhere else. You help us to create fun rewards and this is our way of saying thanks!

  • Delivers by Christmas 2025 - Our game is 90% complete, and we plan to start manufacturing soon after the campaign ends. We aim to get Holiday Hills in your hands by this holiday season before its retail release. We've done this before. We successfully delivered our first campaign on-time, and Holiday Hills is much further along and will be completed by the end of this campaign!
  • Special Bundle Pricing - Our Deluxe Edition is sugar, spice and everything nice. We want to give you the best bundle offers with the expansions first! These will be printed in limited quantities.
  • FREE Gifts to Backers - The "Let It Snow Promo" will not be offered to retail after this campaign, and any remaining inventory will only be available at future conventions we attend or directly from us. We're giving this to you for FREE with all physical pledge levels!
  • Kraken Skulls Free Shipping is only available in USA. 
  • If you are a returning backer from our Kraken Skulls campaign, and you back Holiday Hills, we will add the Crossover Promo to your pledge for FREE in the Pledge Manager :) Thanks for returning to back our second game!

Nice mode is the standard way to play Holiday Hills. This is the most approachable mode for new and younger players, and encourages competitive collaboration as you balance using your opponents trees to score objectives and dice presents.

Each player setup includes taking all their components and reference card. Place one tree in a starting plot, then place your sleigh at your starting cottage.

Each turn, choose to push your sleigh along the top or bottom path. The top path provides more dice presents while the bottom path allows you to deliver dice presents.

As you push your sleigh around the board, you will add decorations into the town square! You will also deliver dice presents that are within your sleigh.

When you reach the corner of the board, you MUST stop at a cottage, deliver any dice presents in your sleigh, and draw a new objective card.

Ready for a more tactical and meaner version of Holiday Hills? Flip the board to naughty mode! In this mode, players start with all trees on the board, unclaimed. Throughout gameplay, you will claim trees and perform special actions to mess with your opponents' decorations.

Highlights:

  • Swap Decorations on trees
  • Place the fourth and final decoration on a tree and claim it for yourself by placing your star on it!

Adding the Skill Tree Mini-Expansion allows for the Tinsel Taskforce to get more skillful as they accomplish goals during the game. During the game, as you accomplish objectives, you can move the bell onto your Skill Tree to activate passing and instant actions such as re-rolling dice, changing objective cards, and swapping decorations.

If the 3D gameplay is a bit challenging, we included flat Tree Tiles for players to use instead! The gameplay is the same and all components measure the exact same.

Holiday Hills is Pre-Stretched!

We aren't cutting any corners with production, and are bringing you the best version of the game at the best price possible. Here's what we've already deluxified:

? 25 Screenprinted Wooden Trees
? 40 Screenprinted Wooden Ornaments 
? 40 Screenprinted Wooden Candy Canes
? 30 Screenprinted Wooden Lights
⭐️ 30 Plastic Stars
? 25 Screenprinted Wooden Bells 
? 4 Plastic Sleighs and 4 Plastic Wheelbarrows
? 6 Game Modes Included
☑️ Recessed Game Board for components to easily slide into
? 45 Mini Resin Dice

We're excited to introduce some Stretch Goals for our campaign. As we gain more backers and achieve a goal, we will reveal the next one!

The rulebook for the core game of Holiday Hills has been fully designed and developed. All rulebooks for the expansions are currently being finalized, so the documents you find here are primarily text. 

As the campaign progresses, we'll update this chart as to the progress of each rulebook! We will send updates as they are finalized.

  • Players use Super Sleighs instead of the standard sleighs, carrying up to 4 dice!
  • Start with all the trees on the board, and place the address tokens on all the houses in town.
  • Reindeer Tiles are shuffled and replace Action Spaces that provided trees. Now, these spaces activate Santa who is jumping from house to house dropping off one present from his bag.
  • When Santa is activated, you'll roll the Address Dice and move him to the next house.
  • If you can manage to "See Santa" by stopping at the house he's at, you can drop off dice from your Super Sleigh onto his Sleigh Board, earning your 6th Star and other bonus points. 
  • Add the Santa Cards to the board to increase complexity, allowing players to acheive various goals for more points such as combinations of dice on the Sleigh Board.
  • The Milk & Cookies tokens allow you to keep Santa in one location next time he's activated, allowing you a better chance to see him!
  • Krampus is played on the Naughty Side (naturally). 
  • Start with all the trees on the board, and place the Krampus Tiles over all Special Action Spaces. These will provide some new Special Actions as well as bonfire action spaces.
  • When you encounter a bonfire spot, you MUST stop and take a "Naughty Move" from Krampus' Bonfire Board. These Naughty Moves are Krampus' way of encouraging you to be a bit meaner this holiday season, but he will award you Humbug points in return!
  • Each Naughty Move is made my shifting one of the tokens on the Bonfire Board to an open action. The player taking that action will increase their Humbug. Find the sweet spot for Humbug so you can score even more points! But too much Humbug and even Krampus' will think you're a scrooge.
  • Naughty Moves include swapping decorations, placing Krampus into town to block trees from being decorated on, adding coal underneath trees or to his Bonfire, and even BURNING decorations to add more fuel to the flames of mischief. 
  • Add the Krampus Cards for more complexity and variation for Krampus.
  • As you push your Sleigh around the board, you'll collect snowflake tokens. 
  • Once you collect 3 snowflakes, you can build your Snowman!
  • Place your Snowman in between any two adjacent trees.
  • For up to three turns, only you can decorate on the trees adjacent to your snowmen.
  • If you don't decorate on those trees for three turns, your Snowman melts. If you can decorate on those trees before three turns, it will be easier to build up your snowman for a future turn.
  • The Wreaths module adds some hidden moves to the decorating. When you arrive at a Cottage, you will place a Wreath on any tree. These Wreaths will multiply or subract points from all decorations they touch or are connected to. So string lights can make a big difference!
  • The Mayoral Mandates are special objectives outlined by Mayor Holly Daze. She's tasked you with some specific instructions for this year's festival, and if you fail to meet them, she'll dock your Cheer points!
  • The Masterpiece Cards add all-or-nothing, complex decoration patterns to the game. Each player will obtain up to 3 of these cards depending on their moves. If you can manage to impress Wreathmaster Winston, then you'll be the first name on the Nice List for sure.
  • The Great Holiday Bake-Off features Gingerbread Men tokens and some pre-game bidding. Each player will place their 3 Gingerbread Men on 3 different plates. At the end of the game, if they've managed to accomplish these tasks, then they've made the perfect bake! Fail, and your Gingerbread Men are toast and you'll earn negative Cheer points.
  • Even though it looks pretty, this dice tower will come with a slight rules variation using dice drafting instead of rolling them every time!
  • To start, drop 2 dice of each color into the dice tower. These will be the dice available for you to draft as you navigate the board. Instead of rolling dice every time you pass over the icon on the board, you must draft all of the dice presents by the fireplace first. Then you may roll more dice. 
  • The sleigh card holder is just there to look pretty!
  • Holiday Hills coverage starts at 30:35!

We are in ongoing conversations for the best shipping rates and services to get your pledges to you at the most affordable cost. We are partnering with GamesQuest and other shipping partners to provide USA and International shipping services. 

We are very confident in our projection of fulfillment before Christmas. We have had numerous conversations with our manufacturing partner for the last 6 months regarding how we can accomplish this. However, there are some factors out of our control such as freight and government discourse.

We will communicate fulfillment progress updates with our backers at least once a month.

We had a very successful and engaging Kickstarter campaign for our first game, Kraken Skulls, in 2023. As we launch this campaign for Holiday Hills, we are much further along in the game's development and production than we were in our previous campaign which also fulfilled on-time and fast.

  • April 10, 2025 - Kickstarter campaign ends
  • April 2025 - Mold costs paid to manufacturer (the longest lead time in manufacturing process)
  • May 2025 - Pledge Manager opens (Closing date TBD, but likely in September 2025)
  • May to August 2025 - Final artwork sent & Manufacturing begins
  • September to October 2025 - Freight and Shipping to hubs
  • November to December 2025 - Fulfillment begins
  • December 2025 to Janurary 2026 - All fulfillment complete

We plan for every edition of Holiday Hills to be produced in English. But, we are going to offer a translated rulebook for download in Spanish, German, and French. Once we begin fulfillment, we will send a backer-only update with download links to the translated rulebooks.

If any backers are interested in partnering with us in translating our rulebooks, please reach out! 

All UpdatesUpdate #3

Post Campaign Update #8: Trees Fixed + Games on Boats + Find me at PAXU!

2025-10-31 07:30:18

Hey everyone, and Happy Halloween!! 🎃


I've got a longer update for you all, but here's the TLDR:

  • Trees are fixed! We re-printed one side of the tree and reprinted all the stars to be thicker for additional, long-life support.
  • Non-US games are on boats/in transit to various hubs! (UK, CA, NL, AU, and CN)
  • US games are getting loaded onto a boat next week and should arrive at port in December, with fulfillment to follow as soon as possible.
  • We'll be a vendor at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, PA, on Nov. 21-23! Please give Holiday Hills, Jingle Bell and our listings a "like" on the BGG preview page and help us spread the excitement. 
  • Expect at least three updates from me (one in Nov and two in Dec) with progress details.
  • Rulebooks for each game are available on our newly designed website! Go to each game's page to view the rulebook. 
  • A Jingle Bell Roll "how to play video" is coming mid-November.
  • Translated rulebooks are underway. We've already got Holiday Hills translated. The others will be done by the end of November.
  • We announced a new game, Garden Club!


Now for full details.


🎄 We reprinted one side of every tree and reprinted all the plastic stars, fixing all the issues.


As you saw in our previous update, there was a major problem with the trees not connecting properly. After we tested repainting the trees, we agreed with your concerns that this wasn't a long term solution. Our manufacturer re-cut new wooden trees for one side, and this new side has a small notch in the middle that helps "lock" the trees together. Our manufacturer also made a new, thicker mold for the stars and has reprinted all of them. The new stars sit nice and snug on the trees. With both of these changes, the trees now are very sturdy for gameplay, and they will last for years to come. I appreciate your patience as we addressed this issue.



🚢 Freight Update


🌎 Non-US games are on a boat!


All international backers who completed the pledge manager: Your games are on a boat to various hubs around the world! I will keep you updated on their progress once I hear back from our fulfillment partner, GamesQuest. Essen (the largest board game convention) just wrapped up recently so everyone is still traveling back home. Expect an update in November with the latest status report. I'm excited that your games are officially on the way to your doorstep!


Any international backers who did not completed the pledge manager: You can still claim your rewards! We need to determine the best, most cost effective way to ship them to you. You can expect to receive an update from us in November on our approach. 


🇺🇸 US games are getting ready to ship


US-games are fully assembled and getting ready to be loaded onto a boat by next week. We needed to delay about two weeks when the US government had a potential 150% tariff threat in place. If we had shipped and that held true, that would have been insurmountable (We would have paid an additional $50,000+ to the government). Both countries met and have a reasonable tariff rate in place, and we are now moving forward, thankfully. This has resulted in our freight costs being 2x the original cost, but we're biting that bullet.


US-games should arrive at port by mid-December. Fulfillment will commence as early as possible. If the stars align and there's enough Christmas magic, games just might arrive by Christmas. But, with everything that has happened, I want to set realistic expectations. So I'll keep you updated as much as possible.


🔔 We will be a vendor PAX Unplugged and will have some inventory of our games


This bit is frustrating to write, but I've always been transparent and will continue to be. I made the decision to air freight 200 copies of Holiday Hills and Jingle Bell Roll, with around 25-50 copies of the additional content for our booth at PAXU. This cost over $7k to do, and the choice was made well before we had delays with the trees and the tariff threat. But the costs went up significantly due to the tariff threat. 


Why did I make this decision?


Simply put, times have been very tough. Tariffs have created more instability, and paired with the unlucky timing of the threat and their impact on my every day job, has created real financial difficulties. Debts have to be paid from this campaign, and planned expenses like freight are around 2x their original costs. In order for our company to survive (and honestly to pay for my livelihood), I need to have some inventory of Holiday Hills to sell and solidify our booth space for PAXU in the future. PAXU costs a LOT of money for us to be a vendor. It'll cost around $13k once we factor in air freight, tariffs, transportation (large loading vehicle), lodging, staff, and more to our already expensive travel costs. Me and two friends will be driving from Memphis to Philly (16 hours) and hauling booth gear and inventory to the show. It's only worth the effort if we can sell inventory. 


I could have declined the PAXU offer, or just attended without inventory and sold preorders. But, that expense would have likely resulted in a straight loss, and with inventory we have the potential to grow our company and maintain a booth spot for future years.


We created a backer-only promo, as a thanks for your trust.


Without each one of you, this game doesn't get made! So it might feel frustrating if you see me selling Holiday Hills and Jingle Bell Roll at PAXU when you haven't received your game yet.


I ask for your empathy, first. But second, I want to share that I have a backer-only Santa's List Promo that will be sent to you in printer-friendly format. I eventually hope to fully print this promo and send it to you, free of charge. I don't particularly like Kickstarter-exclusives, I like to give everyone content. But this particular situation feels like it's deserved. You can find a preview of the backer-only promo below.



In this promo, you'll have two tarot sized cards for a Nice and Naughty List. As you reach the Cottage opposite of your starting Cottage, you can place your color Stamp on Santa's List, taking the action. In a two-player game, you each get two Stamps.


This promo is simple in nature, but it includes actions that are not found in any other game content, such as pushing your sleigh again immediately, placing all three decorations, swapping dice presents and specific decorations in naughty move, etc. So this is special just for you.


If/when we can fully print it, US backers will be first as it's easier for us to ship, followed by our non-US backers. 


I have printed around 50 physical copies of the Santa's List Promo, and if you're attending PAXU, come by the booth to receive it for free!


I have also printed some PAXU promo cards for Holiday Hills, Jingle Bell Roll, and Kraken Skulls. These are primarily for buyers at the convention, but I do have some extras as well. So again, if you're at PAXU.. come by the booth and you can have one of these promos in limited supply :) 


  • Please give Holiday Hills, Jingle Bell and our listings a "like" on the BGG preview page and help us spread the excitement!




My pals at Weast Coast will be swinging by the booth and to celebrate we are doing a crossover promo for their new game that's being released direct to retail, Fruit Boss!


Can you pick up your game at PAXU? 


No, unfortunately. Fulfillment is complicated, and we can't release games to backers at PAXU, as we need to make sales there to break even/make any profit. There will be no discounted pricing at our booth for Holiday Hills or Jingle Bell Roll content. Any buyers will pay full MSRP.


We will also offer FREE photos with Santa on Sunday, Nov 23rd from 11am - 2pm EST! Bring the family on "Family Day"!




---


Fun News


We announced a new game! 


You can read about Garden Club on our website. We'll have this available to demo at PAXU as well, and you can expect this on Kickstarter in Q1 of 2026. We will have crossover content for Holiday Hills for any returning backers for this game. More to be revealed soon!




We attended Stonemaier Design Day and tested Vector and Haunted Hills.


Both were praised and widely enjoyed. Vector is further along than Haunted Hills, and it showed as it was voted in the top 10 of games at the event!! Kudos to Nick who demo'd and to Chris C. They've both been working hard on the mechanics, and I'm super proud of the game they've designed.


---


That's all for this update. Thanks again. Feel free to ask any questions you might have. 


Chris P. and the CCG team

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