The Presence

April Update!

Time passes quickly! It's time for our first monthly update!

We aim to show you a little bit of what is happening behind the scenes and try to keep you informed and in the loop. We will pause our previous newsletter to instead focus on Kickstarter updates, since so many of you have joined us here!

Development Roadmap 2024

This has been a busy month, but for the first time in 4 months we have been able to fully focus on game development, knowing that you all have our back. Because of your support and trust we are now able to follow our original vision, without holding back!

From 2023 public testing we have over a year of feedback on rules, icons, art and layout that we have not been able to work with until now. We will go over the full game and update icons, graphics and layout. We will also develop the remaining illustration, which is a lot of pieces, as well as develop and finish the narrative campaign and all content, including balancing of all spirits and characters.

We're very excited, since this is what we love to work on. Some of this had to be paused for attending events and prepping the crowdfunding campaign, and we can now go back in full force, with renewed energy and fueled by the enthusiasm you gave us during the campaign!

In fact, due to some wild and crazy events in a certain Kickstarter we have a little bit expanded scope now, so time to show you all some progress!

Art Update - Main Boards

Developing the original board art was an enormous undertaking. It took over 3 months of concept work, detailing and revisions before we were finally happy with it. We now have a year of feedback on the board, so some minor changes are in order. We're very excited to develop the dark side of the same board, which will now fit into the campaign narrative.

Early Concept Sketch (Original board, ground floor)

Here you can see an initial concept draft of the ground floor board. We feel that immersion is greatly helped by a strong sense of place, so we care a lot about getting the manor itself to feel like you are there, walking through its halls.

Revised Ground Floor, Light Side

You may have noticed some changes here, among them a major change to layout. We are changing places of the Kitchen and Dining Hall in the new version. This has some gameplay benefits, but will also make the connection to The Cellar (stairs) much more clear when playing.

You gave us some more work to do, so time for the big reveal! We are ready to show you a first draft of the dark board below. It did take time to complete, but we're very glad we got the chance to! This will really enhance some (untold and secret) parts of the game.

Draft Ground Floor, Dark Side

You may see a few significant differences, but what could they mean? This is all the sneak-peek you will get before you finally unpack this thing yourself, so see what you are able to find out from the clues we leave you..

Pledge Manager & Late Pledges

We have now transferred all backers to our PM-system Hive (here!).

No notification has been sent out to backers regarding this since there is no action we need from you at this moment. You're already in, safe and sound, and be sure that we will notify you when we need you to take action. Communication will be in a KS update like this one, and by the email you provided.

We've written 'pledge manager opens' in April on our timeline which led to some confusion, sorry about that. What we initially had in mind was to open up the possibility to late pledge for those who missed the campaign. If you missed the campaign it is now possible to Late Pledge for the game.

We will wait with address & shipping until the later half of the year. The main reason is that we need final weight estimations to get the lowest possible shipping costs, which we can only get after we lock down the game for production. As we expect to be in development for at least a few months more this will be in the later half of the year.

When this happens you will also be able to add anything to your pledge that you missed from the campaign.

That's all for this month. Let us know any questions or comments down below!