In the past decade I have written approximately 1,922 Kickstarter updates (yes, really – an average of more than one every two days).
In the past six months, however, I’ve posted almost zero. As Quimbley’s is (still transitioning) into the role of game publisher, I have been called to return to this task – for good or ill bwa ha ha ha!
Recently we posted a video of Sandy stating we will return to more active messaging on our social media as well as other communications regarding timelines and announcements for our outstanding Kickstarters. This is the first of these - but in order to not bury the lead, I do want to tell you that we do not have substantial news on specific dates today.
If that’s all you are looking for, you are welcome to stop reading and return to your day, knowing that such substantive updates will be coming in the next weeks and months.
For those of you who want to stick around and read on:
In the best of times, when there aren’t special challenges, setting future timelines is tricky and virtually everyone - everyone - gets things wrong (ask me how I know!). And Petersen Games is NOT experiencing “the best” of times, needless to say.
However, things are about the best they’ve been (by certain measures) in the past two years - largely due to our new ally, Quimbley!
That’s the good news. Nevertheless, we still have quite a bit of our quagmire to get through. We think we can see, just ahead, the spot from which we will be able to see how much further this quagmire goes until we are back on solid ground. In other words, we don’t even see the dry land just yet, but we are in shallower waters and can see a high point from which we are confident we will be able to see that dry land. If my metaphor worked, I’m just saying we believe we will be able to start posting firmer timelines for our outstanding projects in the near future.
To that end, and to leave you with a visual, in conjunction with Quimbley, we have built my brainchild, the Cthulh-O-Meter, which lays out the milestones ahead until every outstanding Kickstarter shall be delivered.
You will notice that we do not have any specific dates on the milestones. This doesn’t mean we will never have specific dates displayed. We just don’t want to put them there just yet (we DO have specific dates for most things, but they are still internal to Petersen Games and Quimbleys).
We also reserve the right to switch around where these milestones might be in their ordering.
As we achieve success on a milestone, we will colorize Cthulhu until at long last, the stars will be right and he shall rise.
Expect happy surprises along the way…including some teasers for you now:
First up, Kung Fu Vampires! Here is my playtest box with a (poor) print out of the actual final box art (by Alyssa McCarthy) taped to a Cthulhu Wars expansion box:
Here are some card backs:
Some of the character standees, along with a larva from Planet Apocalypse to show scale:
Over 40 playtesters have played over 100 games of it, but we are still refining the final version!
Sandy teased Cthulhu Wars: Standard Edition, which is an intermediate product between Cthulhu Wars (the original with miniatures), and Cthulhu Wars Duel, which is only two players. The new Standard Edition will not have plastic miniatures, but will be up to 4 (or possibly 5!) players. We are still working out if we can actually fit the 5th Faction in the box and keep the price point we need. Regardless of the final Faction count, one of them is a brand new Faction never before seen in any Cthulhu Wars release!
And Hyperspace Standard Edition is going to be similar – with a release to retail (and for any Hyperspace backers which want it) until the final plastics version is ready.
Terror Paths is another long-awaited release that Sandy designed a few years ago. This is a Call of Cthulhu licensed board game, and while we wish it had been released long ago, we are re-invigorated after seeing the success of Chaosium’s own Horror on the Orient Express game. (As an aside, a few years ago the owners of Chaosium requested Sandy and I playtest that game to help give it a stamp of approval (gameplay-wise) for them to feel confident in proceeding with it as a project; needless to say, we thought it had legs and said so – kudos to all involved).
Back to Terror Paths, we initially pitched it to Chaosium as “Call of Cthulhu: the board game” with that literal title (basically, a market replacement for Arkham Horror, which is effectively ‘CoC: the board game’ under a different name). They already had plans for other games (e.g., Horror) so requested a new title, but approved everything else. Finally, with our ally Quimbley’s it can see the light of day this year!
And special deluxe edition:
Early ideations of key scenes from the game (all art is final, this is just showing you history) -
How about Frank Frazetta?! Quimbley is friends with the famed Frazetta (who has sadly passed), but also has a good relationship with his heirs and one forthcoming game is Destroyer:
You should also note on the Cthulh-O-Meter the following project listed:
Sandy Petersen’s first Call of Cthulhu campaign in 3 decades?!!
What is this? Wait and SEE………..
What is Project X ?
It’s secret. Obviously.
- Your friend, Arthur
The juice, the precious juice, was hidden…
