Dr. Strangepenguin or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Delay the Kickstarter.

Dr. Strangepenguin or: I Should Not Have Access to Photoshop.

We wanted to kickstart in October. Kickstarting in early October means the kickstarter ends early November, which means we get our funds before November ends, which means if we order the shipments immediately people can get the game in time for Christmas or whatever winter holiday they may celebrate.

Ho, ho, ho, in time for Christmas!

That was the plan, but printing a game is expensive ...and shipping is slow.

In order to print the game affordably we need to sell quite a few more copies of the game than originally planned. That's workable, but we'll need to scramble to advertise and get the word out. Then the shipping hit the fan.

Card printing companies print in China. China is far away. Shipping from China takes about two weeks. We want to make sure the card print quality is good, so we're printing test decks from several large-scale (Chinese) printing companies. (We even found some American ones! ...that print in China...) It's going to take time to set up our files for each different website's upload requirements, it's going to take time to process and print the cards, and then a few weeks before the cards end up in my mailbox.

Shipping via flightless birds is slow.

But it's more than cards.

We need a box too. The game has gotten larger than the standard 52 card tuck box can hold. We need to print iterations of boxes until the design looks right. It's nothing we can't handle. But it'll take time for those boxes to get here too (China.)

You cannot fit more than 52 penguins in this box.

Then we learned October is historically the worst month for kickstarters.

Then we learned we can get hit with a heavy tax at the end of the year if we're not careful (i.e. if kickstarter/china runs int any delays. Hint: It'll be the holiday season.)

Then we went out and got some bubble tea.

Fun fact: Emperor penguins love boba.

...and we decided to delay the kickstarter until February. That's our goal. The game is currently about 80-90% done. There's little artwork left and the rules are fleshed out. What's really left to do is iron out production details and promote the game.

The extra time will even give us some wiggle room to add in extra extra extra polish. My apologies to anyone who was hoping for a 2016 release. Please hold on a little bit longer as we work out these last few details, I promise it'll be worth it!