Shipping Info Update
about 1 year ago – Sun, Feb 19, 2023 at 03:10:26 AM

Hello everyone!

Again I need to apologise as we missed another update last week. As a result of this, we've made the decision to reduce our updates here to every 2 weeks. This will not only save me time, but also remove the guilt I end up carrying with me all week when I miss one. If anything super urgent or important comes up we'll ensure we post ASAP, but most things can wait a while before being announced, so I don't think anyone will miss out.

We have been very busy since the last update - Jose is wrapping up the board artwork which is looking amazing, and I've spent most of my time focused on the shipping details (more on that shortly).

The most important and awesome thing that happened was last weekend. Jose (who now lives in Vancouver) spent a couple of days with us here in Amsterdam! It was the first time we were able to meet in person, and we had such a blast hanging out, getting to know each other and doing a bit of partying too. Before you ask - no, we didn't go to the Gay Sauna together, we'll save that adventure to the next time we meet up :D We did manage a trip to my favourite party in Amsterdam called Blue at Club Church - a crazy kooky clubbing experience with a really unique vibe. If you're ever in town a strongly recommend this for a Thursday night.

Shipping!

By far the biggest challenge in this whole project has been the complex shipping conundrum. I've spent a good part of the last months analysing so many different options for how to get your games out to you all in the most efficient and cost effective manner. This is at least for now finalised with the current shipping estimates already loaded into the pledge manager (BackerKit).

The actual shipping charges won't be taken until we're closer to sending things out, and I will continue to investigate options that might improve the costs for some backers. Specifically I'm not happy with the current charges for APAC and also some European countries, but while I'm waiting on some more info and quotes I didn't want to hold up the process for everyone else. The current is the absolute maximum you will be charged.

BackerKit currently won't display the upcoming charges to you very easily, but if you go to your survey and click to Edit your Address, you should see an order total listed (the shipping will be listed as being charged later, but the total will be non-zero). Access your survey here.

We'll only be collecting shipping charges in April when the games are ready to be shipped out. So if you've got questions or concerns, there is time for us to resolve these in the meantime.

That's all we've got for this update - in 2 weeks our next update will include an update to our Print n Play version including some modifications we've made thanks to feedback from some of you.

Prepare for a big one incoming!
about 1 year ago – Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 12:55:53 PM

Hello everyone! I hope you're sitting comfortably, because this is going to be a big update full of lots of awesome information. So let's get started!

Print n Play

The first Beta version of the Print n Play game is being added to the Pledge Manager as I'm writing this. If all goes well, it should be available to download later this evening or very latest tomorrow.

This version is a simple file dump of the digital files we're using for the reviewer copies. We've still got a couple of components we're working on before the final game is ready, but these versions are about 90% accurate of what the final game will include.

As this is a "file dump" it's been optimised for the manufacturing process, not home Printing. As a result, the assets are all individual files, of varying scales and full colour. I'll be working to make a v2 in the coming weeks, reformatting everything to A4 pages and taking out some of the colours so it's a bit more printer friendly.

Note that this version is also only the standard game, the NSFW Print n Play will be released in the coming weeks with the above mentioned improvements. Preparing these files is quite a manually intensive task, so I'm hoping you'll be patient with me while I get everything ready for you.

Reviewer Copies

We're delighted to announce we've confirmed 4 content creators who have offered to review the game! These copies are being ordered right now - they might take a few weeks to be printed and get to their estimation, but we're very excited to see what folks think when they've got the game in their hands!

Once we've confirmed it with the reviewers, we'll be dropping their details in our next update so you can check out their channels and join us in eagerly awaiting their posts.

Manufacturing

As mentioned above, we're down to our final few components to prepare before we send everything off to the printers. It's looking like this should happen in the next 2-3 weeks - which given approx 2 months for production, puts us a tiny bit behind where we hoped to be at this point.

While I'm certain we'll be getting the games into your hands across Europe in May, further afield it might take a little longer before games are arriving at your doors (but no longer than a couple of weeks). I'm not expecting a big delay here - in fact it could still all work out on time, but I want to be upfront and set the right expectations.

Fulfilment and Shipping Costs

One of the most challenging aspects of this campaign has been the fulfilment conundrum. We had always intended to do our own fulfilment for the campaign, but we didn't really expect to have such a global audience, and with over 50% of backers residing in the US and Canada, we've been trying to work out how best to keep things affordable for everyone involved.

While we have yet to sign with a partner for fulfilment, we have received enough information at this point to announce we will be working with a US based fulfilment partner. This means we'll be shipping pallets of the game and expansion over to the US in bulk. The result is US and Canadian backers will have a huge reduction in their shipping costs compared to our previous estimates (in fact it'll be about 50% of the quotes we were looking at earlier in January!).

Once we've signed an agreement, we'll be announcing the partner and also populating all the shipping costs within the pledge manager so everyone can see what they'll need to pay for shipping. In the meantime I figure you'd all appreciate a bit more information so here's a rough approximate of the shipping costs we expect - with the variation depending on the size of the package ;)

• NL €10 (or local pickup)
• EU & UK €10-25
• US €15-25
• Canada €20-30
• Other €20-60

We're still working to get this as cheap as possible to all regions, and will continue to explore different options especially for APAC which is proving to be a challenge at the moment - we just don't have the scale of backers in the region to negotiate for better prices.

As I mentioned, once we have signed, we'll be able to populate the pledge manager and you'll get your own personalised shipping quotation. We won't be able to help much with questions about costs before then, so please only reach out if really necessary so we can focus our time where it's most needed.

Sorry for the late update folks!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 02:08:19 PM

It's been a really busy few weeks for us here, with both progress on the game and other life events. I'm really sorry that meant we missed an update last week, but know that work for sure hasn't stopped!

We're on the last couple of assets - I'm currently reviewing the final event and mischief cards while Jose has almost finished the cruising area designs. After this, it's a couple of tokens and the game board!

The rules are also nearly finalised and are being reviewed at the moment.

I'll be pulling all of this together next weekend and publishing the first version of the Print & Play. I'm sorry this is later than promised, I hadn't really realised how closely connected it all was, and figured I'd be able to use some existing assets for things, but without re-doing a lot of the rules, it wasn't really possible to wrap it up together.

I'm also still waiting on quotes for shipping - I figure this is post-season backlog, but reminders will be sent this week and I'll be publishing estimates as soon as possible (hopefully in the next update).

Please let me know if there's anything you're curious about or are waiting to get more info on. Juggling a lot of different things, so I'm expecting some stuff to slip through the cracks. But whilst it seems like we're delayed, we're still on track to get the games to us and ship them out to you all in May!

Busy busy busy!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 01:37:23 AM

IMPORTANT: Add-Ons and Pre-Orders purchased through the pledge manager will be charged on Monday 16th January!

Hello everyone, we hope you're enjoying 2023 and are doing well with your own personal resolutions and goals! For ourselves, we're not adding to our load by trying dry January this year, but we salute all those making the effort! So, between the occasional drink, we're keeping ourselves busy finalising everything.

Pledge Manager: Pre-Order & Add-On Charging

We've closed the pledge manager and locked orders - this now gives us pretty much all the information we need. On Monday, we'll be charging cards for all Pre-Order backers as well as for any Add-Ons that were added to pledges in the pledge manager.

Note that this doesn't include shipping costs yet. We are still working on our shipping options and expect to share more details about shipping charges and the process before the end of January!

Rules

We've stepped quite a bit forwards here, after the awesome help from Chris at EntroGames, we ran things through with our Discord group who had a few more valuable pointers. We were then able to run a blind playtest this Tuesday which went well but did point out one big omission...this is why you always playtest folks!

With all this input, we're not pretty much ready with the rules, so now moving onto the layout and graphics.

Cards

We're already now running through the process to create all the cards in their final format. The Visitor templates are all ready and being generated now and we've also got the final designs for the backs of all three of our card decks!

Dice

The upgraded Engraved dice were Jose's favourite stretch goal during the campaign, but...well you see, dice engraving can only be done with a single colour per side. So all our existing icon designs needed to be reworked in concept.

Now that the work is all done and verified, I think it might be again his favourite, but I'm pretty sure if you'd have asked him at the beginning of the week he'd have given you a different answer ;)

Reviewers

We got a bit further with Review Copies in the past week (and Print n Play beta as a result), so we're on the lookout for Reviewers! We've got a couple on the list, but I will admit none of these are from the LGBTQIA+ community or produce content for the community. For sure getting these reviews is also important to us, but we'd also like to get some perspective from the key audience we designed the game for.

We've reached out to several so far, but no success stories to date. So if you know LGBTQIA+ game reviewers, please give them a heads up and ask them to get in touch!

Insta Naming

In case you've missed it, we're collecting suggestions for all our Visitor Characters on Instagram @saunagame, so head over there and check out our posts from the past week and let us know your name suggestions!

Well that's it for this week - if we've missed anything you'd like to hear about, please let us know in the comments.

Take care everyone, stay warm (if it's Winter where you are) and enjoy the world's jealousy if you're lucky enough to be anywhere sunny!

Happy Gay Sauna Year!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Jan 07, 2023 at 05:00:16 AM

Well, things are certainly looking rosy over at Sauna Game HQ this past week, as we've been busy as Christmas Elves getting things ready for you all!

Icons & illustrations

We're now all done with our game icons - with the tribes, kinks, roles as well as all the items are ready to be played with!

Rules, rules, rules

After going through quite a few iterations here and refining the mechanics of the rules, we're delighted to announce we've engaged with Chris from EntroGames who is proofing our ruleset as well as helping to make the adjustment from my native British English to American English. This was not such an easy decision, as I naturally add a U in colour and won't apologise for my lack of Z in...well...apologise. However, with now the majority of our backers hailing from the US of A, it makes a lot of sense for the game as a whole.

Review Copies

With these changes, we're very nearly almost ready to send off for a couple of reviewer copies. If all goes well, we should be making that order shortly after next weekend. I'll be reaching out to those reviewers on stand-by to get address details this week.

Print n Play

I'm sorry to report that the Print n Play timeline has slipped a bit due to my illness last month. We're working hard to get all the assets in place and I'll be preparing the Print n Play Beta version at the same time as our Review Copies.

This first Beta version won't have all the final graphic designs - so if you're planning on creating a longer term version for yourself, I recommend you wait for a later version that will come once we have finalised the manufacturing files. But this will include the final ruleset and all the final content - it just won't look quite as pretty as the final version will.

Pledge Manager

As mentioned last week, the Pledge Manager is open until 10th January, when we'll be closing it off ready to prepare all the fulfillment options and nail down exactly what needs to go where. Most backers have completed their surveys already - but if you're one of the 40 who haven't, please do take a moment.

In case you've got any questions or have any problems with the process, please let me know. I'm happy to work with you to workaround any issues you might have if it works out easier for you.

Twenty Twenty Three!

We're a week into the New Year and the excitement is incredible. Jose is zooming forwards with all the graphics and it's coming together so nicely there are days when I'm struggling to contain myself.

I can't say it enough, but all of this is thanks to you all! Your support for the project has been incredible and we really can't wait to see the final product on your tabletops and hear the laughter across the globe as you fight your way through the Gay Sauna tallying up your scores in the biggest hookup contest ever!

Until next week - take care, enjoy and happy gaming!