Pledge Manager incoming!
over 1 year ago – Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 08:49:03 PM

Hello everyone

We're finally launching the Pledge Manager in BackerKit for this campaign. You will receive an email in the next day or so including a personal link. In the pledge manager you'll be able to confirm or change your pledges and add-ons and most importantly: confirm the address where you want it to be shipped to. This gives me the final pieces of information about what we need to manufacture and ship around the world.

We won't be charging for shipping yet, this will come early next year when we're close to shipping and can give you accurate figures for the costs.

We will send out the pledge manager invites to a small group first to check everything is working as expected, then we'll roll it out to everyone. You should receive yours within the next 48 hours. Once you have access, you'll be able to use the support option in the pledge manager for any questions about your pledge or process.

Last weekend we were at SpellenSpektakel in Utrecht, and oh boy did we have a lot of fun! It was awesome to meet so many people and introduce them to the game. The team did an awesome job and ensured laughter was ringing out throughout the weekend. Thank you so much Yaron, Miko, Estefano, Shaun, Ryan and Pieter, you were all awesome!

Meanwhile, we're making good progress with the game components and artwork and will be including some visuals of the progress in these updates going forwards as we finalize everything for manufacturing. We'll also give some more details on that process next week (we're finalizing our discussions at the moment).

Well, that's all for now. Give us a shout in case you have any problems getting into the pledge manager, and we'll be back next week with some visuals!

Gay Sauna the Board Game - Timelines
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 02:21:52 AM

Hello everyone!

We're back from a bit of a break from our regular updates as we tried to catch up with all the backlog of things that couldn't get done during the campaign. We do still have a bit of a backlog in places, so if you're waiting to hear from us, we're sorry and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Please don't be afraid to send a reminder if you need our attention.

Timelines

While the backer surveys and pledge manager are almost ready for next week, we thought it would be useful for everyone to see the timelines for the coming months:

November
SpellenSpektakel - 5th & 6th (visit us at booth 922)
Backer Surveys & Pledge Manager
Finalising design
Finalising copy
New prototypes (for reviewers & demos)

December
Rules revisions
File preparations
Pledge manager & Preorder stores close
Manufacturing order
Print & Play v1 (initial publication)

January
Print & Play v2 (tidied up for easier printing)

March/April
Receive physical copies from manufacturers

May
Fulfillment

We've probably left a whole bunch of things out, so we'll be posting the latest list in each update.

Taxes - it shouldn't have to be so taxing...

We had a bit of confusion when it comes to our BackerKit Pre-Order store and sales taxes. As a result, prices were being shown as excluding VAT / Sales taxes in your region.

This has now been corrected - the price shown is inclusive of all sales taxes, only shipping is not included and will be charged later. All preorders have already had their tax stripped from their orders.

If you need a tax receipt for any purpose, please reach out to us and we will generate one for your order.

Updates

We'll be posting an update every 7-9 days going forwards to keep everyone in the loop. Keeping it short when there's not too much to post about. If we need action from you we'll include ACTION NEEDED in the title of the update or message (watch out for the next one on November 10th).

Well that’s it from us for now, we’re busy this week preparing for SpellenSpektakel in Utrecht - we’re at stand 922 for all those coming along. And we’ve got an exciting adventure for those who do visit our booth with prizes to be won!

See you soon!

Competition AND Correction: SteamWorks on Friday OCTOBER 28th!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 22, 2022 at 04:44:36 PM

Our last Competition Winner

We're thrilled we woke this morning to a response from our third and final competition winner: Lilly!

Congratulations, we're thrilled to have you as a part of our Sauna!

SteamWorks next Friday!

In our last update we mentioned we were going to be hosting a party at SteamWorks, but we got the date wrong...

We'll be turning up with the gang next Friday 28th October from 21:00 for DJing, drinks, demos and dancing! Check https://www.steamworks.nl/ for more info.

Late Pledges, Backer Survey (10-nov), Competition, BGG & Events
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 22, 2022 at 03:35:58 AM

I don't think I'll ever quite fully get over how amazing this whole experience has been. For sure, we faced a bit of negativity that wasn't fun to see, but I was very thankful to have such a supportive group of backers. Together we've turned this little hobby project into a serious gaming adventure and we feel ready to take on the world!

Pre-Order store is now open!

We managed to gain quite some traffic in the last few days, and we've had a bunch of requests about late pledges. Luckily, the folks at BackerKit have thought all about this predicament and provide a Pre-Order store connected to Kickstarter, so any late pledges through BackerKit will combine with our Kickstarter pledges and we can fulfill them all in one go.

You can find the Pre-Order store via the Late Pledges button on the Project Homepage or via this link: https://saunagame.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Backer Survey -  ETA 10th Nov

We're already filling out a bunch of details preparing the pledge manager for the surveys we'll be sending out. For a whole bunch of reasons, we're advised to not do this within the first 14 days, so we've pencilled in to send out on Thursday 10th November. Should this date change, we'll let you all know.

Competition Winners

I'm pretty sure this is the part that most of you are waiting to read, so I won't make you wait any longer.

We can now reveal that we have drawn 3 winners who will be joining us in the Sauna!

Announcing 2 of our lucky winners:

Drake (aka Dan) and Greg, we're so happy to be inviting you in to join our Sauna! And I know Jose can't wait to get to work on you ;)  For privacy reasons we need to confirm all entries and photos before announcing, so please check your Kickstarter inbox in case you're our lucky third winner ;)

BGG

In our last update we mentioned we got to #13 on BGG's Hotlist. Well, this morning we somehow got all the way up to #4!  Now, since then we've disappeared from the list completely, and when I browse BGG it looks like there is some community content that was removed. I can only assume that some negative comments drove a lot of traffic to the BGG game page. Not sure if I'll ever know - but we'll be keeping a closer eye over there to be sure.

Upcoming Events

We've already mentioned we'll be at SpellenSpektakel on 5th & 6th November with our amazing Demo Team. We're so happy to be invited to join this event, and can't wait to demo share this hilarious experience with the public.

We're also freaking stoked to announce that next Friday on 28th November, we're also bringing the team to SteamWorks Sauna in Arnhem. During their Youngsters night, we'll be doing game demos, chatting with (up) all the visitors and I'll be doing a DJ set full of fun, bouncy, pop & house!

Come join us and let's see how much fun playing Gay Sauna the Board Game in a Gay Sauna can get!!!

We made it bigger than we could have imagined!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Oct 21, 2022 at 12:50:11 AM

Thank you all so so much! We're completely blown away by reaching so far - we didn't quite meet our €35k stretch goal, but we came close we'll be adding the First Player token for all backers!

We also had a big surprise this morning by finding out we're #13 on the BoardGameGeek Hotlist at the moment: https://boardgamegeek.com/hotness (that's so freakin cool we can't quite comprehend it happening yet...)

Over the next 24 hours we'll be pulling all the backer submissions and will announce the winner of our competition tomorrow evening.

We're then going to take a few days to process everything, regroup and pick up a bunch of things that have been on hold while this campaign was running. We'll be adopting a weekly update rhythm for the campaign - even if we've not got anything to say, we'll provide a quick update saying that. We'll also publish our planning next week in the update to give you an idea of the next steps and what we'll be busy with.

We will also be launching our pre-order store very soon - so those who missed out on the campaign can have a chance to join backers. We'll also be rolling out some options for retailers - so stay tuned for more there.

It kind of feels like a goodbye, as we've been glued to this campaign and connecting constantly with all of you for this time, but it's really a HELLO to the world! As everyone keeps telling me: It all starts now!

And none of this would have been possible without you all!