PAVERSON GAMES Charging Cards for Distilled this Weekend! 💳
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 12:37:17 AM

Hi everyone, this is a very short and brief mid-month reminder that we'll be charging all credit cards in Backerkit for Distilled this weekend! I wanted to send this specific update out, to let you know that it will show up as PAVERSON GAMES on your credit card statement, and I don't want you to wonder who that might be (cuz that's me!). 

I'll see you all in early February for an official update, with LOTS of fun stuff to show and share!

Dave Beck - Paverson Games

Happy New Year from Distilled! 🥳🥂
over 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 05, 2022 at 04:37:08 AM

Happy New Year, Distillers!

So here we are in 2022! I'm not sure what your resolutions might be, but I can confidently say that mine is to deliver Distilled to you this year! 🤞

Even with the holiday season, it has been another busy month and I have a handful of updates to share, including:

• Reminder: Cards charged on January 15th 💳
•  Art from a few new cards from Erik 👨‍🎨
• Guest post about creating the 'First Taste' from our Rules Editor, Cody Reimer! 📝
• Photos of all 794 components in Distilled, via Dave's latest prototype! 📷
• Links to the Tabletop Simulator & Tabletopia Updates! 💻
• Paverson Games' Plans for Cons in 2022... 📆
• Preview of Next Month's Update... 

Cards Charged Jan 15th!

Just a reminder that all orders were locked in Backerkit back in December, but I deliberately waited until January to charge cards, so as not to stress out the ol' bank account during the holidays. Your card will be charged on January 15th, and there isn't anything you'll need to do before then (but if you've changed credit cards or something else goes wrong, you'll likely hear it via email from Backerkit on/after the 15th). 

Have you still not filled out the survey? Shame on you! But luckily, you can still squeeze in through the door!

New Art!

Erik posted a big art update last month, so I'm just including a few new assets here. He's essentially locking himself up in his studio during the month of January as we race into the big final lap to prepare things for translation and pre-press printing tests! Locking oneself up inside right now is actually somewhat easy to do where we live in Wisconsin, as it is currently -14° F outside as I write this 🥶

Erik has been finished with the base game ingredients for awhile now, but we still had the new ingredients from the Africa & Middle East expansion to create. Remember, if you backed the Signature Blend, you'll get this expansion as part of that package (you'll notice that all cards found in the expansion will have the region logo on the card itself for easy sorting). We've playtested these extensively over the last few months, and have settled on five unique "super ingredients" that will add a bit more complexity (and flavor!) to the game for those ready to take it to the next level. The above 3 "super sugars" will count as two of the same sugar type, and also allow you to add two alcohol cards to your washback,  - but they are quite expensive!

Above, you'll see two quite interesting cards that allow you to "cheat" a bit with these ingredients, just like some distilleries-who-must-not-be-named do in real life with these products! Notice that the Glucose Syrup is quite powerful (essentially, a "wild sugar"), but gives you no spirit points and little return on investment, while the Neutral Spirit Alcohol performs the same function as normal alcohol (can be used as a water or a yeast in your washback), but now has a one-time luck mitigation, akin to what you'd find in a more permanent Distillery Upgrade card!

There's lots more that Erik has been up to of course, and we'll have many additional examples to show in the coming months for sure!

Crafting the First Taste Experience

Another month, another guest post! This time, I've asked Cody Reimer, our rules editor, to spend some time walking you through the development of our "First Taste". Cody has been a phenomenal addition to our team. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stout and he frequently appears as a guest on the podcast Game Studies Review. Take it away, Cody!

Distilled posed an interesting challenge for onboarding and rules writing. As a medium-weight, Euro-style board game, it has myriad components and a bit of crunch to the rules. This is expected by hobbyists familiar with the style. Dave anticipated the game finding another audience, though—spirit aficionados who are board game novices. The Kickstarter’s tremendous success proved Dave correct. Many backers came to Distilled not for love of the genre, but for love of the flavor. The challenge, then, was this: How do we teach the game to disparate groups of players?

“First Taste” is a beginner’s guide that comprises a big part of our solution. We were inspired by the likes of Wingspan and Root, both of which have exceptional supplements for new players. The goal with the guide was to help introduce the phases, mechanics, and concepts of Distilled clearly, simply, and quickly. We wanted folks to be able to follow the guide, which we also called a walkthrough, through the first round to learn core gameplay. Early playtests had shown that once folks got through the first round they learned fast, so we committed to creating a teaching tool to do just that.

The first draft, before the guide even had a name, was designed and written as separate handouts for each player, in the spirit of Wingspan. These dictated each player’s distiller identity and starting goals and prescribed which purchases to make and which spirits to try to distill. With their single-page supplement, new players would be escorted through the Market, Distill, and Sell phases of the first round. Because it’s not possible to distill an aged spirit in the first round—at least, not without considerable design contortions that would only create confusion—the Age phase was set aside for players to learn through the core rulebook.

The separate handouts aimed to teach the game without regurgitating the core rulebook, but the draft needed only one round of revision before we decided there was too much repetition of information across the separate handouts. We needed a single guide. In the subsequent revision, Richard Woods (Distilled's game developer) offered fantastic design choices about which identities, purchases, and spirits to use to best showcase the various concepts and mechanics of the game. With few exceptions those choices are still reflected in the current version of First Taste. We also decided the guide would start players with a little extra money to show off more of the premium market in the first round.

As I wrote the guide I strived for concision—the most meaning in the fewest words. Brevity and clarity are always in tension. If I strayed toward brevity, confusion could creep in. There’s just not enough information. If I strayed toward clarity, the guide would grow in size until nobody would want to read it. “You’re telling me I have to do homework to play this game? No thanks, I’ll just have a dram and watch.” Practicing concision required interrogating whether repetitions were warranted to reinforce information (e.g., two basic market purchases per round per player) or whether they were needless, but also how much hand-holding was necessary. How much does the guide need to explain strategy and how much should be left for the players to discover on their own? Discovery, after all, is one of the joys of learning and playing. We needed player feedback.

Fortunately, we planned on playtesting the guide for answers to such questions, and we did so across another round of revision. Dave and Richard each organized two rounds of testing: three I sat in on (taking notes), and another Dave recorded for me to watch later (which I did, taking more notes!). In each playtest the majority of the players were brand new to Distilled, having only played a much earlier prototype many months prior, watched the wonderful How to Play video by Ryan from Nights Around a Table, or read about the game from the Kickstarter campaign. Seth Berrier's work with the Tabletop Simulator mod proved invaluable for these playtests, as several of the players were not only new to Distilled, but to TTS as well!

We learned several important lessons from the playtests. One, First Taste was working! Players quickly learned how to play as they advanced past the guided first round and, just as importantly, indicated that they liked the guide and would use it at their table. Two, there was still finessing to be done to position the guide as a supplement to the rulebook. We realized that the guide works best if at least one player was familiar with the rules already. While this might seem like an existential problem for the guide (i.e., if somebody already needs to know the rules, why would they need a beginner’s guide?), we realized it makes sense for many players’ tables, where the host already knows the game and is teaching friends how to play.

Two rounds of testing and subsequent revisions later and we’re happy with the design, balance, and concision. The heads and tails have been cut and we’re left with a well-distilled heart. Erik will finish the layout and graphic design and it will go through a final proof, but I’m thrilled with our work. The guide should serve as a spirited First Taste for seasoned board gamers and initiates alike.

While Cody has been a driving force behind the First Taste, he's also done quite a lot of other work behind the scenes, such as copy-editing all assets in the game, editing the rulebook, and helping to write the rules for the Africa & Middle East Expansion. Cody's been working extremely hard over the last few weeks to have all of this finished, so that it can be passed off to Erik for the final layout on all cards, boards, and books!

All 794 (prototype) Pieces of Distilled!

For those of you in our Distilled Facebook group, you've already seen this, but since I know that not all of you use that platform, I wanted to repeat this one in the update! With the opportunity to teach Distilled to folks at upcoming local cons (more on that below), I needed to order an up-to-date copy of the prototype from The Game Crafter. They are an amazing company in Madison, Wisconsin who will custom print a fairly high-quality copy of your game. For instance, any previews, videos, and pictures you saw of Distilled this summer around the Kickstarter campaign featured Game Crafter printed prototypes. Furthermore, I wanted to get a full sense of both the main game and expansion, regarding the amount of components and how much box space they truly took up, as we continue with the design of the GameTrayz insert. 

So, I've put a few pictures below, in which anything with custom art is separated, to demonstrate how much unique art and components will be found in Distilled! If you want to see more, feel free to check out this video on Facebook where I walk people through everything in detail. NOTE: this is all still a prototype, with graphic design, art, and other finishing touches still coming for your final manufactured game!

And because all of you are the extra-special Distillers, you're getting even MORE stuff than what is above! Everyone will receive the KS Mini-Expansion (left side of the table in the below picture) and those who backed at the Signature Blend level will also get the Africa & Middle East expansion (right side of the table in the below picture). 

When its all laid out like the first picture, it is a table hog 🐖 but it cleans up nicely when sorted and stacked! 🥃🎲 I can't wait for all of you Kickstarter backers to get it to your own table later this year!

Play Distilled for FREE (online)!

I mentioned it last month, but here I am now to let you know that we have BIG UPDATES to both our Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia mods for Distilled. In both cases, these are completely free*, and offer a bunch of new features since the last update in May of 2021.
*while the TTS mod is free, you must purchase Tabletop Simulator on Steam, here. Tabletopia is completely free, and runs in your browser.
 

   The updated version is very close (concerning gameplay) to what players will experience in the final (physical) version of the game that ships in late 2022, but still has a ways to go for art and graphic design. It features that new beginner's guide (First Taste) mentioned above, a revised solo mode, 18 different distillers and 2 of the 8 available tasting flights. Since a fair amount of the art still needs to be completed, this is definitely still a digital prototype of the final version of Distilled.
 

Distilled at Cons in 2022

Who knows what 2022 will bring? Will the pandemic continue to putter onward, but grow increasingly weaker with strains (let's hope so) or will there be new variants that we once again have to pivot in order to keep us all safe? Either way, I am planning to have a "soft rollout" of Distilled's presence at cons in 2022, due to the fact that it won't even be released until later in the year!

But I did want to let you know about a three small, regional cons in MN & WI I'm planning to attend and run sessions of Distilled, happening this month and next (links below take you to a page where you can buy tickets if you live in the area)!

•  Midwinter Gaming Convention in Milwaukee, WI from January 13th-16th. I'll be there running sessions of Distilled throughout the weekend, along with Houston, a friend of mine (we'll be taking turns). All 8 sessions are sold out, but I hope you'll stop by Table 33 in the Regency Ballroom to say hi and watch a game! I'll be gaming throughout the weekend too, so perhaps we can play something together!
•  Protospiel Minnesota in Bloomington, MN from January 21st-23rd. Protospiels are events for designers to bring their prototypes and other "in-progress" games to be played and critiqued! Instead of bringing my own game design(s), I hope to "give back" by playtesting other games all weekend (I won't be playtesting Distilled, for obvious reasons). You can attend as a playtester to just play games all weekend, or attend as a designer to bring your own designs to playtest (I brought Distilled in January 2020 for its first "non-friend public playtest", as you'll see below!). 
•  Con of the North in Plymouth, MN from February 18th-20th. I'll be there running sessions of Distilled throughout the weekend, along with that same friend of mine mentioned above. Just like with Midwinter, all 9 sessions are sold out, but I hope you'll stop by the Copenhagen Room to say hi and watch the game! And again, just like with Midwinter, I'll be gaming throughout the weekend too, so perhaps we can play something together! This will be special to return here, as this was the first - and last - Con that Distilled made an appearance at before the pandemic hit one month later. 

I also have tentative plans to attend the following cons happening later in 2022, which could range from having an entire booth to just doing some demo  and teach 'n' play events. 

•  GAMA Expo in March (Reno, NV)
•  Geekway to the West in May (St. Louis, MO)
•  Origins in June (Columbus, OH)
•  Gamehole Con in October (Madison, WI)
•  PAX Unplugged in December (Philadelphia, PA)

Again, none of the five above are set in stone yet, but I'm hopeful that Paverson Games can be there, and maybe get a chance to connect with you! 🤞

Well, that's a wrap for January's update. I have a funny feeling we'll have A LOT for next month, as we are aiming to start submitting things to licensees for translation and also start to work with the factory on pre-press proofs! 

Sláinte,

- Dave

 P.S. I simply had to share this amazing and thoughtful gift I received from a BGG Secret Santa this year. In addition to surprising me with a sold-out game I had been literally obsessing over throughout the fall season, my Santa commissioned Tux & Roll to create these sweet custom whisky dice, inspired by Distilled! Look closely and you can see the little ice cubes floating in each one - dice on the rocks - how cool is that?!? Perhaps one of the greatest secret santas of all time!? 🎲🥃🎅

DISTILLED PLEDGE MANAGER CLOSES SUNDAY! + Big 'n' Awesome 🎨 Update!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 07, 2021 at 11:48:12 PM

Happy December, Distillers!

Can you believe it has been just 4 months since the end of the Kickstarter? We've been working like crazy to move things forward, and have a bunch of updates and info to share this month, including:

• Details about the Pledge Manager CLOSING SUNDAY ⚠
• Big Art Update from Erik 🎨😍
•  Foreign Languages Update 😢
• Big Tabletop Simulator & Tabletopia Update Dropping Next Week! 💻
• Results of the 2021 Distilled Global Showdown! 🏆
• Preview of Next Month's Update... 🔭

Distilled's Pledge Manager Closes SUNDAY!!!

That's right, the Pledge Manager (PM) will be closing in just a few days! What does this mean exactly?

This is what is typically called "Locking Orders". It gives us  a good overall idea of the number of games, expansions, accessories, add-ons, and more to order. It does NOT charge your credit card or finalize your address (those come later). But it will make it so that you cannot access the PM to add any more copies or change the selections you have, so you'll want to make sure follow this link, enter your email, and fill that survey out if you haven't yet! Note: around December 10th an email will go out from Backerkit reminding people that they have 48 hours left to fill out the survey.

After the PM is "locked" (like a good whisky warehouse should be), the next date we'll be looking at is a mid-January credit card charge. Remember, what you pledged in Kickstarter was charged back in August, so this is just for additional items you added, as well as shipping costs. Sometimes pledge managers lock and charge at the same time, but I felt it might be good to wait until after the holidays, so it is a bit better on everyone's wallet, so I've picked January 17th for the charge date.  After that, we'll be in touch later in the year about finalizing and updating mailing addresses, but that's nothing you need to worry about now!

And a reminder about some PM FAQ's to keep in mind:

•  When will you charge my credit card? We won't be charging cards until January 17th of 2022, as we know that many of us will have spent a lot in November and December on holiday shopping!
•  I've never received an email for the Pledge Manager - am I too late? Nope! Either visit the above link to obtain your survey, or message Dave by clicking on the Paverson Games link under the "Visit Game Website" button. We'll get it worked out!
•  Why am I being charged taxes or VAT? Since you are obtaining a product, it is required by law to have taxes involved. If we didn't charge backers taxes or VAT, we'd either have to pay it to the government on behalf of thousands of backers (which we can't afford as an indie game studio that is operated out of Dave's basement) or decide not to pay the government bill, which would likely land us in jail. We'd rather not go bankrupt or go to jail, so that we can keep making fun games for all y'all, if that's okay ;)
• I live near you Dave, and I want Local Pickup to drive to Wisconsin and save money! How? You'll choose Local Pickup as your "Country" on the Welcome page and the Address page

How long do I have to fill out the survey again? OMG. SERIOUSLY?!?  UNTIL SUNDAY!!!!

Big Art Update & Guest Post from Erik!

Just like we had Richard provide an update on playtesting and development last month, I've asked Erik Evensen, our amazing artist and graphic designer, to give us an update on what he's been up to for this month. So without further ado, take it away Erik!

Hey all you Distillers out there, I wanted to write and give you all an update as to the process on “art assets” for Distilled!

First of all—we are marching steadily toward our February print date. Over the two years we developed Distilled, one of us—either Dave or myself—was on sabbatical at least 75% of the time (a sabbatical is when a professor gets some time off to focus on their own research, which was in this case, Distilled!). However, now we are both working full-time, so we deliberately gave ourselves a bit more time than we might have otherwise needed because we have plenty of things to do outside of the Distilled world. So in case you think, “Erik, you should have been able to do all of this by now,” you’d be correct, except for the whole job thing.

So, I’m here to give you a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes sausage-making that’s happening on my end.

NEW ART ALERT!

First, some new art! This is what you all really want to see, but it only accounts for one of my duties at this stage. As Dave outlined in last month’s update, I’ve completed all of the artwork for the Flavor cards, which was probably the biggest number of unique art elements in the game that I had yet to finish. Since I had 31 sketches left to do, in October I used Inktober as an excuse to work on these, doing a new sketch every day and sharing it to my Instagram account to maximize my internet fame.

Distiller Identities

I’ve finished new character art for the distiller identities representing Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, Italy and Peru. Phew! I still have to design the rest of the Distiller Identities for the Africa & Middle East expansion.

Final Coin Designs

I very recently redesigned the coins for the game, after finding an approach that we felt struck the right balance of consistency and diversity. We decided to go with a numeric front, with a graphic back to each coin. The backs represent the three sugar types in the game, and increase in value—grains are the cheapest (the 1 coin), then plant, then fruit. Redesigning the coins needed to be prioritized, because we are having  these paintings turned into 3D models and developed for all you backers who are getting metal coins—rather than being a faux-sculpted painting, you will get a legitimately sculpted coin that looks just like this! This is not something I’ve EVER done before, so I’m pretty excited.

I also did the same thing for the “first player token.” You may recall Dave running a poll in our Facebook group, and he settled on one of his favorite sayings for the back side of it. This too will be turned into a metal version for all Kickstarter backers for the Original or Signature Blend pledges.

File Prep

All game projects have a lot of “file prep,” and Distilled has more than its share! I have been spending my time doing batch conversion of our assets from RGB to CMYK. Everything was originally developed in RGB because of Tabletop Simulator, so now it needs to get converted for its final print application. This is not exciting and not worth showing you images of. Actually, there’s barely anything visible to look at. It’s like tuning a musical instrument, except at least with that, the audience can hear a difference.

Another part of my job is taking the multi-layered work files, and redeveloping them to be flat images. When designing the game, we had such an iterative process that in order to stay nimble, most every element was on its own layer. There are shadows, graphics, and layers and layers of textures pasted on top of one another. It made it easy to swap one element out for another, or modify a size or proportion whenever we changed a card size, or added or removed text or icons. But for printing purposes, all of these layers need to be merged and flattened.

WHAT’Z NEXT?

I still have quite a lot of file prep to do to get things ready to send to our manufacturer. However, a lot of it goes pretty quickly—batch-converting images is not difficult, and flattening card art and component art has been pretty easy, as well. Rebuilding our cards and components with the new, flattened, and converted files actually goes pretty quickly now that art direction and game balancing has been established. The biggest level of complexity will be the typesetting—a lot of the cards you’ve seen in Tabletop Simulator and Kickstarter preview videos were typeset in Component Studio by Dave, as the physical prototype games were exported from Tabletop Simulator. So my duty is to remake these cards with a lot more typographic control at my disposal. This also won’t be terribly time consuming, but it will take a few full days.

Also, I still have some illustrations to produce. There are a few bottles, barrels, and ingredients that were late additions to the game that never got illustrated, and the Distillery Upgrades have always needed some more attention. Not to mention our expansion packs. My estimation is that I have half a week, maybe a full week of illustration left to do.

Thanks Erik! As you can see, Erik has been busy - when he's not working long hours at his actual full time job at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, he's been cranking away at Distilled! He and I are both looking forward to our winter break, where we hope to be able to accomplish a lot of work in a window of time off from work at the university.

Foreign Languages Update

So first, the good news. As I said before, Distilled is now officially in NINE different languages. This is pretty unbelievable, especially since this began as a small project that I was hoping we'd raise enough to print a few thousand copies in just English! One of the licensees have come back and requested additional copies due to the popularity of the game in their own country, and we are now looking at printing over 10,000 non-English copies of Distilled!

But, there's also some bad news. We have been tirelessly looking for licensees of Distilled in both Italian and Polish, which were the final two languages we were aiming to obtain. Michael Raftopoulos of Meeple on Board has been speaking with multiple companies, but we have not had luck in these two languages. I've sunk over $300 into printing and shipping costs to have a few major publishing companies based in Poland and Italy play and evaluate the prototype (they wanted to test it in person, rather than on Tabletop Simulator), but to no avail. Because of this, I think it is time to come to the realization that a Polish or Italian version of Distilled just isn't in the cards this time around. And, as promised back in the July 26th update, I will uphold my guarantee to all Polish and Italian Wee Dram backers:

I want to thank all of you for believing in this project, and holding out hope for these languages. Given the interest from backers and companies, not bringing Poland and Italy into the equation came as a major surprise to me, but there is absolutely nothing we can do at this point. We've tried everyone and everything for over four months now. 

New Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia Mods Releasing Next Week!

Now back to some good news. As you can see from above, Erik has been busy! But he still has quite a lot left to go, so we have been working hard to playtest the final parts of both the base game and expansion on Tabletop Simulator (TTS) over the past few months while he is finishing up. Now that things are in a solid space concerning balance and gameplay, we felt it was time to provide an updated virtual mod to all of our digital distillers out there! 

The last time we released a major update for Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia was BEFORE the Kickstarter campaign! I'm happy to report that Seth B. (TTS) and David H. (Tabletopia) have been hard at work updating both platforms for what will feature all final gameplay changes in the game. We are targeting the release of the update on TTS and Tabletopia for sometime next week! I'll be sure to drop something in the comments when they are live and official, and post on social media too. I've taken a few screenshots from TTS to help you visualize what you can expect in the newest FREE release, below. Please note that all of this will look even better with Erik's graphic design and artwork refinements when it hits your table next year!

Starting things out, above is our new "First Taste", a beginner's guide that holds your hand through the first round of Distilled. This will ship as a handout with the main game, and is simply a PDF to read online when you are playing digitally. Seth has scripted the TTS version to auto-setup the game for you if you choose this option, which is great. This is meant to help people playing Distilled for the first time, and our rules editor, Cody Reimer, has been hard at work creating both this and finalizing our main rules. Next month, Cody will be doing a guest spot where he talks about this development process, so stay tuned! 

With this update, you'll be able to play with any of the 18 above Distiller Identity cards, each of which hails from a different country around the world and features Erik's cool character designs.

When choosing a standard game, you'll now get to choose from two very different flights, showing off all of the different spirits from Distilled! In addition to Moonshine, Vodka, and Whisk(e)y, you'll also have four other spirits to sample from each region (Americas, Europe, and Asia & Oceania). 

Those flights will open up 15 unique spirits and 18 signature spirits, all which will be playable in the updates and also ship with your copy of Distilled. How many of these spirits have you personally had before? Perhaps this will inspire you to try a few new cocktails in the coming months!

Once you choose your distiller, you'll then get their signature recipe and ingredient, as well as some money and ingredients to begin the game. We're including a virtual prototype for the new dual-layered clipboard, so you can start to get a feel for what this might be like. Additionally, Seth has scripted a digital money counter for TTS, so you can add and subtract money to your heart's content without ever virtually lifting a penny - ahhh, the joys of technology! 

Finally, here's our final prototype for the point, round and spirit label board. As a reminder from our last update, we've shrunk this down and combined two boards into one, thus saving table space for all of you. Since our score track is smaller, we have a 50/100 "lap" token for each player now, to show the table what your total score might be at, as  (accomplished Distilled players have been known to often approach the mid-100 range!).

So, as you can see, some great updates are coming very soon for those who enjoy playing online. And again, we are doing this because it is something we can accomplish for all of you while we wait for the physical game to be completed in 2022.

2021 Distilled Global Showdown!

Another thing we wanted to do was show off all the cool game mechanisms and features in both the Kickstarter mini-expansion and the Africa and Middle East expansion,  (since all of you have had the chance to get that as part of being backers). We thought we'd have a bit of cheeky fun and hold the "2021 DISTILLED GLOBAL SHOWDOWN", where we invited four of our most frequent and high-scoring Distilled players who are active in our Discord server to play a head-to-head game that spanned the world!

The result was a four-player match that I hosted and streamed live on Facebook last week in our Distilled group. It was a lot of great fun, with the video already getting a couple hundred views. We had players representing all 3 regions from Distilled (USA and Canada for Americas, UK for Europe, and Singapore for Asia and Oceania), making it a truly international event (special thanks to Demo and Richard for participating in the middle of the night in the UK!). The scores were high and the competition steep, but it was really a great time had by all. Be sure to hit the link in the pic above or right here to view this video in our Facebook group, and get a sneak peek of all the cool expansion goodies many of you will get to experience next year!

And of course, a big congratulations to our winner, David "The Crown Royal" from near Toronto, Canada! David played as the Canadian Distiller, and leaned heavy into a flavorful aging strategy with the help of his distillery upgrades (at one point, he had a Doig Ventilator, Metal Rickhouse, and Tropical Warehouse, all of which were churning out extra flavors for him!). He was creating rye whisky and Japanese shochu that definitely tasted all kinds of delicious. Perhaps next year we'll actually get to do some of this tournament style playing in person, but for the next year the bragging rights stays with our Canadians!

Looking to Next Month...

Another long Distilled update, but rightly so, as there is a lot going on! As we finalize most all of the gameplay and rules, it will now be full crunch with art and design as we look to sending files to the translators and manufacturer in early 2022! Because of this, next month is going to be equally as exciting, as we'll be diving deeper into:

• A report back from our rules editor, Cody, on the design and testing behind First Taste (aka the "Beginner Guide")
• Details on what 2022 Cons you can expect to see Distilled at, and potentially meet some of the Paverson Games team!
• Manufacturing Updates on deluxe components 
• Additional art updates 
• And more!

Sláinte and don't forget tofill out that pledgeby Sunday!

- Dave

PS. I hope everyone is enjoying the transition into the winter months, as I'm sure there is a high likelihood that the number of board games one plays on a monthly basis rises as the temperature levels drop! I know I definitely did that over the Thanksgiving weekend in the states, where I went through a self-prescribed FEAST OF GAMES, playing a new-to-me game solo every day of the break. I enjoyed it so much that I have decided to start doing it every Sunday morning, and started this past Sunday with Dinosaur World (perhaps it's my new church?)!  🐱‍🐉⛪ #cardboardchurch

Pledge Manager OPEN + Component & Playtest Updates!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Nov 03, 2021 at 02:46:31 AM

As the crisp fall season finally hits Wisconsin, I'm exchanging my candy  🍬 for a dram of whisky 🥃 to warm things up! The colder weather also aligns with "gaming season", as we had some great Halloween-filled family game nights playing Betrayal at House on the Hill, Horrified, and Mysterium.  I hope you and yours have been able to enjoy this season too, by dressing up, eating candy, and playing games!

This month's update is much like the last - CHOCK-FULL-OF-GOODNESS! It includes:

• Reminder about the Pledge Manager 
• New Component Prototypes from The Game Crafter
• A Playtesting Recap from Richard (and a call for new playtesters!)
• Inktober Flavor Sketches from Erik

So, pour yourself a glass of something tasty and let's begin...(oh, and a word of warning, most images in this update contain prototype placeholder designs by DAVE (Game Designer) and not final artwork by ERIK (Artist), so please don't worry - Erik will be making all of this look much nicer in your final game!).

Pledge Manager Open! One Month Left!

The pledge manager has been open for a month, and about 6,700 of you have filled it out, which is awesome! But there still is about 1,700 people who have not, so this is your gentle reminder to get in there and fill it out! This will allow you to finalize your order, add anything extra (like some metal recipe cubes or a neoprene playmat to deluxify the game!), and enter your shipping information. 

Don't exactly understand how to fill out the survey? No worries, just check out our October update for a step-by-step guide to filling it out!

⚠ Remember, the pledge manager is going to close in mid-December, so you'll want to get in there ASAP to finalize your order! ⚠

Some Pledge Manager FAQ's to keep in mind:

•  When will you charge my credit card? We won't be charging cards until mid-January of 2022, as we know that many of us will have spent a lot in December on holiday shopping!
•  I've never received an email for the Pledge Manager - am I too late? Nope! Either visit the above link to obtain your survey, or message Dave by clicking on the Paverson Games link under the "Visit Game Website" button. We'll get it worked out!
• Why am I being charged taxes or VAT? Since you are obtaining a product, it is required by law to have taxes involved. If we didn't charge backers taxes or VAT, we'd either have to pay it to the government on behalf of thousands of backers (which we can't afford as an indie game studio that is operated out of Dave's basement) or decide not to pay the government bill, which would likely land us in jail. We'd rather not go bankrupt or go to jail, so that we can keep making fun games for all y'all, if that's okay ;)
•  How long do I have to fill out the survey? You'll have until mid-December to do this, but the sooner you do it, the less you'll be pestered by me and Backerkit.
• I live near you Dave, and I want Local Pickup to drive to Wisconsin and save money! How? You'll choose Local Pickup as your "Country" on the Welcome page and the Address page

Components from Game Crafter

As you might recall, we had some fantastic backer support by all of you during the campaign. It allowed us to achieve something that we frankly thought would never happen - dual-layered recipe clipboards that will let players swap out different tasting flights (our name for curated lists of recipes) and also place their cubes right next to their unlocked recipes, all on this board that is located right next to the player mat! 

During the campaign, I created a 3D rendered mock-up of the recipe clipboard as an update. Since then, we've been testing some designs in Tabletop Simulator, and I have even added a bit on to it to streamline the overall setup and flow of the game (printed recipe cube costs at the top and a spot for your signature recipe at the bottom). I'm now happy to report that I received the prototype back from The Game Crafter (TGC), and it is looking great! I glued two laser cut boards on top of each other to create a prototype of the dual-layered clipboard, allowing for the players place different tasting flight cards, put metallic cubes next to the recipes they've unlocked, and finally - in a new plot twist - include their "signature recipe" into the bottom slot of the clipboard.  

Throughout both the physical and virtual playtesting we had been doing over the last year, something always annoyed me - we had these cool one-time use "signature recipes" (that everyone loved making), yet it required the game to have a separate spirit label token and an additional component in which the recipe was on a random standalone card that wasn't part of the main recipe clipboard. This resulted in extra table space and extra setup time that was especially obvious in the physical playtests. Then, a few months ago, the lightbulb moment hit me - we can combine those two things into one component, and include it at the bottom of the clipboard! Players begin the game with their punchboard token "recipe side up" in their clipboard, and when they craft that fancy spirit, they take it out of the clipboard, flip it over, and put that - "spirit label side up" - above their distillery to gain the bonus and display it proudly to the table! Note: the one thing we need to fix with the clipboard is a finger indent to pull that token out, but otherwise it is looking very good and ready for Erik's artistic overhaul!

In addition to the recipe clipboard and signature recipe/label tokens, I also took a stab at redesigning the Spirit Awards, based on Erik's original design. The version we originally had were TGC default 3.5" wide circle cards, that were far bigger than necessary. For the final game, they will be punchboard tokens (roughly 2.5" wide), resembling a medal or ribbon for winning that award, much like you'd find in a spirits competition. These are again just my first attempt at them, and Erik will be revising the design with more polish in the coming months. I've also included a few different tasting flights below, to show you what that might be like for your own copy. Again, all just prototypes, but this demonstrates the amazing depth of Distilled, through offering 8 different tasting flight combinations in the base game, and 6 more flights in the Africa and Middle East expansion (w/ 1 copy of each tasting flight per player). That means that you'll need to play Distilled 15 times before you experience a game with the same spirit combination! 🤯

 So, there you have it - Distilled is going to be even more deluxe now, thanks to all of your support in helping us meet some of those pricey stretch goals. I can't wait to see Erik bring these up to the awesome standard that he's already set for the game's art and graphic design!

BIG Playtesting Update from Richard

The past three months have been a whirlwind of progress on the gameplay front. This is largely thanks to our awesome developer, Richard Woods. I've asked him to write a bit about what has been accomplished.  So, I'm excited to hand the keyboard over to Richard to give a recap on the amazing progress we've made in design, development, and playtesting. Richard, take it a way!

"Following the amazingly successful Kickstarter campaign, we were presented with a plethora of extras that were unlocked and needed to be developed and tested. These included new Distiller Identities, new Recipes, new Distillery Upgrades and new Goals/Awards. It was a big challenge but also very exciting to be able to add so much more depth and replayability to the game we love.

So in August we focused on the recipes and identities added to the core game. In total there are 15 unique recipes and 18 diverse identities in the core game alone, so making sure all of these worked together and were finely balanced was a key priority. Whilst we had already designed these all on paper before the campaign, we hadn’t played with them all yet. So we took what we thought would work and played numerous solo and multiplayer games, each time tweaking the numbers and abilities to ensure they all felt distinctive and fun to play with. The result is that we now have a fantastic mix of things for people to explore in the core game.

Alongside this we also reinvented a number of the solo goals (above) that were previously region-specific, meaning they needed to be removed during setup if they didn’t match your identity’s region. The great news is that they all now work with any Distiller Identity or Taste Flight making setup even quicker and also providing more variety.

In September we turned our attention to the Africa & Middle East expansion. Whilst we had many ideas for the new cards that the expansion added, we’d not yet had the opportunity to fully define them all. It was so cool being able to come up with interesting and different abilities that added a little something extra beyond what was in the core game.  Alongside 6 new identities and 4 recipes, there are 10 upgrades, 8 ingredients and 8 items included in the expansion and we wanted all of these to stand out. So again we drove straight into play testing, both solo and multiplayer, trying out new abilities and finding out what works. Our Distilled community has been awesome throughout this process, helping us decide between options and even coming up with original ideas in some cases (for example the Tunisian identity power is a direct result of a suggestion raised in our Discord server).

We really wanted a special ingredient to be included in the expansion, which provided great utility to the player who was able to snap it up in the market. We’ve therefore been testing both Glucose Syrup that acts as a wild sugar, as well as Neutral Spirit Alcohol which provides some additional luck mitigation when used. The plan was to choose one of them to include, but the reception to both has been fantastic, so we’ve decided to keep them both. This means that instead of 8 additional ingredient cards, the expansion will now come with 10 additional ingredient cards!

In October we completed the main play testing and are delighted to report that most of the content is now fully developed and is working wonderfully. My attention for November is therefore turning to testing the Beginner’s Guide written by Cody Reimer (our Rules Editor), as well as revisiting the core game after playing with the expansion for the past two months. Needless to say, whilst we are almost there, play testing never ends and we’ll be continuing to play regularly in TTS right up to when the game goes to print. So if you’d like to join us and see all the exciting extra content we’ve added since the campaign please do join us in our Discord server."

Thanks Richard! As you can see, Richard has been VERY busy- we've accomplished a MOUNTAIN of work in the past few months (and this is all while we're holding up our main full time jobs!). If you are interested in helping playtest, we are looking for new players to test out our Beginner's Guide (aka First Taste) over on our Discord server. All you need is Tabletop Simulator (which is a one-time cost of $20) and we'll help with the rest!

Distilled playtesting, by the numbers (August-October):

• Number of different multiplayer games: 20
• Number of different playtesters participating: 27 (we had returning players for many games)
• Number of solo game playtests : 40
• Approximate total number of in-game spirits crafted: 1,400!

Tasty Sketches!

Artists around the world will often participate in #inktober, in which they dedicate the entire month of October to drawing something every day. Our artist, Erik, decided to take inspiration from this, and do his own "Distilled-tober", in which he sketched a different image (for the flavor cards) everyday and posted it on his Instagram feed! As you might recall, we had a flavor-filled event during the campaign, where fans like you got to suggest and vote for your favorite flavors (some of which are now in the game!). Thanks to #inktober, Erik has now finished all 48 unique flavor sketches for Distilled! In addition to ones he already completed, see the 31 flavors he completed for #inktober, collaged below. Do you spy your favorite flavor, or one you voted on during the campaign?

Looking to Next Month...

If you've made it this far, congratulations! I hope you can see how much we've been working to make the best possible game for all of you, and I can honestly say that it has only gotten better and tighter since the Kickstarter! Next month is going to be equally as exciting, as we'll be diving deeper into:

• A big art update from Erik
• Details on major new TTS & Tabletopia Mod updates with our digital demigods, Seth and Dave H.
• Report back from Cody on the design and testing behind the "Beginner Guide" (AKA First Taste)
• And more!

Sláinte!

- Dave

The Pledge Manager Will Open AHEAD of Schedule!!!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 04:27:28 AM

Happy Distilled-toberfest! 🍻

TL;DR: If things continue to go as planned, every single one of you will be able to access the Pledge Manager by this Friday, October 1st! 🥳

We're a bit early for our monthly update, but since this is going out at the end of September as it bleeds into October, we thought this would be a great opportunity to celebrate Distilled-toberfest! There are a number of important things in this update:

•  Pledge Manager Opens Later this Week!
• Distilled's Custom Progress Chart 
• Two More Languages Added!
•  Signed Prototypes Shipped to Master Distiller Pledges

Pledge Manager Will be Open by FRIDAY!

Yes, you read it here first folks, you'll be getting an email from Paverson Games (via Backerkit) sometime in the next few days! We're starting with some "smoke tests" (where a random sampling of 5% of the backers will get the pledge manager early), and the rest will be coming to your inbox in the next few days. Since I know this might be new for some of you, I've tried to lay out a few things to make it easier:

1. First, you'll get that email about filling out a SURVEY

2. Click that button, and it will take you to a "Welcome Screen", where you will confirm your country (and possibly state)

3. After hitting the green button, you'll be greeted by some questions I've set-up to ask you (each customized to your specific pledge level), like whether you want to stick with or switch from the pledge that has no reward (the $1 Wee Dram pledge) or what language you want your game to be in when it is delivered to your door. After answering all of those questions, you'll get to the Add-ons menu.

5. Here, you'll choose any add-on's you'd like from the store, while the amount you pledged in Kickstarter is credited to your account or chosen pledge level (ie: if you pledge $85 for the Signature Blend in Kickstarter, you will see all components of the Signature Blend already in your cart, and $85 subtracted from your total).

From there, you're just going to fill out your shipping and billing info, and you are good to go, easy peasy. 

Some FAQ's to keep in mind:

•  How long do I have to fill out the survey? You'll have until mid-December to do this, but the sooner you do it, the less you'll be pestered by me and Backerkit.
• I live near you Dave, and I want Local Pickup to drive to Wisconsin and save money! How? You'll choose it as your "Country" on the Welcome page and the Address page
• Can I get multiple games or add-ons? Yes! In fact, in some cases, it will save you a lot of money on shipping, as extra games cost only $7 each to ship! 
• Why am I being charged taxes or VAT? Since you are obtaining a product, it is required by law to have taxes involved, I'm afraid. Because of this, Paverson Games will be writing a big check to the government(s) when this is all finished

The Pledge Manager can be a confusing, daunting process. So, if at any time you have a question, consider coming back here and leaving a comment - I'm sure some of our Distillers will be more than happy to answer your question. If it is extra-complicated or personal, feel free to also message me of course. 

Introducing the Distilled Progress Chart

In order to keep all of you as best updated as possible, I've created this progress chart for you to see where we are with certain components and features of the game. This is a highly generalized list (there's like 250 different cards alone!!!), but will hopefully give you a good idea of what we're looking at. You'll notice that things like the Wood Tokens and GameTrayz Insert are barely started, and that is because those were unlocked during the campaign, while much of the other stuff was already on its way when the Kickstarter began. We also have some things skipping a few steps, as there won't be as much "Game Design" or "Game Development" for things like Metal Coins or Playmats ;)

I've always admired these progress charts by other designers and companies, and wonder if Jamey Stegmaier's version (for Stonemaier Games) might be the first to do this for his entire game line. I think it is a great way to let fans know where you are in the process, and demonstrate transparency throughout as well (which we're all about with Distilled!).

Welcome to Czech and Portuguese Languages!

Two more languages have joined our ranks, bringing Distilled's language count to TEN! We're thrilled to welcome REXhry as our Czech partners, and a mystery partner for Portuguese (who will be announced in the future!). While these won't be included in the Kickstarter options (just like Korea and China aren't), they will still be available for retail in those countries, which is exciting!

Small Batch Release for our Master Distillers!

Finally, I wanted to end with a few shots of the games that were signed, authenticated, and sent out to our Master Distiller pledgers recently. Limited to only 10 spots, the Master Distiller Pledge included the Signature Edition pledge (like many of you have), but also one of the original 10 prototypes for Distilled (dubbed "Small Batch Release" by Erik) that were previewed by content creators for the Kickstarter and signed by Erik and me. Eight of these were sent around the USA, and the other two to France and New Zealand. Perhaps you'll get lucky enough to find one of them in the wild, and get a chance to play Distilled a full year before it's official release!

Well, that's all I have for this month, Distillers! Good luck with the Backerkit Pledge Manager Survey this week, and please comment below with any questions!

Next month, we'll likely have some new art updates to share, as well as some final reports on the extensive playtesting we've been doing over on our Discord, of the Africa and Middle East Expansion!

Sláinte 🥃,

Dave