Return to Dark Tower

BackerKit "Smoke Test" and Grigor the Unbreakable
about 4 years ago – Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 11:59:39 PM

As we did with Fireball Island and given the size of the campaign, we are doing a "smoke test" for BackerKit. Surveys are going out now to 5% of the backers across all pledge levels and countries.

If you get a survey as part of the smoke test, please complete it as soon as possible and preferably before Monday. And please complete it accurately. If you get it, this is your actual survey. You'll be able to update or modify your survey until we lock it down at the end of March. But this lets us identify and fix any problems before we send the surveys out to the rest of the backers. If you get a survey and have any questions or problems, BackerKit has world-class customer service, so don't hesitate to contact them with any issue you might have. And, of course, you can always message me directly via Kickstarter or email.

If there are no major problems, we will start sending the remainder of the surveys out on Monday, and I will post a full update on how to use BackerKit at that time.

In the meantime, the whole team has been hard at work finishing up more art, tightening up the game rules, and even adding a touch more weathering details on the Tower itself. So I thought I might show off a little something Qistina just wrapped up. Feast your eyes on Grigor the Unbreakable, one of the allies available in the base game:

In addition to his powerful ability, he also offers a unique game play experience as the quest ally. He literally stands guard at the Tower, and you must defeat him in single combat to gain access. Rest assured, that won't be easy against the greatest warrior in all the land.

Quick Check-In
about 4 years ago – Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 12:36:56 AM

Thought I'd post a quick update and let you all know that we're plugging away on the finishing up the art and design, which are both going well.

Still waiting on Kickstarter to finish processing the payments, but we're still on pace to open BackerKit by next week. I'll have a big update then, explaining the whole proess.

I should also mention that our manufacturer, like all companies in China, has been affected by the Coronavirus outbreak. The government is only permitting certain factories to reopen at this point, which does not include game manufacturers. That said, we had not planned on starting manufacturing just yet, so we are not presently delayed. Even if there does end up being a delay, our fulfillment schedule incorporates a little buffer for just these sorts of unexpected hiccups. In short, nothing to report; if anything changes, we'll let you know.

If you have any questions, fire away.

We Were Victorious
over 4 years ago – Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 10:35:43 PM

 Well, you all charged and charged. And then, when I thought you all were done charging, you went and charged some more. Charged yourselves all the way past $4 million. That's an incredible achievement and beyond our hopes and dreams when we started this project -- checks watch -- over three years ago. So, above all and without qualification, thank you from the entire team.

We're so excited you all unlocked the last stretch goal, the Gaze Eternal. He's a mysterious adversary that will take the game in interesting new directions. 

Here's a brief overview of how things go from here. Over the next couple of weeks, Kickstarter will charge your credit cards. IMPORTANT: We do not have any hand in that process. If you have issues with payment, you must contact Kickstarter to resolve them. Once those payments are processed, your information will be transferred from Kickstarter over to BackerKit.

When that is done, sometime in mid-February, we will open the pledge manager and send out surveys. We'll do an update here notifying you when that happens, so please keep an eye out for it and make sure you check those spam folders. We will keep the pledge manager open as long as we can, until we need to lock down our manufacturing order, which will likely be sometime in mid-March. During this time, we will be taking regular preorders through BackerKit for folks who missed out on the Kickstarter; however, they will not get the Azkol's fortune discount, access to some of the add-ons, or other perks of being a backer, some of which we haven't even announced yet.

Over the next year, we will continue to update you here on the process. Hopefully, those updates will be uneventful. But, rest assured, if there are any issues, we will notify you what's going on and how we're dealing with it. I know a year seems like a long way away, but we've still got a lot of work to do. I think you'll have fun seeing how the project comes into its final form and ultimately into a gorgeous game that you can put on your table and sit around with your friends and family for endless hours of fun and laughs for years to come.

Until then...

A Feast for the Eyes: An Art Design Diary by Jason Taylor
over 4 years ago – Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 02:23:21 AM

We've shown you some behinds the scenes looks at both the gamedesign and the Tower design. For this last update, we wanted to give you some insight into how the world of Return to Dark Tower came to life through an amazing team of artists led by our peerless art director, Jason Taylor.

A little background about Jason by Jason: I've been a graphic designer and art director since 1996. I started my career in Florida, working in the theme park industry under some truly talented ex-Imagineers, who always taught me to focus on the idea and let that lead the way to the execution. As such, I've worked in many different arenas -- from motion graphics for TV to game, where I started with Hasbro in 2001. Working in tabletop games has been by far the most rewarding experience, particularly with this talented and extremely creative Restoration Games team. [Back atcha, Jason!]

When we start a new  project, my job is to provide the direction for the visual elements. Often, as was the case with Return to Dark Tower, it starts with a mood board. 

We use the mood board to discuss the themes and key aspects we want to highlight and use it to both spark discussion among our own team but also to on-board prospective artists. Do we want something dark and gritty or whimsical? What colors do we want to dominate the palette? For this game, you can see that we were already looking at, well, dark colors punctuated by gold and other metallics. Were also looking at the use of geometrical shapes to distinguish between the forces of good and evil, something we would continue to flesh out over the course of the project.

Another thing we do on a big project like this is invest in concept art. Basically, this is art that we use to shape the world. It might seem like a waste to pay an artist for work that's not going to be in the game. On the contrary, concept art is invaluable in giving focus to the project. 

Concept art helps us start to clarify the world and ask the right questions visually. We initiated the concept phase with Garrett and JJ Ariosa (with whom we previously worked on Stop Thief!). In addition to being great illustrators, they are both amazing concept artists because they can work quickly and iterate a single concept in diverse ways.

At the concept art stage, we're not thinking about the final art at all. These concept illustrations are beautiful in their own right, as you can see, but it's about helping us develop the visual story of the game while the narrative itself is still being written.

For the four kingdoms piece above, it lets us ask: Is this right for Return to Dark Tower? Why or why not? The visuals almost immediately expose just how much we know (or still need to uncover) about the world we're creating. What is the relationship between the Tower and the lands that surround it? Pieces like this help us answer questions like that. (As it turned out, we liked Garrett's world-building so much we tasked him with the board illustration.)

Likewise, the roles the players will take are critical to the play experience, so we start concept art on the heroes as well.

I provided Garrett a brief on the very rough idea of their powers and abilities. As you can see, Garrett will draft a number of different approaches. Different styles and themes, but also different genders, body types, ethnicity. At the outset, we don't necessarily set out to have a specific character be any one thing, instead narrowing that down as we finalize the visuals of all of them at the same time. At this stage, we'll pick out things we like or don't like for the character so we can continue to refine them.

At this stage, we turn the finalized concept design over to our lead illustrator Qistina Khalidah. We keep a running directory of artists we find from all over. We had seen some of Qistina's work online. Once we started building out the world, we knew she would be perfect for the project. We also provide a brief background story for the heroes. You can see how a small detail about a bell ended up in the final piece. 

It's important to let Qistina explore the character as well, so she has free reign to develop them further. One of the great things about working with Qistina -- much like a concept artist -- she never stops thinking about the character. As you can see in her own iterations, she's visually asking us more questions about who the character is. And as an art director, it's always fun to have options.

We'll follow this same process for all of the heroes. 

You can see that we envisioned the Spymaster to be, appropriately, a cipher from the beginning, an inscrutable identity beneath their garb. You can also see how Qistina adds some amazing, playful details from her early pencils to the final piece, such as the half-moon belt clasp and the climbing claws.  

This might be my favorite character in Return to Dark Tower. He's a bit unexpected in many ways -- from his hat right down to his sword. I've also heard whispers surrounding that clockwork arm ... a relic bound to him but shrouded in mystery.

While Garrett was working on the heroes, we tasked JJ Ariosa to develop the evil forces of the land. Here's just a sampling of JJ's creative work for the foes. 

And here's how Qistina breathed life into those concepts. 

In addition to the foes, JJ also did the first concept work on the Tower that you saw developed in Tim's design diary. You can see the first ideas of using basalt and combining sculpted textures with organic materials. 

I even jumped on the concept art for a bit. As we arrived closer to the narrative behind the Tower and the aspects we were liking from JJ's and Tim's work, I wanted to explore details that would help add interest and a bit of imposing doom to the structure, such as adding vertical line elements to imply height.  

And as we discussed the narrative around the seals, it became clear that we wanted these doors to feel like they were sealed shut ... that it's bad if they were to ever open ... real bad. This is where I introduced the concept of the chained door.

I hope you enjoyed this look behind the scenes of the visual origins of the game. We have a remarkable team, and they did an amazing job bringing this world to life. I'm happy to answer any questions you all might have.

Sleeves, glorious sleeves!
over 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 01, 2020 at 02:23:03 AM

Hi friends!

Suzanne here, sneaking in before the weekend to show off the preliminary sleeve design. You helped unlock this optional add on through a stretch goal and we know a lot of you have been eager to see what they will look like.

For those of you who might be new to the world of card sleeves, these are plastic "envelopes" you can slip your cards into. Many gamers love to sleeve their cards to help protect them from wear, sticky fingers, and evil towers that spew corruptive skulls. 

We offered custom sleeves in the Fireball Island campaign and the response to them was overwhelmingly positive because of Jason Taylor's super cool approach of leveraging a partially transparent back that allowed the card back art to show through. We're bringing that design trick to Return to Dark Tower with a new stunning sleeve design.

A sleeve pack will include enough premium quality sleeves for the cards in the base game and the Alliances expansion. Most of the sleeves will have the cool sleeve art on them - but some will be fully transparent for the cards that have information on both sides of the card (Foes and Allies.) If you want the sleeves, you can add $20 to your pledge amount now or add them in BackerKit later. There is no additional shipping fee (if you order sleeves with a copy of the game.) 

We hope you are as excited about the sleeve design as we are. Jason has truly outdone himself again.

As I post this, we're headed into the last days of the campaign. Thank you everyone for your ongoing enthusiasm and support! Don't forget to let your friends know about the campaign, the added competitive play option, and these fantastic card sleeves. The Gaze Eternal has its eyes upon us all and wants to be released into this world!

As Justin would say: Keep Charging the Tower!