Happy Anniversary, Crafters!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 12:56:02 AM

Hi Crafters, 

We have 3 things to celebrate with you all. 

1) Happy Anniversary, ArchRavels! A year ago today, it was the first day of fall and the day that we launched ArchRavels on Kickstarter.  We funded on day 2 and the campaign ended with 1,826 Backers, raising $107,928! 

2) Happy Birthday! Our Director of Communications, Lauren, is also celebrating her bday! She writes social posts, emails, and yes all of the updates we've been reading! 

3) Mass Production. We're officially in mass production of ArchRavels! We're anxiously waiting for its arrival to our warehouse at the end of October. We'll have more updates with photos once we receive the assembled final proof! 

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to [email protected]!

Keep Crafting...

Team XYZ 

GameTrayz Insert Update!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 10:17:24 PM

Happy Tuesday, Crafters!

We wanted to give a quick yet positive update from our manufacturer. In our last update, we shared the most recent proof and we had some slight issues with the GameTrayz insert thickness. To fix this problem we had the manufacturers increase the thickness of the insert and the bowls and here is the updated video from the manufacturer. It is looking pretty promising so we had to share the good news!

For those who are curious as to what Team XYZ was looking for in the video, here is our thought process:

With the added thickness of the insert we were wondering...

1) Does lid still fit?  Upon placing the lid over the insert, we realized that the lid fits nicely! *phew*

2) Is the insert more sturdy? From our last update we noticed that the areas that were stretched out the most from the mold felt flimsy and there was a cracking sound from the plastic. By flipping over the insert and pressing on the most vulnerable cavities we noticed that it was sturdier, not popping inward or out, and there were no popping sounds!

As for the thickness of the bowls, we were wondering...

3) Do the bowls stack? We saw a demo of the bowls nicely stacking and we're happy with the result!

We hope this answers any concerns and because we love our backers and we wanted to bring you along our production journey to show how Team XYZ makes adjustments from the proof. It also goes to show just how important a step physical proofing is to the publisher. 

GGS Shelf-a-pa-luza

We'll be at Girls' Game Shelf's Shelf-a-pa-luza next weekend to play through ArchRavels on their discord Friday 9/11 @ 9PM CT. We recommend this event if you want to learn more about new games coming into the market, check out how to play videos, or just in general trying to discover more games to play with the family. Since this is a family friendly event, our co-founder, Jordan Miller, will be bringing his family to play ArchRavels! 

The Red Opera

We wanted to highlight a special Kickstarter that is going on right now called The Red Opera. Our friend, Rick Heinz, is the lead writer of this beautiful 10-Act role playing game (RPG) placed in the warlock world of 'Shadelands'. The world and the game was inspired by a symphonic rock album from DiAmorte's album: 'DiAmorte' which means each act has a complimentary track to listen to from the album while players discover, seek, live, and breathe in the immersive world. 

This game is so awesome because not only is Rick our friend, but it's truly an experience that has never been done before and we see it as a "one of a kind" type of game. Also, if you've never been interested in RPGs this may be one that piques your interest! 

Closing Thoughts

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please reach out to us at [email protected]. We hope to see you this Friday 9pm CT at Shelf-a-pa-luza! 

Have a great week and keep crafting! 

- Team XYZ 

Proof Walk through!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 07:38:50 PM

Hello Crafters! 

We know you've been patiently waiting for an update from us. We want to thank you again for trusting in us through the creation of ArchRavels, a colorful and cozy game about fiber arts. Without further ado, here's a personal message from our CEO and designer, Adam McCrimmon. 

Cliff's notes version of what the video said

1) Delivery: unfortunately, the game will not be delivered in August. We are planning on having backers' rewards and pre-orders delivered in November. 

2) Look at that beautiful GameTrayz insert! We have some good news and some bad news. Bad news first, always: 

A) We're slightly worried about the thickness. We want to increase it so it feels sturdier. Adam goes into some detail on the production process for when they mold the trays. We've already spoken to our contacts about ways to improve the integrity of the tray. We believe in high quality work so we're gonna make sure we get this one right. 

B) The 3-yarn chits are too large for their intended slots in the bazaar tray. We're going to shrink the size of the 3-yarn chits to fit the slots.

Good news: The design is so beautiful. We've playtested this game countless times, yet each time we set it up we'd get a slight headache. We were always eager to play but physically managing ROYGBV tokens and all the cozy items, we knew we had to fix that clunky experience and remove that barrier. With this in our hands, we know it will accomplish exactly what we intended: less set up time, more play time, and more fun.

3) As promised, all of the base components AND the deluxe components fit within the box. 

But what about the neoprene mat? We got you covered and it fits best like this over here! 

4) What if we want to sleeve our cards? We tested that out, and the sleeved cards fit! 

5) Where's our cat meeple that we worked so hard to unlock? Oh, he's hanging around here somewhere... hehe get it? hanging around?

So what's different about the studio prototype and the proof? 

6) Our yarn, special projects, and event cards are slightly larger. That makes them a bit easier to shuffle, and they fit nicely in standard sleeves (70x70mm). 

7) Our project cards are slightly smaller than the studio prototype. Again, they'll fit nicely into standard card sleeves (63x41mm).

8) The custom action markers are smaller than the studio prototype. If you watch the video, you'll notice it feels way better on the player board. 

9) We also received our colorblind friendly yarn tokens! Red and Purple have a pentagon shape (5 pointed edges), Blue and Orange have a square shape (4 pointed edges), and Green and Yellow have a Triangle Shape (3 pointed edges). These accessible tokens will replace our circular shaped ones and will be part of the base games because accessibility matters. For those concerned, we also consulted with several colorblind play testers and respected people within the hobby industry who were also colorblind and they found that our solution for ArchRavels worked great for their needs! 

10) Last but not least, since it's one of our favorite changes to the game we made so far: Our Cat Meeple is HUGE! #chonky

How do I pack ArchRavels? 

Great question! We made this nifty reels video on our instagram showing exactly how to pack ArchRavels. While you're there, we'd love it if you gave us a follow! 

Questions, comments, and concerns

Of course if you still have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email us at [email protected]. We'll get back to you as soon as we can! 

But I want to speak to an actual face? Check out Twitch

If you have any further questions, we'll be doing a live stream sharing this proof on Twitch tonight at 5:45pm CT during our XYZ Stream Nite. Please give us a follow there too and ask us questions! 

Thank you so much for believing in us and letting us express ourselves in our craft of designing and developing fun games.

Keep Crafting, 

Team XYZ 

ArchRavels Progress & Gen Con Online
almost 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 31, 2020 at 08:52:14 AM

Hey Crafters!

We have some bad news and good news. Since we like to end things on a high note, let's breakdown the bad first: 

Fulfillment has been pushed back to November :(

We're so sorry that our project is going to be late, and we apologize for not updating you folks sooner. We were so hopeful to ship in time and possibly in denial that we wouldn't be able to ship by September. So why are we late? 2020 has been a challenging year (and that's an understatement). In hindsight, there were things that we could have done as early as April to mitigate the damage to our delivery schedule. At the time, it was a struggle for each member of our team to do anything with COVID-19 looming over us. 

What now? 

It may have taken some time, but we've acclimated to the reality that is 2020, and we're ready to get back to work. In terms of production specifics, we have approved the digital proof of all the printed material (cards, game board, rule book, box, etc). We're waiting for the physical proofs to arrive, which we anticipate will be late next week, and we'll post pictures ASAP.

As for the deluxe components, the wooden bowls proof has been approved, and they've moved into mass production. The neoprene mats have a short turnaround, and with one small edit, they'll be ready to go in plenty of time. The realistic resources are underway as well.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at [email protected] 

Good News: Gen Con Online! 

You can join us live at Gen Con Online! 

We have scheduled live events  on our Twitch where you can talk to the team, the designers, ask us burning questions, and check out some sneak peeks of new games we've been working on. If you can't wait, you can also check out our YouTube where we demo our games including ArchRavels. 

Streaming Schedule On Twitch 

Thanks for reading, and we hope to chat with you all live on Twitch starting tomorrow!

Keep on crafting, 

Team XYZ

ArchRavels Blank Proof Photos & Yarn Bowl Experiment!
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 02:23:22 AM

Hi Crafters!

We have a few exciting sneak peeks to share with you as a big thanks for supporting ArchRavels!

Blank Proofs

Here's a photo of the blank proofs we received from the manufacturer. Because these are blanks there are no colors. Also please keep in mind that the lighting may vary depending on the photo.

Since you all may be curious the base tray will be in this Pantone Bleached Sand color. 

And the yarn bazaar tray and bowls will be in Pantone's Monk's Robe color. 

Here is a spec sheet & sample of the custom action markers and the cat meeple that we unlocked as a team! Again this is a photo taken by the manufacturer so the lighting may not be perfect. 

Here's a spec sheet and sample of the wooden yarn tokens. If you're wondering why the yarn tokens are shaped and not circular like our prototype version, we took into careful consideration that our game was accessible to colorblind gamers by adding the unique shapes. 

Yarn Bowl Testing

We posted a poll about which yarn bowl cut out (smaller swirl vs larger swirl) that you would prefer. The larger swirl won but there were a few concerns about the cutout in the comments. For example, 

We take your concerns seriously so we conducted an experiment to answer once. and. for. all:  

Will the yarn tokens slip through the swirl? 

(No humans or robots were harmed in the making of this film)  

 Thanks again for reading and watching!

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to [email protected]

Keep Crafting, 

Team XYZ Game Labs