In MoDian (One of Kickstarter platform in China), Celestial's KS campaign got cancelled as well. But they made a statement that the canceling is to protect the DoM backers, they just don't want more stuffs get in the way before DoM backers received their games. KS campaign of celestial will be relaunch after DoM get delivered.
crazy! i blinked, and in that waking instant, celestial had launched. later, i sneezed, and immediately, your video popped up, explaining how celestial has noped its way out. thanks for the heads up! at least this break gives me more time to put some money aside for this beast.
HAH! Yeah it was a crazy single day lol That is a pro right? At least we now have an idea of how much it'll cost us. I wonder if they might swap to GF for stretch pay?
So, I'm one of the scmucks that pledged the 'Otherworld Experience' for Dawn of Madness back in '19 with an estimated deliver of '10/21.. They've missed the target of 2 years and counting. About mid way through the random updates, it was explained the game was radically re-written and re-worked in many aspects. I have a feeling the minis were already sculpted and molds made before the game was finalized, so ergo, once they realized through playtesting that things weren't working...they shoe-horned a 'new' game around the stock of minis they already had. The 'Dawn of Madness' game to be delivered will be different from the game originally advertised....At this point I feel lucky I'm only out $150. I'm not even sure I have real interest anymore, other than I admit, I did like the minis. Yeah, makes me question 'facts' of 'recent' issues, when so many other companies were able to ship and deliver by now originally citing the 'same' issues. I understand *some* delays and it's to be expected, but the inconsistent updates and messaging behind the Dawn of Madenss campaign makes me feel they only had a concept of a game and were literally making it up as they go....even after 1-2 years of development. I don't think I'll back another from them again.
It was totally wild. I thought I was somehow out of the loop and didn't know the launch date, but no, it just launched out of nowhere. I really can't get my head around this launch, even after the "explanation". I've never seen anything like this. Absolutely wild. It makes no sense why they wouldn't, at the very least, use free advertising like messaging all previous backers with a heads up about the launch a few months in advance. That costs nothing
@@danielcarlsen9228 yes, me too, but it was the same day as the launch. What I meant was that they should have done that months and months prior to launch. If they did do that, I missed it completely
They're asking for an insane amount of money for an All-In, they have an established history of slow promised delivery and an inability to meet those slow deadlines, and they have not explained at all why this is a fun game to play outside the minis. I have concerns about the art direction (the 80s style sexualization of the female body doesn't need to be so prolific - there are a lot of ways to make evocative and even enticing figures that do not rely upon giant boobs). I enjoyed Deep Madness (sculpts, game and conceptualization), but this is not something I can back given the cost, lack of information, art direction and lack of faith in a timely delivery.
Honestly I don't think the art relies on giant boobs at all. Might just be me tho but I don't have a problem with how they're presented here. Not all female mini's have huge boobs and the poses to me are not sexualized at all. (are they very naked however, yes definitely) Boobs are still part of the female body and how they're presented here I think there's a lot of emphasis on other parts of their design as well. Its not just wow BOOBS in ur face. (not saying ur opinion is wrong or anything, i just wanted to share a different view. I know we all have different preferences).
Some of the angry reactions just sound a bit like a storm in a teacup to me. Granted in an ideal world we would all like for a company to finish delivering a project before launching a new campaign. But in reality it rarely happens and people are generally OK with it. CMON launches campaign back to back. I have yet to read criticism that they should finish outstanding projects before starting new ones. Trudvang is a project that is ridiculously late. Yet people with throw hundrends of cash at the next zombicide/ marvel/ whatever. Anyway I am also happy to see the campaign cancelled but for different reasons. The miniatures look stunning and the game deserves to be a success. So I would prefer if they spend time actually advertising it, sending copies to reviewers, raising awareness and hype. Not launch it in the middle of the night like it's a secret.
The miniatures might be decent but the game looks nonexistant or bare bones at best. This is why they don't have any prototypes out, because there's nothing to preview. I think they need to focus on miniatures, since that is clearly their passion.
I disagree actually. Twisted fables and deep madness had both excellent gameplay so the developers are clearly able to make fun games not just minis. They put emphasis on miniatures because they are pretty much done.
Hard plastic sprue minis are great and i enjoy assembling and customizing them with extra bits and changing poses. You can even carve it like you would carve wood to add extra details if you want. i can understand people that arent a fan of it though, especially if they arent very good at it. it takes time and patience and steady hands (and stinky plastic cement)
Me: "Man, $1200 all-in. This game is way too expensive" Also Me: Bought all of KDM for over $3k All companies who are launching campaigns should ask themselves: Will it look like we're out of money like Mythic Games and trying to fund past stuff if we do this right now 😅 In any case, this was a very ill conceived campaign and probably did them more harm than good. No one wants to see a company they're about to give a ton on money too look like they have no clue what they're doing
Yeah, while it's obviously an expensive game, the price is actually very reasonable for the amount and quality of the miniatures alone. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in getting the miniatures for a game that I know basically nothing about. I do appreciate that their statement seemed to be pretty honest and straightforward about the mistakes they made. We'll see how this looks when it rolls around again.
Totally agree. For the complexity of the miniature sculpts/bases and amount of sprues to build everything, it's very cheap compared to KDM models (for example) that are nowhere near as complex
Yeah, the big thing I took away from this campaign is, do they even have a clue what they are doing? I guess it's selling mini's and not a boardgame at the very best. At the worst, no they absolutely don't. And they didn't cancel because they cared about backers, or because of the backlash. It's because they weren't going to fund. Like in the update they say the mini's have been sitting in the warehouse for over a year. I guess they knew how many backers they'd have or something?
@@bassmeo3937 It definitely seems odd. I'm not sure I buy the whole "We've been talking about launching this forever. Let's do it real quick with no notice at all so we can get it out there even if we're not prepared"
Totally agree on many of these points, especially the note on delivery Hype. I have gotten everything that IV Studios makes and much of that has to do with how happy I have been with the delivered projects. I absolutely loved Moonrakers, then I bought Veiled Fate off their site and loved that and since then have backed anything they do. Every time they deliver, it has always been a good experience and I just keep going back for more, even if I haven't played all their games yet (still haven't played MM).
I want to try to articulate why, as a DoM backer, the Celestial campaign bothered me while other similar situations like the DM reprint didn't: - Quite a bit of gaslighting about things like "DoM is late because we redesigned it based on backers feedback". First of all, DoM had to be redesigned because its design was not complete before the campaign, as demonstrated by the half baked prototypes sent to youtubers. Second, that redesign was finished years ago and the real delay was caused by the incredibly slow pace of writing the narrative. And having to delay even starting to write that narrative until Byron had time to write the Shattered Sea book, which was a very late delivery of a previous kickstarter - Bad taste of having all communications in the new campaign handled by Byron when he is supposed to be working on finishing the 5 remaining books for DoM. Can Byron really be the only person in DG who knows enough English to be able to babysit a KS campaign? Can I really believe that Byron would have put any serious work in writing for DoM during this month when he would have to run the Celestial campaign? Exactly how much of Byron's time that should have gone to writing for DoM has been instead spent to prepare the Celestial campaign content? - Terrible communication and transparency for DoM. This matters, because other very late games like Aeon Trespass were able to launch somewhat successful new campaigns before delivery based on the stellar quality of the communication and the transparency about progress. - Another very much unfinished design. We know that DoM went to KS with an unfinished design and very little story content written for it. Celestials is a game heavy on miniatures and light on gameplay, still the miniatures would have been delivered a year before the gameplay content. This is weird, why the gameplay content hasn't been locked down if the game has been in development for 6 years now? This reads to me like another underbaked product from DG getting to KS. And the lack of gameplay demos, prototypes and previews only solidifies this impression. If DG really needed to push this campaign out right now, I believe they should have branded it as "Miniatures of Celestial", sell the miniatures without any gameplay content for hobbyists to build and paint (and whoever is buying a thousand dollars worth of miniatures now without a hint of how the gameplay is going to look like, is probably mostly interested in the miniatures nonetheless). Have someone else run this campaign making clear that Byron is way too busy working to finish DoM. They could have done one of Byron's livestreams to provide a DoM update and push the Celestials minis, but that should have been it. They could have brought the gameplay content for Celestial as a different KS down the line toghether with a miniatures reprint. I would not have had a problem with that since any sculptor that DG employs has likely finished any work on DoM and the DM reprint a long time ago.
From an outside view, as someone who has no stake in any of their other campaigns, it really does appear as though these are miniatures first games. I think perhaps they should lean into what they are clearly passionate about (the minis) and just make those. If they want to develop a game around them, that's fine, but don't put something out that is so clearly tacked on just to sell the minis because some people will genuinely want to play the game. What little info they had on the game in this campaign made it look about as boring as you can make a generic skirmish game look.
I have no stake in any of their campaigns but I'd agree that while the update was "fine" from a PR standpoint compared to a lot of other companies it just felt like gaslighting. Clearly they don't care about backers since they couldn't even be bothered to have gameplay video's when they say themselves say the plan was to launch now. The decision to not postpone based on not delivering DOM might have been a knee jerk reaction, but this campaign wasn't ready regardless if DOM was delivered or not.
I'm pretty much done with any crowdfunding miniatures heavy campaign now unless it's an Awaken Realms or CMON (really just X United now) game. There's just too much risk in the campaign not delivering.
Most confusing thing about the Celestial campaign was that I had absolutely no clue as to what the game actually was. I think it's like a skirmish game, but I have no idea! I think it's really good of them to cancel the game until Dawn of Madness W1 ships, really shows people that Diemension is a company that cares about their backers. As for the delays on the project, it's really annoying to have our money locked up like this for so long, but it really isn't like other games. The retooling of gameplay aside, Byron is essentially writing several full length novels. I have no doubt if this game wasn't so narratively focused we'd have seen it by now.
As a big fan of the resin line the kickstarter made me wish it had stayed a resin line. I only need so many messed up looking space people, and never really cared about the game aspect. Also I bet a lot of people saw those $150+ terain pieces and just noped out of the project entirely. I did go in for one of the $175 boxes just to show them some interest, but I was also like 90% sure it would be cancelled.
I dont mind the cancelation, what worried me the most it was VAT free, and then he said in the comments unless the Pledge Manager adds something. And they were going to add backekit or gamefound as PM and both add it automaticly, So the VAT free wasnt even real. Thats false advertising.
I know you've covered some on this game but 1) I had no idea the crowd funding campaign launched. 2) What is the gameplay?!?!?! It's great that it has expensive minis, but how do you play it?
They backpedal after the stale state of the launch and it should be better for everyone, but they clearly not listen to the comments feedback in the preview kickstarter, at some point the art disappeared from the preview (I was making manuals backups of the images from time to time), about two weeks the link broke so I thought "oh, they will delay the launch" and this week, hop, they launch out of nowhere.
PR-wise the update was pretty good. Yet, call me cynical at this point, but I don't believe any of it. They cancelled because they weren't funding, simple as that. If they cared about backers they wouldn't have launched the campaign in the first place. Considering there also wasn't even real info on how to play the game. Also, if the campaign is any indication of the product, it doesn't bode well. Like in the update they also mentioned the mini's have been sitting in the warehouse for over a year. I guess they knew how many backers they'd have or something? Makes no sense to me.
Is the plan that you get the miniatures a year before the game arrives so you have enough time to assemble and paint them all? Seems like a sus project to be avoided but I expect many will go all in and then be surprised when it goes all Mythic in 2 years time.
I can't wait for this to relaunch. I'm gonna save up for the gameplay all-in cause... honestly.... I'm just here for the mini's. I might play the game as well but I don't expect to. I have some of the resin mini's and the designs are stunning. Gonna save up some extra money in the meantime. I really hope they can deliver on this project within the time estimate and not have a multiple year delay. Hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those projects that never gets made. Would be a shame.
If truth be told, Dawn of madness is one of the things I backed which is waaaaay up on the list of games I am looking forward to play, I just hope its worth the wait :), I agree that launching another big game when this has taken soooo long is disheartening for DOM backers.
First I heard was when it showed up in my Instagram feed. It had one comment and so hadn't been on there for long? Went to Kickstarter page and it was cancelled! Crazy. Saved me some money though?!
I've been following you and Diemension Games for a while now. I know that you are also hyped for this game and maybe DoM to. But the have nobody to have overviewing their campaigns. . I think they should hire you for an overview for their campaigns. I think that Byron would appriciate your opinion on this. And so would a lot of backers do. Somehow I am on a double here. To believe or not to believe. I was hyped for DoM. Now.... Maybe. And to pay over €1000 for a game that I will be playing alone. Thank you for this video. I truly appriciate it.
This was a no brainer. I saw this on KS and thought the company was going insolvent the way they put out the game???? Without an actual game. Just minis and a ridiculous price. Looked like a cash grab to deliver dawn of madness. Let me rant about dimension games and I really like them. I have an all in on dawn of madness and backed the reprint of deep madness. I played deep madness at a convention and LOVE the game. It’s amazing. And dawn of madness is my dream game. Horror boss battler adult themed and scary with very good writing. Butttttttttt Dawn of madness has 8 characters. 2 unlocked through stretch goals and 2 in add ons. Each character is a separate campaign. That’s a very ambitious goal and they are having a near impossible time to even get the game out with the first 4 characters. I am worried we won’t get the last 4.
Doing the campaign before Dawn ships would probably hurt their sales, as will the surprise launch, of course. I'm not really too overboard with the "don't make a campaign until other is fulfilled" though. I mean, you've got designers/ authors (though most of these are freelance for kickstarters often enough), once they finish their project and it's off to the press/ production, then you can move them to a new project without it hindering the old project at all really. It's not like they need guys to sit around doing nothing while a product is being produced in China. That said, they had the same 2 year "we're giving you a REAL date" thing in Dawn and that meant nothing. I have no real faith in the company and wouldn't back it to begin with, but not because I think they need to deliver Dawn before making another product. Obviously there is a fear of tossing money into the fire, but that's pretty common on kickstarter anyway. At least they didn't come out with a new company to push Celestial in secret. :)
Though, another thing I forgot was the delay to them STARTING Dawn's writing because he was also writing a novel for Deep Madness or something? Just meh, overall.
You always said "make games, not campaigns" - - the corollary is "make games, not miniature collections with a bare-bones ruleset attached." Awaken Realms has cool minis, but they build deep and immersive narrative to make you actually *care* about the minis. I'm sure there are some people who are just into mini painting as a hobby, and wouldn't care about the actual game. But those people are an edge case. You can't sell a big campaign on just them, or treating them as the primary audience.
@@TheKingofAverage after a game like ISS Vanguard or Tamashii, I don't think I could ever back Celestial and go "oh, five scenarios with minimal world building on top of some generic skirmish rules, sure I'll pay hundreds of dollars for that"
I'm sorry but I disagree with the AR take a bit. A lot of their mini's are equally unnecessary. For example, ISS Vanguard. Yes, the hero mini's might be worth it, but that add-on for ships and enemies definitely isn't. At least they didn't put them in the core game though.
Every AR game has a major design flaw that makes me wonder did they play test this enough? I began noticing with the random health values for aliens in Nemesis, to LoH to Ragnarok, to Tainted Grail. The latest debacle is Dragon Eclipse, lots of minis shown but where are the cards? How does the card combo mechanics actually work? UA-camrs showing limited gameplay means it’s not baked enough. I’ll wait for retail.
Did not raise enough as they wanted, obviously. Honestly, I gave up in the middle of the page while scrolling down, then I closed it, LOL. So much information and stuff, so many big freaking minis, I don't know what I would do with all this, I think they should really re-assess this and take it down a notch.. ;)
These miniature board game manufacturers drive me nuts. They don't even explain what the game mechanics are or how it's played, they just tell you the component list. As if board game backers are more concerned about buying cheap plastic and cardboard in bulk. As an industry, can we please focus on the game first and the components AFTER you make something worth while? This is starting to become a collectible hobby. I bet most of these games get played an average of 1 time or less before the next one is purchased. And that is OK if you are a collector. But I still want a good game before the fluff is added.
Honestly, the miniatures were too much for me. not even just cost, but the way they looked was so weird/out there that I couldn't really wrap my head around how I would play a game with them. They seemed more like something that'd fit a scenario like this: Friend: "wow you have some weird looking miniatures!" Me: "weird, you haven't even begun to weird!" *pulls out Celestial miniatures* Friend: "what a terrible day to have eyes"
I thought they mostly looked quite good. It was just another mountain of plastic that I don't need, for a game that I know almost nothing about how it plays. They need to start leading with interesting gameplay rather than just trying to sell me the art design.
Yeah, like, ATO is interesting weird. This was very very single note half-face bug boob nonsense. You have to reaaaally be a fan of that...or have zero shame.
@@arthurdent9281 Because the game is clearly creating an onanistic bug boob fantasy space. Not because it has bodies but because it has the exact same twisted sexualization over and over again. So like I said, you can't be oblivious to it, you have to embrace it without shame or be particularly apathetic to it.
@@nifarious This is in the horror genre, so twisted seems appropriate. The human form has long been a subject of art, and especially horror-related art, as that twisting of the beautiful into the horrific is designed to affect primal human emotions and is intended to be disturbing. These are essentially primeval forces taking these forms. Why these forms? Because they're the way that humans have always imagined the embodiment of gods and demons to look like, and they're intended to be horrific. I'd say the only silliness here is the fact that they used some rather ridiculous methods of covering the boobs when they could have simply gone with another form, or left them uncovered. There are bare-chested male forms in there as well, after all. If you want to fixate only on the boobs, then that's your decision, although I think anybody whacking it to monstrous miniatures has bigger issues.
Looked interesting but Final Girl Season 3 is the one that's putting my bank account into the negatives, so people buy my 3d prints or painted games on Etsy to pay for my board game addiction, lol,
This inspires absolutely zero confidence in this company. I don't understand how they can launch a campaign withlut any kind of clear plan. Whilst the concept and miniatures seem fantastic, I have absolutely zero idea what kind of game this is.
They had a plan since they were expecting to deliver DOM in august and launch the campaign after that. Even with that plan they couldn't be bothered to actually explain the game on their campaign page, or have independent reviews. Couldn't even be bothered to make a video themselves. The update is a whole lot of gaslighting and fake apologies. The only knee-jerk reaction was not delaying the campaign based on DOM delivery.
@@TheKingofAverage yeah man, I think we need some solid hands-on content to really demonstrate the flow of the game. That said, they did have an alpha rulebook on the campaign page, so I will take a look. For now though, I am highly sceptical. With the volatility of big KS campaigns, I don't understand why they wouldn't break it up a bit instead of doing one huge chunk of a campaign.
Ahahah Sprue And that price... Diemension has to understand that not all creators can be poot.. he created a sort of cult following with kdm being the "first" in a new line of product, something no one else managed to do//justify.... And yet, here they are, asking 550 usd for a gameplay all in (not even all in) with 2 games still pending since years.. Like wtf did they expect would happen?
For this quality level of miniatures, I'd expect sprues. You can do much cooler things when the pieces are created separately. They're also fun to put together if the quality is good. The problem for me was that there was practically no info about the game itself! No idea how they could decide to launch without that!
Sorry that you weren't able to get it yet, but it really was too early to launch Celestial due to their inability to deliver on DoM (I got a refund myself). I'm not interested myself, but hopefully, it comes to fruition someday for those who want it.
KoA, dont you think maybe its a perfect campaign strategy to put it there without any info out of the blue and cancel it? We are talking about it now right? I think Byron is a genius! :D
In MoDian (One of Kickstarter platform in China), Celestial's KS campaign got cancelled as well. But they made a statement that the canceling is to protect the DoM backers, they just don't want more stuffs get in the way before DoM backers received their games. KS campaign of celestial will be relaunch after DoM get delivered.
crazy! i blinked, and in that waking instant, celestial had launched. later, i sneezed, and immediately, your video popped up, explaining how celestial has noped its way out. thanks for the heads up! at least this break gives me more time to put some money aside for this beast.
HAH! Yeah it was a crazy single day lol
That is a pro right? At least we now have an idea of how much it'll cost us. I wonder if they might swap to GF for stretch pay?
@@TheKingofAverage that's right! stretch pay would be welcomed here.
So, I'm one of the scmucks that pledged the 'Otherworld Experience' for Dawn of Madness back in '19 with an estimated deliver of '10/21.. They've missed the target of 2 years and counting. About mid way through the random updates, it was explained the game was radically re-written and re-worked in many aspects. I have a feeling the minis were already sculpted and molds made before the game was finalized, so ergo, once they realized through playtesting that things weren't working...they shoe-horned a 'new' game around the stock of minis they already had. The 'Dawn of Madness' game to be delivered will be different from the game originally advertised....At this point I feel lucky I'm only out $150. I'm not even sure I have real interest anymore, other than I admit, I did like the minis. Yeah, makes me question 'facts' of 'recent' issues, when so many other companies were able to ship and deliver by now originally citing the 'same' issues. I understand *some* delays and it's to be expected, but the inconsistent updates and messaging behind the Dawn of Madenss campaign makes me feel they only had a concept of a game and were literally making it up as they go....even after 1-2 years of development. I don't think I'll back another from them again.
It was totally wild. I thought I was somehow out of the loop and didn't know the launch date, but no, it just launched out of nowhere. I really can't get my head around this launch, even after the "explanation". I've never seen anything like this. Absolutely wild. It makes no sense why they wouldn't, at the very least, use free advertising like messaging all previous backers with a heads up about the launch a few months in advance. That costs nothing
I received a note for backing Deep Madness.
@@danielcarlsen9228 yes, me too, but it was the same day as the launch. What I meant was that they should have done that months and months prior to launch. If they did do that, I missed it completely
@@stevekozlowski5963 Ah okay! Like a "Notify me on launch" page? Yeah, that works well for a larger day 1 influx.
Came for the tea on this Kickstarter, stayed because cute dog was also in the video.
:D He insisted on being in the video! As soon as I turned the camera on lol
I was surprised, intrigued, then saw the price and noped outta there.
Hah! A roller coaster of emotions :D
This KS was a real shitshow from A to Z. So happy they got a reality check. And shame on them and their bs apology!
Hello beautiful doggo
They're asking for an insane amount of money for an All-In, they have an established history of slow promised delivery and an inability to meet those slow deadlines, and they have not explained at all why this is a fun game to play outside the minis. I have concerns about the art direction (the 80s style sexualization of the female body doesn't need to be so prolific - there are a lot of ways to make evocative and even enticing figures that do not rely upon giant boobs). I enjoyed Deep Madness (sculpts, game and conceptualization), but this is not something I can back given the cost, lack of information, art direction and lack of faith in a timely delivery.
Honestly I don't think the art relies on giant boobs at all. Might just be me tho but I don't have a problem with how they're presented here. Not all female mini's have huge boobs and the poses to me are not sexualized at all. (are they very naked however, yes definitely) Boobs are still part of the female body and how they're presented here I think there's a lot of emphasis on other parts of their design as well. Its not just wow BOOBS in ur face. (not saying ur opinion is wrong or anything, i just wanted to share a different view. I know we all have different preferences).
Some of the angry reactions just sound a bit like a storm in a teacup to me. Granted in an ideal world we would all like for a company to finish delivering a project before launching a new campaign. But in reality it rarely happens and people are generally OK with it. CMON launches campaign back to back. I have yet to read criticism that they should finish outstanding projects before starting new ones. Trudvang is a project that is ridiculously late. Yet people with throw hundrends of cash at the next zombicide/ marvel/ whatever.
Anyway I am also happy to see the campaign cancelled but for different reasons. The miniatures look stunning and the game deserves to be a success. So I would prefer if they spend time actually advertising it, sending copies to reviewers, raising awareness and hype. Not launch it in the middle of the night like it's a secret.
The miniatures might be decent but the game looks nonexistant or bare bones at best. This is why they don't have any prototypes out, because there's nothing to preview. I think they need to focus on miniatures, since that is clearly their passion.
I disagree actually. Twisted fables and deep madness had both excellent gameplay so the developers are clearly able to make fun games not just minis. They put emphasis on miniatures because they are pretty much done.
Hard plastic sprue minis are great and i enjoy assembling and customizing them with extra bits and changing poses. You can even carve it like you would carve wood to add extra details if you want. i can understand people that arent a fan of it though, especially if they arent very good at it. it takes time and patience and steady hands (and stinky plastic cement)
Me: "Man, $1200 all-in. This game is way too expensive"
Also Me: Bought all of KDM for over $3k
All companies who are launching campaigns should ask themselves:
Will it look like we're out of money like Mythic Games and trying to fund past stuff if we do this right now 😅
In any case, this was a very ill conceived campaign and probably did them more harm than good. No one wants to see a company they're about to give a ton on money too look like they have no clue what they're doing
Yeah, while it's obviously an expensive game, the price is actually very reasonable for the amount and quality of the miniatures alone. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in getting the miniatures for a game that I know basically nothing about. I do appreciate that their statement seemed to be pretty honest and straightforward about the mistakes they made. We'll see how this looks when it rolls around again.
Totally agree. For the complexity of the miniature sculpts/bases and amount of sprues to build everything, it's very cheap compared to KDM models (for example) that are nowhere near as complex
Sounds like you are bad with money
Yeah, the big thing I took away from this campaign is, do they even have a clue what they are doing? I guess it's selling mini's and not a boardgame at the very best. At the worst, no they absolutely don't.
And they didn't cancel because they cared about backers, or because of the backlash. It's because they weren't going to fund.
Like in the update they say the mini's have been sitting in the warehouse for over a year. I guess they knew how many backers they'd have or something?
@@bassmeo3937 It definitely seems odd. I'm not sure I buy the whole "We've been talking about launching this forever. Let's do it real quick with no notice at all so we can get it out there even if we're not prepared"
I really liked the weird minis with chinese touch, but too expensive and too much storage space for me....
I've backed about 15 games these last two years and I've never even heard of this
Was waiting for this because I loved the Celestial miniatures from BCC but those are expensive cast resin so it’s cool to see these in plastic
Totally agree on many of these points, especially the note on delivery Hype. I have gotten everything that IV Studios makes and much of that has to do with how happy I have been with the delivered projects. I absolutely loved Moonrakers, then I bought Veiled Fate off their site and loved that and since then have backed anything they do. Every time they deliver, it has always been a good experience and I just keep going back for more, even if I haven't played all their games yet (still haven't played MM).
on what day(s) will you be at Spiel ?
I want to try to articulate why, as a DoM backer, the Celestial campaign bothered me while other similar situations like the DM reprint didn't:
- Quite a bit of gaslighting about things like "DoM is late because we redesigned it based on backers feedback". First of all, DoM had to be redesigned because its design was not complete before the campaign, as demonstrated by the half baked prototypes sent to youtubers. Second, that redesign was finished years ago and the real delay was caused by the incredibly slow pace of writing the narrative. And having to delay even starting to write that narrative until Byron had time to write the Shattered Sea book, which was a very late delivery of a previous kickstarter
- Bad taste of having all communications in the new campaign handled by Byron when he is supposed to be working on finishing the 5 remaining books for DoM. Can Byron really be the only person in DG who knows enough English to be able to babysit a KS campaign? Can I really believe that Byron would have put any serious work in writing for DoM during this month when he would have to run the Celestial campaign? Exactly how much of Byron's time that should have gone to writing for DoM has been instead spent to prepare the Celestial campaign content?
- Terrible communication and transparency for DoM. This matters, because other very late games like Aeon Trespass were able to launch somewhat successful new campaigns before delivery based on the stellar quality of the communication and the transparency about progress.
- Another very much unfinished design. We know that DoM went to KS with an unfinished design and very little story content written for it. Celestials is a game heavy on miniatures and light on gameplay, still the miniatures would have been delivered a year before the gameplay content. This is weird, why the gameplay content hasn't been locked down if the game has been in development for 6 years now? This reads to me like another underbaked product from DG getting to KS. And the lack of gameplay demos, prototypes and previews only solidifies this impression.
If DG really needed to push this campaign out right now, I believe they should have branded it as "Miniatures of Celestial", sell the miniatures without any gameplay content for hobbyists to build and paint (and whoever is buying a thousand dollars worth of miniatures now without a hint of how the gameplay is going to look like, is probably mostly interested in the miniatures nonetheless). Have someone else run this campaign making clear that Byron is way too busy working to finish DoM. They could have done one of Byron's livestreams to provide a DoM update and push the Celestials minis, but that should have been it. They could have brought the gameplay content for Celestial as a different KS down the line toghether with a miniatures reprint. I would not have had a problem with that since any sculptor that DG employs has likely finished any work on DoM and the DM reprint a long time ago.
From an outside view, as someone who has no stake in any of their other campaigns, it really does appear as though these are miniatures first games. I think perhaps they should lean into what they are clearly passionate about (the minis) and just make those. If they want to develop a game around them, that's fine, but don't put something out that is so clearly tacked on just to sell the minis because some people will genuinely want to play the game. What little info they had on the game in this campaign made it look about as boring as you can make a generic skirmish game look.
I have no stake in any of their campaigns but I'd agree that while the update was "fine" from a PR standpoint compared to a lot of other companies it just felt like gaslighting.
Clearly they don't care about backers since they couldn't even be bothered to have gameplay video's when they say themselves say the plan was to launch now. The decision to not postpone based on not delivering DOM might have been a knee jerk reaction, but this campaign wasn't ready regardless if DOM was delivered or not.
I'm pretty much done with any crowdfunding miniatures heavy campaign now unless it's an Awaken Realms or CMON (really just X United now) game. There's just too much risk in the campaign not delivering.
Most confusing thing about the Celestial campaign was that I had absolutely no clue as to what the game actually was.
I think it's like a skirmish game, but I have no idea!
I think it's really good of them to cancel the game until Dawn of Madness W1 ships, really shows people that Diemension is a company that cares about their backers.
As for the delays on the project, it's really annoying to have our money locked up like this for so long, but it really isn't like other games.
The retooling of gameplay aside, Byron is essentially writing several full length novels.
I have no doubt if this game wasn't so narratively focused we'd have seen it by now.
As a big fan of the resin line the kickstarter made me wish it had stayed a resin line. I only need so many messed up looking space people, and never really cared about the game aspect. Also I bet a lot of people saw those $150+ terain pieces and just noped out of the project entirely.
I did go in for one of the $175 boxes just to show them some interest, but I was also like 90% sure it would be cancelled.
I dont mind the cancelation, what worried me the most it was VAT free, and then he said in the comments unless the Pledge Manager adds something.
And they were going to add backekit or gamefound as PM and both add it automaticly,
So the VAT free wasnt even real. Thats false advertising.
I think I recall them having issue accurately stating this for their last deep madness as well. I'm not sure they have a huge grasp on it
I know you've covered some on this game but 1) I had no idea the crowd funding campaign launched. 2) What is the gameplay?!?!?! It's great that it has expensive minis, but how do you play it?
I don't think they even know that yet, which is a big part of the problem.
Didn't see the dog until its tongue licked the air
hah! :D
They backpedal after the stale state of the launch and it should be better for everyone, but they clearly not listen to the comments feedback in the preview kickstarter, at some point the art disappeared from the preview (I was making manuals backups of the images from time to time), about two weeks the link broke so I thought "oh, they will delay the launch" and this week, hop, they launch out of nowhere.
So once it goes it's scheduled to go live I believe it stops being a preview page on KS.
It seems like every week, my decision to NOT fund Kickstarter games for established game companies- is completely validated.
PR-wise the update was pretty good. Yet, call me cynical at this point, but I don't believe any of it. They cancelled because they weren't funding, simple as that. If they cared about backers they wouldn't have launched the campaign in the first place. Considering there also wasn't even real info on how to play the game. Also, if the campaign is any indication of the product, it doesn't bode well.
Like in the update they also mentioned the mini's have been sitting in the warehouse for over a year. I guess they knew how many backers they'd have or something? Makes no sense to me.
Is the plan that you get the miniatures a year before the game arrives so you have enough time to assemble and paint them all? Seems like a sus project to be avoided but I expect many will go all in and then be surprised when it goes all Mythic in 2 years time.
I can't wait for this to relaunch. I'm gonna save up for the gameplay all-in cause... honestly.... I'm just here for the mini's. I might play the game as well but I don't expect to. I have some of the resin mini's and the designs are stunning. Gonna save up some extra money in the meantime. I really hope they can deliver on this project within the time estimate and not have a multiple year delay. Hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those projects that never gets made. Would be a shame.
If truth be told, Dawn of madness is one of the things I backed which is waaaaay up on the list of games I am looking forward to play, I just hope its worth the wait :), I agree that launching another big game when this has taken soooo long is disheartening for DOM backers.
I hope so too! I think as long as the game plays great that backers are a very forgiving group :)
First I heard was when it showed up in my Instagram feed. It had one comment and so hadn't been on there for long? Went to Kickstarter page and it was cancelled! Crazy. Saved me some money though?!
I give them props for realizing their mistake and acting to correct it but yeah, was gone in a flash!
I've been following you and Diemension Games for a while now. I know that you are also hyped for this game and maybe DoM to. But the have nobody to have overviewing their campaigns. . I think they should hire you for an overview for their campaigns. I think that Byron would appriciate your opinion on this. And so would a lot of backers do. Somehow I am on a double here. To believe or not to believe. I was hyped for DoM. Now.... Maybe. And to pay over €1000 for a game that I will be playing alone. Thank you for this video. I truly appriciate it.
This was a no brainer.
I saw this on KS and thought the company was going insolvent the way they put out the game????
Without an actual game. Just minis and a ridiculous price.
Looked like a cash grab to deliver dawn of madness.
Let me rant about dimension games and I really like them.
I have an all in on dawn of madness and backed the reprint of deep madness. I played deep madness at a convention and LOVE the game. It’s amazing. And dawn of madness is my dream game. Horror boss battler adult themed and scary with very good writing.
Butttttttttt
Dawn of madness has 8 characters. 2 unlocked through stretch goals and 2 in add ons.
Each character is a separate campaign. That’s a very ambitious goal and they are having a near impossible time to even get the game out with the first 4 characters. I am worried we won’t get the last 4.
Such a good boy.
I value a couple boxes of Pathfinder Pawns over miniatures any day.
Doing the campaign before Dawn ships would probably hurt their sales, as will the surprise launch, of course. I'm not really too overboard with the "don't make a campaign until other is fulfilled" though.
I mean, you've got designers/ authors (though most of these are freelance for kickstarters often enough), once they finish their project and it's off to the press/ production, then you can move them to a new project without it hindering the old project at all really. It's not like they need guys to sit around doing nothing while a product is being produced in China.
That said, they had the same 2 year "we're giving you a REAL date" thing in Dawn and that meant nothing. I have no real faith in the company and wouldn't back it to begin with, but not because I think they need to deliver Dawn before making another product. Obviously there is a fear of tossing money into the fire, but that's pretty common on kickstarter anyway. At least they didn't come out with a new company to push Celestial in secret. :)
Though, another thing I forgot was the delay to them STARTING Dawn's writing because he was also writing a novel for Deep Madness or something? Just meh, overall.
Ooooh, that's why the channel is called *King* of Average.
I can't tell if this is a jab or a compliment haha 😂
Always a compliment! But specifically I meant seeing your full name on your screenshot of the Facebook thread about Celestial.
Ohhh haha yes ;) I am not that original - some might even say average at naming things :)
I don't care what happened. If a company/individual does this on KS, I don't back anything else from them again.
way too much stuff, too much cost, too much sprues to assemble for me to jump in. Especially while i'm still waiting for DoM
You always said "make games, not campaigns" - - the corollary is "make games, not miniature collections with a bare-bones ruleset attached." Awaken Realms has cool minis, but they build deep and immersive narrative to make you actually *care* about the minis. I'm sure there are some people who are just into mini painting as a hobby, and wouldn't care about the actual game. But those people are an edge case. You can't sell a big campaign on just them, or treating them as the primary audience.
Yeah AR is almost the opposite, where the miniature are completely unnecessary.
@@TheKingofAverage after a game like ISS Vanguard or Tamashii, I don't think I could ever back Celestial and go "oh, five scenarios with minimal world building on top of some generic skirmish rules, sure I'll pay hundreds of dollars for that"
I'm sorry but I disagree with the AR take a bit. A lot of their mini's are equally unnecessary. For example, ISS Vanguard. Yes, the hero mini's might be worth it, but that add-on for ships and enemies definitely isn't. At least they didn't put them in the core game though.
@@bassmeo3937 right, that's the whole point -- they're optional buys on top of a strong narrative and thematic experience
Every AR game has a major design flaw that makes me wonder did they play test this enough? I began noticing with the random health values for aliens in Nemesis, to LoH to Ragnarok, to Tainted Grail. The latest debacle is Dragon Eclipse, lots of minis shown but where are the cards? How does the card combo mechanics actually work? UA-camrs showing limited gameplay means it’s not baked enough. I’ll wait for retail.
Mostly harmless? Do you know where your towel is?
Never leave home without it, especially when hitchhiking! ;)
Did not raise enough as they wanted, obviously. Honestly, I gave up in the middle of the page while scrolling down, then I closed it, LOL. So much information and stuff, so many big freaking minis, I don't know what I would do with all this, I think they should really re-assess this and take it down a notch.. ;)
Too many issues/red flags (intentional or unintentional . Won’t back when it comes back.
These miniature board game manufacturers drive me nuts. They don't even explain what the game mechanics are or how it's played, they just tell you the component list. As if board game backers are more concerned about buying cheap plastic and cardboard in bulk. As an industry, can we please focus on the game first and the components AFTER you make something worth while? This is starting to become a collectible hobby. I bet most of these games get played an average of 1 time or less before the next one is purchased. And that is OK if you are a collector. But I still want a good game before the fluff is added.
300k $ goal... realistic but is not how KS works. Was better to put 150$ K and then unlook SG considering base pledge... 175$? correcrt?
Honestly, the miniatures were too much for me. not even just cost, but the way they looked was so weird/out there that I couldn't really wrap my head around how I would play a game with them. They seemed more like something that'd fit a scenario like this:
Friend: "wow you have some weird looking miniatures!"
Me: "weird, you haven't even begun to weird!" *pulls out Celestial miniatures*
Friend: "what a terrible day to have eyes"
I thought they mostly looked quite good. It was just another mountain of plastic that I don't need, for a game that I know almost nothing about how it plays. They need to start leading with interesting gameplay rather than just trying to sell me the art design.
Yeah, like, ATO is interesting weird. This was very very single note half-face bug boob nonsense. You have to reaaaally be a fan of that...or have zero shame.
@@nifarious Shame for what? Because boobs? Seriously?
@@arthurdent9281 Because the game is clearly creating an onanistic bug boob fantasy space. Not because it has bodies but because it has the exact same twisted sexualization over and over again. So like I said, you can't be oblivious to it, you have to embrace it without shame or be particularly apathetic to it.
@@nifarious This is in the horror genre, so twisted seems appropriate. The human form has long been a subject of art, and especially horror-related art, as that twisting of the beautiful into the horrific is designed to affect primal human emotions and is intended to be disturbing.
These are essentially primeval forces taking these forms. Why these forms? Because they're the way that humans have always imagined the embodiment of gods and demons to look like, and they're intended to be horrific. I'd say the only silliness here is the fact that they used some rather ridiculous methods of covering the boobs when they could have simply gone with another form, or left them uncovered. There are bare-chested male forms in there as well, after all.
If you want to fixate only on the boobs, then that's your decision, although I think anybody whacking it to monstrous miniatures has bigger issues.
Looked interesting but Final Girl Season 3 is the one that's putting my bank account into the negatives, so people buy my 3d prints or painted games on Etsy to pay for my board game addiction, lol,
Who is a good boi :)
Sawyer is!
35?
This inspires absolutely zero confidence in this company. I don't understand how they can launch a campaign withlut any kind of clear plan. Whilst the concept and miniatures seem fantastic, I have absolutely zero idea what kind of game this is.
I'll certainly be interested in the prototype to see how far along it is!
They had a plan since they were expecting to deliver DOM in august and launch the campaign after that. Even with that plan they couldn't be bothered to actually explain the game on their campaign page, or have independent reviews. Couldn't even be bothered to make a video themselves. The update is a whole lot of gaslighting and fake apologies. The only knee-jerk reaction was not delaying the campaign based on DOM delivery.
@@TheKingofAverage yeah man, I think we need some solid hands-on content to really demonstrate the flow of the game. That said, they did have an alpha rulebook on the campaign page, so I will take a look. For now though, I am highly sceptical. With the volatility of big KS campaigns, I don't understand why they wouldn't break it up a bit instead of doing one huge chunk of a campaign.
Ahahah
Sprue
And that price...
Diemension has to understand that not all creators can be poot.. he created a sort of cult following with kdm being the "first" in a new line of product, something no one else managed to do//justify....
And yet, here they are, asking 550 usd for a gameplay all in (not even all in) with 2 games still pending since years..
Like wtf did they expect would happen?
Zombicide would never
I lost all interest in the campaign the moment I saw the sprues and the exorbitant price.
For this quality level of miniatures, I'd expect sprues. You can do much cooler things when the pieces are created separately. They're also fun to put together if the quality is good. The problem for me was that there was practically no info about the game itself! No idea how they could decide to launch without that!
For the hips quality and number of minis in there, it's on the lower scale of pricing tbh
Not much gameplay for the price compared to other games in the genre 😢 I was looking forward to it though from all the hype
its a skirmish game isnt it? kinda like limbo eternal war@@kanalune
Why are sprues a problem? Just genuinely curious cause I always thought it was very normal to have
Sorry that you weren't able to get it yet, but it really was too early to launch Celestial due to their inability to deliver on DoM (I got a refund myself).
I'm not interested myself, but hopefully, it comes to fruition someday for those who want it.
They should have never launched it right now, no worries :)
KoA, dont you think maybe its a perfect campaign strategy to put it there without any info out of the blue and cancel it? We are talking about it now right?
I think Byron is a genius! :D
Hah! Secret geniuses