Sand & Wind Expansion Updates! (YAY!)
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 02:14:23 PM
Hello everyone!
Our team has been hard at work on the Sand & Wind Expansion, and I wanted to share some of our progress with you!
The first part is an art update (and rather than tell you all about it, I figured I'd just show you):
🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
The second part is a development and play testing update:
During the development of Command of Nature, we worked through many different faction, token, and mechanic concepts, and we flagged some of them along the way as "maybe these would be exciting for future expansions." Adding Sand and Wind to the campaign has given us the opportunity to revisit some of our favorites to bring you something that adds a very exciting new dynamic to the game.
We've been aggressively testing and refining the mechanics of each of these factions, and we wanted to offer you a chance to take a peek at our progress! That's why we've decided to host a very special Twitch stream on Saturday where you can watch a live play test of Sand vs. Wind!
Please keep in mind, if you choose to tune in, that the Sand & Wind expansion is a work in progress. You may witness the team stumble upon interactions that don't work quite right, observe cards that aren't quite balanced yet, see art and graphics that are far from finished, and hear debates about rules. We've never offered a view into our development process like this before, but we thought it would be a really fun final stream to include in this campaign.
We've been so delighted as we've worked on this expansion, and I just want to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to design it. And we can't wait to show you what we've got so far!
(And, as a reminder, we still have our 2v2 playthrough happening TODAY!)
And with everything going on, I almost forgot to mention- yesterday (shortly after I posted my update), we also unlocked our $1.3M stretch goal!
That's all for today!
<3
Social Stretch Goal Highlight (+2v2 Playthrough Tomorrow!)
over 1 year ago
– Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 01:02:44 PM
Hello :D
Since we announced our social stretch goals last week, our team has been having so much fun going through all the submissions we've received (and we officially crossed 15,000 backers! Woohoo!)
We've made great progress, but there's still a lot to do to unlock all the rewards. Here's where we stand:
THANK YOU to everyone who has participated thus far, and please keep posting your submissions in the comments!
If you want to help us achieve our goals, it's not too late to run to a local deli and snap a photo of a sandwich or skip rocks in your bathtub! Your local department store probably has a lovely wind breaker you can try on! Have a cat? Feed it some grass! Have a pen? Draw a stick figure! Live on planet earth? Take pictures of clouds and justify to us that they look like animals! There's no time to waste!!
(Ok fine I'll take a breath.)
But seriously, if you're looking for inspiration, keep scrolling to see some of the submissions we've gotten so far- I can't get over John's "stick figure" of Cedar the Twig Sage 🤯
We also made a shared folder where we're saving all the submissions we receive to give you a chance to easily view them all- it's a work-in-progress that we will keep updating as we go :)
And, as a final note on Social Stretch goals, I'm pleased to share with you our official Command of Nature Spotify Playlist as the next reward! The final three rewards are 1P, 3P, and 6P gameplay modes for Command of Nature, so I'd love to hit 25 unlocks so we can develop them all 🤩
I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who joined us for our 1v1 play-through on Twitch. As a reminder, we will be running a 2v2 session to show you 4 factions in action tomorrow, so mark your calendar!
In tomorrow's update, I plan to show our progress so far on the Sand & Wind expansion- I'm super excited about it!
That's all for now :)
<3
Ritual Commands Are Here! (BRAND NEW card type unlocked)
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 12:12:15 PM
Hello everyone :D
I'm super excited about today's stretch goal unlock, because it introduces a brand new card type… Ritual Commands!!
Since these are a brand new card type, I wanted to give you a bit of extra information in today's update to tell you a bit about how they work and what they add to the game. Ritual Commands allow you to use connected Elementals in your formation to perform rituals with powerful effects. Each Ritual Command requires you to have a minimum number of connected Elementals of the same faction in your formation; after all, there’s power in numbers :)
(As a note, an Elemental used to perform a Ritual Command can still attack in the same turn.)
In this example, you'll see 4 connected Droplet Elementals in a formation, which would allow you to use the Astral Stars Ritual Command shown:
Unlocking this stretch goal adds 12 Kickstarter Exclusive Ritual Commands to the KSE Edition of Command of Nature (which total 20 cards altogether).
During the campaign, we've been asked a number of times if a single-faction strategy is viable when playing Command of Nature. While you may encounter limitations if you want to go 100% into one faction (primarily centered around availability of options in the Elemental market), this new card type certainly opens more space for strategies that skew much more heavily towards a single faction.
In other news, I had said I would give a Social Stretch Goal update today, but since we ended up blasting through the 1.2M SG, I decided to push the larger SSG update to tomorrow to make sure we have space to highlight your submissions more fully. For now, though, I wanted to at least share the progress so far:
Elemental Goal Tallies:
Droplet
- Pets Drinking Water: 4/10
- Water Bottles: 18/20
Leaf
- Plant Collections: 15/25
- Catnip Kitties: 7/15
Pebble
- Rock Skipping: 0/10
- Cool Rocks: 11/20
Twig
- Duels: 1/15
- Stick Figures: 7/20
Sand
- Elaborate Sandcastles: 2/5
- Sandwiches: 7/20
Wind
- Rad Windbreakers: 2/10
- Cloud Animals: 2/15
Ramy’s Adventures: 2/20
(We're making great progress on a lot of these Elemental Goals- keep it up! If you need a reminder on how to participate, you can find it on the main campaign page or in Update #12)
That means we've unlocked the first two rewards! We are still working on the official Command of Nature Spotify playlist, but for now, I’m thrilled to deliver on the first reward - Command of Nature Avatars :)
You can find all 10 here
Use these on your Kickstarter profile and social media pages to share your support and excitement for this campaign!
As I mentioned above, tomorrow we’ll be coming to you with a big social stretch goal overview :) On top of that, we’ll be hosting a live 1v1 Command of Nature gameplay stream at 10am CST on Twitch
Stop by to watch the game in action and cheer for your favorite faction! (And if you're not able to make it, we will post a link to watch it in a later update.)
See you tomorrow!
<3
New Stretch Goals added (and one is already unlocked!)
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 02:11:52 PM
Hello :)
There’s a little over one week left of the campaign, and we’ve still got more to add to the project :D In the second update I posted on Saturday, I mentioned that I’d be announcing a few more stretch goals today, and here they are as promised!
(Oh, and before I got to posting the update today, you already unlocked the first one 🙃)
I’m particularly excited about the $1.2M stretch goal, which would add a brand new type of card called a Ritual Command to the game. I hope to tell you all about them very soon 😇
If you want to help push us towards these last few stretch goals, you can share the campaign using the buttons at the top of the page, or add funds to your pledge if you plan to get add-ons in Backerkit later- as a reminder, any funds you add to the campaign now as part of your pledge in excess of the reward tier you select will become available to you in Backerkit and can be applied to shipping or add-ons you select :)
Last week, we were so excited to see that over 2,500 of you tuned in to our live How-to-Play session on Twitch with Jesse! <3
This week, we are going to be doing two live playthrough sessions (a 1v1 and a 2v2) so you can see a Command of Nature face-off in realtime!!
Join us Wednesday, June 14th @ 10am CST (8am PST/11am EST) for a 1v1 competitive gameplay stream with Jesse and Kristina! Let us know what base game factions you want them to play in the comments >:D (We are not quite ready to show Sand & Wind yet, so please choose from Twig, Droplet, Leaf, and Pebble for now)
Interested to see how Command of Nature plays with 4 people? Tune in Thursday, June 15th @ 6pm CST (4pm PST/7pm EST) for a 2v2 competitive gameplay stream with members of our games team + one of our game experts!
These events are a great opportunity for you to ask questions and share your excitement about the game!! We wanted to offer these at different times to maximize the number of people who would be able to join, but if you can’t make the live streams, video links to watch them will be provided in a future update.
Finally, our team has been super on top of monitoring comments, messages, and social media pages to keep track of your submissions for our Social Stretch Goals :) I’ll be sharing a progress update (along with the first reward) tomorrow!!
That’s all for now
<3
So much has happened in the past week (and we're doing our best to keep up!!)
over 1 year ago
– Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 11:22:43 AM
Hello :D
WHEW! We’re just over halfway through the campaign!
The last 7 days have been a blur, and I wanted to just take a second to process everything we’ve added to the campaign and give you a recap of the week that just ended. Please note: if you are 100% up to date, this update does not contain new information, but it does have a nice condensed version of some of the key highlights (and I know a few of our recent updates were SUPER LONG so I wanted to consolidate a bit).
As I was writing this update, there was so much to include that I actually cut out some pretty exciting stuff to keep this (reasonably) condensed. But you can, of course, go back to review any of our previous updates if you missed anything (or just want to take a trip down memory lane).
Here are some major highlights from the past week:
Command of Nature: Sand & Wind Expansion!!
Soon after we launched the campaign, we noticed a lot of interest from the community in adding new Sages and factions...so we got to work immediately assessing the logistics of designing, playtesting, and producing a new expansion in line with our current timelines – and we’re going to make it happen!! Also, to clarify some questions we’ve gotten, the version included in this campaign will come with a Kickstarter Exclusive box (that accommodates sleeved cards) and extra characters and content that won’t be available later.
Here’s a first look at the Sand and Wind factions <3
(More detail in Update #10)
Massively Upgraded Tiers
We’ve upgraded the $39 KSE tier, $119 Deluxe Bundle tier, and $149 Ultimate Collector’s Set tier to include a ton of new products, including the new Sand and Wind expansion, play mats, and more.
- In the Kickstarter Exclusive Edition +Expansion tier, you’ll get the expansion added to your rewards.
- In the Deluxe Bundle (Expanded) Tier, you’ll get the expansion, 2 new play mats, and 2 new standees added to your rewards.
- In the Ultimate Collector’s Set (Expanded) Tier, you’ll get the expansion, 2 new play mats, 2 new standees, and 2 new vinyl figures added to your rewards.
If you backed before this change, your pledge got automatically updated already!
(More detail in Update #10)
The Return of Former Kickstarter Exclusives!!!!
This was not a decision that was made lightly, but after strongly considering our community’s feedback (including over 5,000 survey responses from former backers), we’ve decided to bring back some Kickstarter Exclusives from past campaigns as add-ons for Command of Nature!!
To preserve the original versions as collector’s items, all cards included in these re-releases will carry a 2nd-edition symbol :)
These former Kickstarter Exclusives will be available to anyone who backs the Command of Nature project, whether it’s $1 or the Ultimate Tier! If you aren't familiar with how add-ons work, you will be able to select these a couple of weeks after the campaign is over. For now, as long as you have backed the campaign, you will get the access you need to add these items (or any other add-ons you want)! You can either wait and add funds later, or you can increase your pledge now if you know which add-ons you want to get.
(More detail in Update #8)
One Tree Planted for every backer
The world of Command of Nature celebrates the magic of nature, and we wanted to find a way to help preserve that magic in our real world. That’s why we are working with One Tree Planted to plant a tree for every person who backs the project (whether you pledge a dollar or back the Ultimate Collector’s tier).
To commemorate each tree planted, we created a Kickstarter Exclusive enamel pin that features Humming Herald, an Elemental Warrior from the Leaf faction. This pin will be automatically added to every pledge as long as you choose a physical reward. (Physical rewards can include backing any of our tiers, or selecting from any add-ons in BackerKit. We just need a physical address to which we can send your pin!)
(More detail in Update #9)
$1 MILLION DOLLAR STRETCH GOAL
Last, but certainly not least… We've officially reached $1 MILLION in funding for Command of Nature!!! That means we’ve unlocked our $1M stretch goal, upgrading the gold chipboard tokens to gold metal coins :D
(More detail in Update #13)
My head is still spinning, but I could not be more thrilled with how this campaign has been unfolding. Thank you for joining us for this wild ride!!
<3
