Print-and-play, contest winners, and the FINAL WEEK of the campaign!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 10:09:00 AM

Leaping lions! We’re in the final week of the campaign, and over the weekend we reached $80,000 raised towards making Ninjitsu!

That’s unbelievable! And it's all because of YOU!

Before I go into the stretch goals we’ve unlocked since last time, I have a surprise for you:

The game + both expansions are now available as a print-and-play!

Go here to check it out; all you need to do is print the cards and cut them out, and you’re ready to go. :)

We didn’t have art in the correct format for some of the cards, and I included some of the promos that we haven’t unlocked yet (as a special sneak preview), but this print-and-play will have everything you need to try the game out and see if it’s for you!

If you have any questions (or run into any issues), please let me know.

Stretch Goals

Let’s have a look at the chart!

Wow! Look at all those swooshes. We have unlocked so much for this game already...and it just keeps on coming!

As you can see, we’ve unlocked TWO new stretch goals since the last update!

$75k - Hurricane added to Heavy Weather

Hurricane is a fun one! It functions as a big reset for the expansion, shuffling the discard pile into the deck, and shuffling all the weather cards back together. If you thought you were safe from Foggy weather, think again!

As well as that, it makes each player discard a card - if it comes at the wrong time, it can put a real crimp in your plans!

$80k - Rainbow added to Heavy Weather

The Rainbow has perhaps the strangest of all the weather effects; it gives each player two actions per turn. That can be two draws, two plays, two swipes - or any combination of actions!

With that sort of power, you’d think the winner would be whoever takes the next turn. But the Rainbow isn’t all sunshine and...well, rainbows - while it’s in play, no one can win.

That’s right - you can hit 100 points worth of treasure, but until a new weather card comes out, there’s no way to win! If you’re ahead, you’ll want to start burning through the deck and hope that another weather card comes out. If you’re behind, you want to start taking down the leader...or building up your own treasure reserves.

I’m super excited about the Rainbow. I think it adds a cool, different element to the Heavy Weather expansion, and will change the way Ninjitsu! plays as a whole! 

As a reminder, unlocking this means that the Heavy Weather mini-expansion (free to anyone backing at the NINJA MASTER level or higher!) is now going to come with 12 cards - just one short of being a full expansion!

(And if we can hit $100k, the promo pack is going to include two promo Heavy Weather cards - Ball Lightning and Aurora Borealis!)

There's a bit of a gap before the next two stretch goals, but I'm confident we can reach them before the campaign ends!

Add-Ons

A few people have been asking in the comments about what’s going to be available in the Backerkit! Right now, we’re planning to have the following available for purchase:

• $10: Ninjitsu! + the Promo Pack 
• $20: Ninjitsu! + Traps! + the Supernatural expansion + Heavy Weather + the Promo Pack 
• $20: The Lady and the Tiger - more info here
• $20: Dracula’s Feast - more info here
• $15: Cthulhu & Friends (the first expansion for Dracula’s Feast) 
• $20: Scuttle! + The Curse of Black Jack + Scurvy! + the Promo Pack
• $4: The Lady and the Tiger Notebooks (see below)
• $10: Pack of 3 The Lady and the Tiger Notebooks

If you’re interested in purchasing any of the above, you’re welcome to increase your pledge now (and help us bridge that gap to the next few stretch goals!)

Contest Winners

I’m excited to announce our two contest winners!

Robert Stone had a great suggestion for the ability of Spiked Balls, and will be getting a free copy of Scuttle! as a thanks. And Fons Verhoef’s suggestion of a Japanese blowpipe for the final ace was fantastic, and has earned the same!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered. To see the winning suggestions, just check out the Ninjitsu! print and play!

Behind the Scenes

I've shared so much upcoming art in this update already, so I thought I'd share something a bit different for today's Behind the Scenes: Kelly's studio!

Kelly is based in Brooklyn, New York - that's actually where I first met her! I had just left Australia for the first time ever, I was as jet-lagged as a man can be, and I wandered into a Brooklyn cafe for a cup of coffee.

I was tapping away on my keyboard, putting together the game that would eventually become Scuttle! (at the time it was called 21 Doubloons, a name that we abandoned after learning 12 Doubloons already existed) and she was drawing loops on her notebook, to test our her pen and warm up her art wrist for the day.

"Are you drawing your curls?" I joked (Kelly has the curliest hair you'll ever dang see) and the rest is history! We ended up spending a bunch of time together in New York, and when I mentioned the game I was working on, she insisted that she be allowed to do the art.

After seeing her sketches, how could I refuse? I think we can all agree that was a pretty solid decision. ;)

I now live in Toronto (although I'm currently on holiday in Australia), but Kelly still resides in Brooklyn, so we do our collaboration digitally. I'm super excited to work with her on Ninjitsu!, and hopefully many projects to come!

Kelly and I are thinking of doing a Kickstarter Live video in the final hour of the campaign - if you'd be interested in seeing that, let us know in the comments! You'd get to ask questions the game, the campaign, us - anything you want, really! - and we'd video chat to you (and each other) in real time.

They're super fun, and if people are interested, we're happy to jump on and have a pow wow! :)

This is our FINAL WEEK of the campaign, so if you haven’t yet - tell your friends, tell your loved ones, tell your Kickstarter-using pets. Ninjitsu! is wrapping up in just 4 days time, and we can’t unlock those final stretch goals without your help!

Thanks so much for your support,
-P

Two new stretch goals unlocked, Heavy Weather, and notebooks!
over 6 years ago – Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 05:27:03 PM

Jumping jackals!

Early on Monday morning, we reached $70,000!!

That is ridiculous and amazing! Thank you so much for spreading the word, and helping us make Ninjitsu! as increasingly awesome as possible.

We have TEN DAYS TO GO (!!!) - let’s see how many more of those stretch goals we can smash through!

Speaking of stretch goals:

Since the last update, we’ve unlocked two more goals! Let’s have a look:

$65k: Heat Wave added to Heavy Weather

Heavy Weather is a mini-expansion that works a little different to the other expansions.

The first two expansions for Ninjitsu! have a lot in common; Traps! adds another suit to the game, with more cool abilities. More traps (as the name would suggest), more unique abilities, more cards with cool ninja artwork.

The Supernatural expansion introduces magic into the world of Ninjitsu! - with cards like Flight, Invisibility, and Freeze Time, this card introduces some awesome new treasures, and cards with cool, unique abilities. My favourite is probably Multiply:

Heavy Weather doesn’t introduce any new treasures, nor does it even have cards that you can directly play. Instead, it adds a whole new “Weather” deck, and a number of events that you shuffle into the deck.

Whenever an event occurs, you flip the top card of the Weather deck. Each card in the Weather deck has a unique ongoing effect on the game. While it’s Sunny, for example, players draw a card at the start of each turn. When it’s Foggy, players have to play cards from their hand at random.

The combination of events and weather cards make every game different. You might think you’re about to win, when bam! A Hurricane hits, changing the weather from Snowy to Stormy.

Here’s what Heat Wave does:

Heat Wave: The player with the most cards in play must discard a card. Everyone draws a card. Discard the current Weather card and play a new one.

As you can see, it’s pretty simple - the Heavy Weather deck doesn’t add a huge amount of complexity to the game, just a bunch of variety!

I’m so chuffed to see Heat Wave added to the game. It’s a great card for slowing down the leader, but it doesn’t knock anyone out of the game entirely. Heavy Weather does a really good job of keeping everyone their toes - I particularly recommend it in combination with the 30-point extended variant!

$70k - unique art on both sides of the Elements cards!

This is a stretch goal that I’m particularly excited about! The Elements is also quite a different little beast to the other two expansions: it’s a set of 5 (6, including the promo Magic card) unique player powers.

One of the earlier stretch goals unlocked a different player power on each side of the mini-expansion. Well, we are now going to have unique art on both sides as well!

This game is gonna look so dang neat, I can’t even begin to explain it.

EU-FRIENDLY SHIPPING

People have been asking in the comments, and so I thought I’d highlight this in an update: we are not currently able to guarantee EU-friendly shipping. We’re going to do what we can, and the game is small enough that it should get to most countries without issue, but we cannot make any promises.

If anything changes on that front, I will definitely let you know!

Behind the Scenes

When Kelly and I first started tossing around ideas for The Elements mini-expansion, I mentioned the idea of being able to choose which power to use. It was her idea to have unique artwork on each side, and so even when she was doing the first sketches for The Elements, she was coming up with ways of showing the same idea in two different ways!

Here’s her original sketch for the second side of Fire

Fire has never looked so cute before!

Notebooks

A few people have been asking if we are planning on doing Ninjitsu!-themed notebooks, as we did with The Lady and the Tiger and Dracula's Feast. We're still looking into how feasible that is, but we thought we'd get people's opinion: if we were to offer them, which of these notebooks would you be most interested in?

Let us know in the comments!

That's all from this week. I'll be back soon with more! If you have any questions (about pretty much anything) let us know in the comments. :)

Thank you so much for your support, 
-P

TWO new stretch goals unlocked!!
over 6 years ago – Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 12:46:07 PM

Hey!

Since the last update, we’ve smashed through two more stretch goals - we’re currently sitting at $52,000 raised...and we’re still only a third of the way through the campaign!

Incredible!

Here’s the updated stretch goal chart:

At $50k, we unlocked tuck boxes for the expansions!

The Ninjitsu! box is going to be the same size as the Scuttle! box - big enough to fit the game with expansions, even when sleeved. (In fact, either box should fit BOTH games!)

The box will look great on the shelf, and it’s super tough and durable. A few people have asked for a more portable box, however, and that’s why I’m so excited about the $50k stretch goal - by putting each of the two expansions into individual tuck boxes, we can have our cake and eat it too!

If you want to throw Ninjitsu! and Scuttle! into your bag without taking up much space, you can keep them in the expansion tuck boxes. If you want to display them on your shelf and keep them both together, use the big box!

Basically it’s the best of both worlds and everything is amazing.

At $40k, we unlocked unique aces! 

Ninjitsu! comes with three Aces. Right now, we have three copies of the same card, but the stretch goal makes all three of them unique!

And that’s where YOU come in - we have some ideas for what the aces could be already, but we thought we’d open it up to suggestion.

If you have cool ideas for the two new aces could be, let us know in the comments! I’ve added the text of all the cards so far to the rules document - just scroll to the bottom of the document!

If we choose your suggestion, you’ll get a special thanks in the rulebook! Kelly has put together a sketch for inspiration:

Leave your suggestions in the comments, and we’ll go through and pick our favourites in the next few weeks!

I’ll be back in the next few days with another update...including new stretch goals. What a time to be alive!

Thank you so much for your support! Ninjitsu! is going to be so awesome, and it's all thanks to you.
-P

P.S. A few people have been asking in the comments - we’re going to be using Backerkit as the pledge manager for this campaign. You'll be able to add copies of Scuttle!, Ninjitsu!, The Lady and the Tiger, and Dracula's Feast to your order for just $20 apiece.

New stretch goals, renamed cards, and so much more!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 07:02:55 PM

Hey!

Vanishing vultures, I can't believe it! We smashed through our LAST STRETCH GOAL!!!

You. Are. Amazing. 

Seriously. We have almost two weeks to go, and we have already run out of stretch goals. Incredible!

Well...we had run out of stretch goals! Kelly and I have spent the last week trying to work out what we could add to the game without putting us at risk of falling behind schedule.

Here's what we came up with!

New stretch goals!

There's a bunch of stuff in there, and it's all described in more detail on the main campaign page. Here's a brief rundown:

More cards for Heavy Weather! Kelly and I are both super excited about Heavy Weather, and if we can unlock enough stretch goals, it will grow from being a cute little mini-expansion into a fully-fledged expansion, the same size as Traps! or the Supernatural expansion.

More Ninja Turtles! This idea actually came from someone in the comments - "why stop at one ninja turtle?", they asked. "Why not have four"? Well, Kelly and I both agree - that's a great idea! If we can beat the amount we raised for the first game in the series, Scuttle!, we are going to add THREE MORE TURTLES into the promo pack. 

A Vampire Ninja! If we can beat our previous Kickstarter high score (for our social deduction game Dracula's Feast - now shipping!), we're going to add a Vampire Ninja as a promo card! That means the promo pack will contain four ninja turtles, Captain Bluebeard, the Jellybean Ninja, the False Floor promo, the Magic promo card, the Vampire Ninja...

...and, if we can raise enough, two Heavy Weather promos!

That's a whole lot of game!

Renamed cards!

One of our commenters, Christopher, saw the list of cards in the game and had a great suggestion:

"Is it possible to us "shuriken" instead of "throwing star" for the 10s? It's a commonly known japanese word like "katana" and seems to fit better. Same with folding fan, could you use "war fan" or "tessen" instead? Ditto for chain and sickle. Could you use Kusari-gama instead? And "Bo" instead of "Staff?" I think that the game then becomes educational and showcases some Japanese language, adding to the coolness factor."

This is a great idea! I was originally worried about giving young children words that they couldn't understand, but I hadn't considered the educational aspect to the game. I learned the word "Kusarigama" from one of my all-time favourite games, Sentinel Tactics, and I don't see any reason why this game can't do something similar for a bunch of cool Japanese terms!

Thanks for the suggestion, Christopher! :)

Contest still running!

I should also remind everyone - we're still running a contest to decide what the new Ace powers should be. We're looking for two things:

• An ability for the card pictured below.
• An idea for the name/weapon/art of the other card.

We've had some great suggestions so far, so keep them coming! Here's the card that we're looking for ability ideas for:

Reward levels have been fixed!

If you were a first day backer, you'll remember that Ninjitsu! launched on the same day that Kickstarter was having all sorts of weird bugs. After literally weeks of back and forth with the support team, we've (sort of) gotten it fixed! The two levels are now LABELED.

If you are a US-based NINJA MASTER supporter, please make sure that you're pledged at the correct level! If you are pledged at the international level, you're not going to get the right reward! I'll post about this again towards the end of the campaign, but I want to be very clear - if you're supporting Ninjitsu! from within the US, please make sure you have selected THIS pledge level:

 Again - if you're not pledged at that level, you will not get the correct reward!

If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

Behind the Scenes

I just discovered that Kelly has been taking a plethora of behind-the-scenes pictures as she's been working on Ninjitsu! - I'm going to end each one of these updates with a picture (at least, until I run out of them).

Today, it's to demonstrate the inking process! Kelly does all of her sketching and inking physically - today's picture shows how the cards go from "pencil drawing" to inked, before she scans them into her computer and colors them.

 For contrast, here's the finished card:

 Incredible, right?

If you want to see more of Kelly's awesome work (also her awesome pink hair) (we Jellybean staff sure are a colorful bunch), you can follow her on Instagram: instagram.com/idleafternoon

That's all for today! At the rate we're smashing through stretch goals, I'm sure I'll be back again over the weekend.

Thanks so much for your support!

Cheers,
-P

GenCon and The Elements mini-expansion!
over 6 years ago – Tue, Aug 01, 2017 at 07:27:47 PM

Hey!

First of all: creepin’ caterpillars! We just hit $39,000!

$39k in less than a week. Amazing!

Thank you so much for supporting the project, sharing with your friends, and just generally being part of the raddest group of backers I’ve ever encountered.

I have a two things I want to talk about today. First of all...

GenCon!

I won’t be there personally, but Jellybean Games is going to be at GenCon this year, and we’re looking for help! We don’t have a booth; instead, we’re looking for people who are interested in getting a free advance copy of Ninjitsu!, and playing it during the con.

All you need to do is meet up with Nicole, our Operations Manager, and get your free copy of the game; it'll be the same version as the one we sent to reviewers.

We’re after people who are familiar with the rules of Scuttle! who are happy to run Ninjitsu! 5-10 times during the con, with different groups of people.

If that sounds like fun to you, send me an email on [email protected] and include “GenCon” in the subject line!

(Why yes, I do have the world’s greatest email address.)

Stretch goals!

Since our last update, we’ve shot through our $30,000 goal, and so I thought I’d share a bit more information about exactly what we’ve unlocked!

There are two expansions available (The Supernatural expansion and Traps!) - anyone who pledges at the NINJA MASTER level or higher also gets a mini-expansion: The Elements.

The Elements is easy to play with - at the start of the game, everyone is dealt one of the elemental cards at random. The five elemental cards are Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Heart.

(Why yes, I was a Captain Planet fan as a kid. How did you guess?)

Each of the cards has a simple ability on it. Here’s what they each do:

• Fire: Your highest-value treasure card cannot be stolen or destroyed. 
• Water: Draw a card whenever any number of your cards are destroyed, swiped, or stolen. 
• Air: Take an extra action after you play an Ace or Joker. 
• Earth: Draw 3 extra cards at the start of the game. 
• Heart: Your revealed treasures are each worth +2.

(I should mention - none of these are final - I’m still playtesting everything for balance and fun!)

As you can see, each of the elemental abilities gives you a significant boost, and can substantially change the way you play.

This mini-expansion gives a bit of variability to the game, but it also allows you to play with a “handicap” - you can deal an elemental power to some players but not others, if you’re worried about balance issues.

When we hit $30k, we made each of the cards double-sided - that means there are now TWO Fire abilities, two Heart abilities, etc etc.

Even the Magic promo ability that we unlocked is going to have a second ability:

• Magic (side 1): Start the game with only 2 cards in hand. Draw a card at the end of each of your turns. 
• Magic (side 2): If your hand is ever empty, draw 3 cards immediately.

The Elements mini-expansion has been designed to work with Ninjitsu!, Scuttle!, and both games shuffled together. It’s a very simple twist to the rules, and I really think it adds a lot to the game(s)!

I'm really excited that we're going to have twice the powers available...even though it's going to mean a heck of a lot more playtesting!

(Why yes, I am glad that my spouse loves Ninjitsu! as much as I do.)

That’s all from me today - remember, if you want to help us out at GenCon (and get a free advance copy of the game for your efforts) just email [email protected] and put “GenCon” in the subject!

Thank you so much,
-P