Turing Tumble progress update #2
over 6 years ago – Fri, Aug 04, 2017 at 01:30:45 AM

Hi backers!

Before jumping into the progress update, I thought I’d mention that we’re only a day or two away from sending out the backer survey where you can update your shipping information, order add-ons, or order more copies of Turing Tumble at Kickstarter pricing. We'll send another update when it's all the way ready.

I figured you might like to see where we've been doing most of our work. It’s our craft-room-turned-home-office. Alyssa and I switch off doing work and taking care of the boys. And yes, that monitor is just as amazing as it looks.

The last few weeks have been busy! Alyssa and I made a lot of progress. Things are moving on schedule, though it has been a bit more stressful than I expected. I suppose it’s like starting any new job - it takes a little time to get comfortable. One month in, we’re starting to get used to the new situation and we’re having more fun with it.

The biggest news is that we locked in with a manufacturer and they’ll probably begin production next week! I did a lot of shopping around before choosing them. One of the most useful resources was created by James Mathe of Minion Games. It’s a long list of companies that manufacture games. After talking to several of the manufacturers on the list and getting quotes, we decided to go with LongPack Games. They do high quality work, the price was right, and the rep we're working with has a long history of making injection molds himself. He’s been really helpful already.

Where things are at now

There are four big sections of this project: the plastic parts, the puzzle book, the box, and shipping.

The plastic parts

If you remember in the last update, I modified a bunch of the parts and designed a new board support. The CNC milling company mixed up my order, so I only received the last of the parts yesterday. Fortunately, the parts worked! The balance is perfect and the parts are more reliable and sturdier. There were only two problems:

1) The board support I made was flimsy. ABS plastic isn’t as rigid as I thought. Also, the steepest tilt angle (75 degrees) was too steep. At that angle, the crossover parts wiggle off the board. I couldn’t think of a good way to overcome the problem without making major design changes, so I ended up omitting that steep tilt angle. I redesigned the board support, giving it thicker ribs, a retro-futuristic design, rubber feet (so it doesn’t slide back while you put parts on the board), and I left two tilt angles: 45 degrees and 60 degrees.

2) There’s a slight ramp in the two sections at the top of the board where the balls are held. In order to reduce the board dimensions, I had reduced that ramp angle from 5 degrees to 3 degrees. Evidently that was a bad choice. The balls didn’t always roll down the shallower ramp. So I put it back to 5 degrees.

The new prototype of the board stand should arrive in a week and a half, but we’re actually going to get started on production before it arrives. And with that, the design of the plastic parts is essentially complete. Yay!

The puzzle book

Getting the puzzle book in final form has been a big job. It’s well over 100 pages long with the comics, the puzzles, the solutions, and various other pages. We’re making good progress, though. Jiaoyang did some nice art for the front and back covers. Here are ideas for the front and back covers of the puzzle book. We haven’t finalized them, yet.

It will be spiral bound so it’s easy to keep open.

What’s left to do:

• Create the other 9 puzzles
• Add a couple pages about Alan Turing and about how this computer relates to a regular, silicon-based computer.
• Edits/beta testing

The box 

The box is going to be slick. :) It will be made of thick paperboard and will have a magnetic latch. It’ll be shaped sort of like a big book. We’ll make sure the magnet is strong so it doesn’t open when you turn it upside down. 

At this point, everything but the art on the box is good to go. To that end, we’ve been working with some contract artists, and just yesterday we pulled in a company named Mackey Creative here in MN to help us, too. Surprisingly, of all parts of this project, the box art will probably be the very last thing we’ll have finished. 

Shipping 

Wow, this part is amazingly complicated. Originally, we planned to work with a company who would handle all of our shipping. It’s still a possibility, but we’ve found it’s quite expensive to do it that way. Shipping will be the single most expensive part of this project, so anything we can do to shave cost saves a lot of money. 

We’ve been learning all about Incoterms, VAT, duty, freight forwarding, shipping containers, and shipping by boat, truck, train, and plane. We’ll probably piece together our shipping by working with local distribution centers in several countries. 

VAT is going to cost a lot more than we expected. VAT is normally a ~20% tax charged on all imported goods to most countries. Other Kickstarter projects have gotten around VAT by importing large quantities into countries with a declared cost of just the manufacturing cost. However, those who monitor such things recently put out a clarification stating that VAT for crowdfunding campaigns must be charged on the entire purchase price + the shipping cost. Ouch!

The plan

Here's a rough projected timeline:

Injection molds take ~40 days to produce. I expect we’ll have a little back-and-forth after that, so it may be 80 days until we’re ready to go into mass production with the plastic parts. In the meantime, we’ll finish up the booklet and the box art. 

Production of 10,000 copies may take 30 days, and then shipping by boat will take 30-50 days. Add two more weeks for freight to the fulfillment centers, packing into shipping boxes, and local shipping. This is probably a conservative estimate, but it looks right now like you’ll still have your games in January.

We sure hope it goes faster than that. :) We’ll keep you updated as we go. 

Thanks again for your support,

Paul and Alyssa

Progress update numero uno
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Jul 09, 2017 at 11:01:25 PM

Now that the Kickstarter is over, we're digging in and working hard to get Turing Tumble shipped to you as soon as we possibly can. I expect this will be a bit of an adventure. :) We'll try to bring you along with us through the experience. This is the first of many updates.

I (Paul) took a few months leave from my job to devote 100% of my time to Turing Tumble. It's been great and weird at the same time. Great because it's super fun! Weird because it's been nothing more than a hobby for a long time. I can't shake the guilty feeling that I'm skipping work to play video games all day. The commute is marvelous!

Part Tweaks

I started this week by making tweaks to just about every part. I ordered some new CNC milled prototypes on Friday to test the changes - they should arrive in a week or two. The most important change was to the stand.

I added slots for three different tilt angles so you can adjust the speed of your computer, and I made the stand sturdier as well.

I also added an arrow to the gear bit. Some of you noticed that it's hard to tell which way the gear bit is pointing.

I also shaved off a centimeter or two from the height of the board and I modified the ball release mechanism to make it sturdier and more reliable.

The Box

We've been giving a lot of thought to the box this week. What's the best way to pack everything in a limited space? I've never paid so much attention to boxes and vacuum molded parts in my entire life. 

The goal was to design a vacuum molded insert that has slots for each individual part. The thing is, if you've looked at most vacuum molded inserts, they're not usually very complicated. They have a few trays (maybe for a deck of cards or dice), but that's about it. In this game, though, there are a lot of parts, and the insert needs a slot for each one. Here's what I came up with. Hopefully it doesn't stretch the plastic too far. 

We considered chopping the board in half in order to make the box dimensions smaller, but it turns out that the unchopped dimensions are the perfect size. Any smaller and we'd have to layer inserts on top of each other.

On the top left, there's a spot for each of the 30 ramps and in the last row there are holders for each of the six crossovers. The right side has slots for the bits, gear bits, gears, and interceptors. Those are all recessed because the puzzle book will lay over them. And on top of the puzzle book, the two halves of the stand will lay. At the very bottom of the right-hand side of the insert, there's a funny-shaped hole for the presser (it sits upright) and a small tray for the balls.

There are also two big trays you can see there. A big one on the left and a smaller one on the right. When we ship the game, we'll probably have all the parts stored in bags held in those trays. We tested the tray sizes to see if they could fit all the parts. They can!

For those of you who ordered extra parts (or plan to later), you'll eventually be able to use the trays to store those parts.

Over the top of all this, we're thinking of having a layer of thick cardboard that rests on top of the parts so they don't come out when the box is shaken. On the top surface of the cardboard we'll have a picture of what's underneath, with all the parts in their places. We're thinking about how to give that cardboard piece a premium feel. Maybe it could be on a hinge of some sort?

And finally, the game board will rest on its back on top of the cardboard piece. I'm modifying the board to give it feet that lift it off the surface so that when it's laying on its back, the parts protruding out the back don't touch the surface it's laying on.

This week, the plan is to work on the box art. We're still trying to decide what it should look like - particularly on the front cover. Any ideas/opinions/thoughts on that?

Expect to get another update in a couple weeks about the backer survey. At that time you'll be able to get add-ons or additional copies of the game at Kickstarter pricing.

Thanks again! Much more to come.

Paul and Alyssa

To 4,198 of the best backers in the world...
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 12:57:39 AM

HO.

LY.

COW.

$404,071  

This is it! 24 hours and $35k to go.
almost 7 years ago – Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 09:29:01 PM

Just $35,000 away from the final stretch goal and 24 hours left on the clock. The posts about the final giveaway are now up on our Twitter page and our Facebook page. Please share them and let's see if we can reach that goal!

Thank you all so much! Looking forward to an exciting day,

Paul and Alyssa

$361,000?!? Turing-completely incredible!
almost 7 years ago – Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 11:57:58 PM

When Alyssa and I began this Kickstarter, we were hopeful, but not at all confident. We couldn't afford a marketing firm, we didn't have a Facebook or Twitter following, and we had no idea what to expect. We spent two months preparing: We got a decent camera and some daylight bulbs, recorded our video, emailed reporters and bloggers, created a Facebook page, created the Kickstarter site, and told anyone we could about it. Once the Kickstarter campaign began, we spent evenings (and nights) trying every idea we could think of to keep momentum going. Some ideas worked and others flopped. We didn't hire an expensive social media marketing firm, but instead relied almost entirely on organic promotion. 

But really, all our efforts only got us a fraction of the way there. It was you who shared the project, spread the word, and backed the project. In fact, Facebook and Twitter have been two of the very biggest sources of backers.

Now, on the eve of the last 24 hours of this campaign, we're all hoping for that final $400,000 stretch goal. We've got $39,000 left to go, and we need your help! Starting at 6 am CT tomorrow, we're going to begin one last social media giveaway across Facebook and Twitter. When it goes live, please share the Facebook post from our Facebook page and re-tweet the Tweet on our Twitter page. Or just tell a friend. I'll send one more update after it goes live.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm and thanks for spreading the word about Turing Tumble. If you could sort Kickstarter projects by "Best Backers", our project would surely be #1 of all time. :)

Paul and Alyssa