Last Call for Shipping Address
over 5 years ago – Sat, Nov 03, 2018 at 08:50:23 PM

Super busy here at Absurdist HQ. We attended a local convention, TokenCon, here in Oklahoma City a few weeks back and had a great turnout. We lost count of how many demos were played (and a big shout out to our volunteer Steven for playing so many), but we do know that we picked up a bunch more preorders after the convention. We also did a Q/A panel with some other local designers that we think was recorded and hope to share with people soon.

Production of Churrascaria continues over in China and we have sent in the final payment so the games should be ready to go on the ship in around two weeks. At that point, they will sail the high seas all the way to the port of Orlando where they will be offloaded and sent to the warehouse of our fulfilment partners at Quartermaster Logistics. Who will start boxing up copies and sending them off to all you amazing backers come early January.

In preparation for that, we wanted to let everyone know that we will be locking mailing addresses on November 15th. So if you have moved or want to otherwise change where your copy of the game gets sent please head to BackerKit and adjust your shipping address.

And here is a handy link to BackerKit for you 

Also, we did have a few people who paid extra shipping to have a copy of the game go to a second address. While I believe I have all of those please double check those addresses as well and send them to us again in a message here on Kickstarter so we can make sure your friends or family member gets the game you ordered them.

Hopefully, when next I send you all an update it will be to announce that Churrascaria has landed stateside. Until then keep on gaming ladies and gents.

David Thomas
Absurdist Productions

Good News and Bad
over 5 years ago – Mon, Oct 01, 2018 at 08:17:09 PM

Good News

As the title of this update suggests we have some good news for you all, and some bad, so let's start with the good.

We have heard back from LongPack and everything for Churrascaria has been reviewed and approved and the game has officially been put on the schedule for printing. Because it doesn't have any super fancy pieces the manufacturing process should be relatively quick. Expecting around two weeks for printing, cutting, and packaging assuming no problems. Which is wonderful, but brings us to the bad news.

Bad News

Churrascaria is scheduled to start manufacturing at the end of October, with a ready to leave China data of around Nov 10th. Then you add on the time to ship it from China to the US, plus potential delays with customs and Quartermaster Logistics (who is handling our fulfilment) estimates being able to start mailing out copies late December at the earliest. That means Churrascaria most likely will not start delivering to people until the first or second week of January.

We know a lot of people were hoping to have the game in hand for Christmas, I myself was planning on giving out some copies as gifts. Unfortunately, as first-time creators with a fairly small order meant that we are not the priority for manufacturing, especially this time of year. Plus we made some mistakes early on that have caused delays of their own. We have looked into all our options, even looking at quotes for Air Freight to get the games to the US faster, but all roads lead to the game not getting to the majority of backers until after the new year.

Now, there is a slim chance that the game gets produced faster then we expect, or that shipping from China goes quicker, but those are all longshots. So, right now we are updating the date for delivery to early January.

We thank all of you who have supported and continue to support us, and we apologize for this delay. 

David Thomas
Absurdist Productions.

Cookbooks and Proofs
over 5 years ago – Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 06:17:58 PM

The Cookbook

It's finally here ladies and gentlemen. The fruits of all my research and testing have resulted in a delicious collection of recipes that I now share with you thanks to the generosity that unlocked what might be my favorite stretch goal of the campaign (after the amazing playmats).

You can access and download the Cookbook from the following link:

Cookbook PDF

Sorry, it took so long to get this out to you all but took a bit to get all my notes organized and then once it was written sent it off to our friendly editor, for which you should thank me as she has saved you from so many typos. And if you do find some we missed please let us know, the great thing about a PDF is I can always update it.

The Proof

We got our Physical proof of the game in yesterday. If you are not familiar with the term it is a single physical copy of the game, everything is very close to final materials and final sizes so that we can make it all looks the way its supposed to, check for any layout problems we might have missed, and generally just get all excited over holding a physical copy of our dream.

I made an unboxing video which you can watch below, or over on Youtube. It is a bit on the long side at 9 minutes, but that's because I show you pretty much everything and spend a bit of time explaining it all.

Progress Update

Now that we have reviewed the physical proof and sent comments back to the manufacturer the game should hopefully go to print within the next week or so. Between printing, assembling, and packaging it should be a week and a half to two weeks. Then all of the games will be loaded up on a ship and sent to our fulfilment partners Quarter Master Logistics in Florida, which will likely take three to four weeks between the boat and customs. So assuming we don't run into any problems the games should start going out to everyone at the end of November.

David Thomas
Absurdist Productions

A Convention, A Recipe, and News!
over 5 years ago – Sat, Sep 08, 2018 at 09:09:15 PM

Manufacturing Update

First I wanted to let everyone know that we have approved the digital proofs for the game and LongPack games, who we are working with for manufacturing, are now putting together the physical proof for us. We should have that in the next few weeks. For those not aware of the process, a digital proof is all of our assets laid out so that we can do a final check for colors, spelling, layout and all of that sort of thing.

The physical proof will be a prototype version of the game including everything we have ordered including using the final materials so that we can make sure that everything meets our expectations. Assuming it all looks good as soon as we approve that the game will start printing, then they have to cut everything, assemble the games, and pack them up for shipping.  

If all goes well we are hoping for the games to be ready to leave China by early October. Which would put us on track to hopefully have them here in the states and mailing out to all of you by early to mid-November. There are still things that could delay us, such as printing problems or customs holds, so we will be keeping a close eye on all of that and keep you posted.

And don't be surprised if we send out a second update this month when we get that physical proof in. I'm looking forward to seeing it and hopefully showing it off.

TokenCon

Speaking of showing things off. Oklahoma City is going to have its first board game convention in a month. The 6th and 7th of October. If you plan on being in Oklahoma City around that time I believe tickets are still available at the below link:

https://tabletop.events/conventions/tokencon-2018

We here at Absurdist Productions will be there with a booth, Booth #5 to be exact. They haven't put out a map yet, but once they do we will share that on our social media. It's a smaller Con though so it should be too hard to see us. In fact, you will likely just have to look for either of the two new banners we got in.

We will not have any copies of the game to sell, but will be running demos, and will still be taking preorders. Also, since they also plan on having a prototype area we plan on spending some time there playtesting some other games we have in development and at least one of which we hope to bring to Kickstarter sometime next year.

The Cookbook

So, I had planned on having the cookbook out to all of you in time for Labor weekend. It is completely written, however, I ran into some scheduling and technical difficulties in my quest to get the pretty version done in time. I am now around 50% done putting it together in Indesign. So it shouldn't be much longer.

 Meanwhile, I'm going to leave you with another recipe to sate your appetite for a bit while I finish it up. This time lets finally focus on some of the amazing meat that is after all the whole reason one goes to a churrascaria.

The Recipe

 Recipe makes 4 servings

Ingredients

• 4 filet mignon steaks (6 oz) 
• 1/2 cup olive oil 
• 1/4 cup Madeira wine 
• 1 lemon, juice and zest 
• 2 tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped 
• 2 cloves garlic, minced 
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
  

Mix olive oil, Madeira wine, lemon juice, oregano, garlic, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl. Slice filet mignon steaks into two-inch cubes and place in the mixing bowl. Toss to coat the steak and place in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 1 hour and up to 3 hours.  

Remove the steak from the refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature before using skewers to pierce the center of each chunk of steak. Cook on the grill, placing the skewers about 12 inches from the charcoal, turn the skewers every 2 to 3 minutes. Cook for about 10-15 minutes for medium rare steaks.

Until next time ladies and gentlemen, keep on gaming.

David Thomas
Absurdist Productions

Off to the Printers
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 02:18:06 AM

Apologies and Updates

First apologies on the delay of this update, I know I’d mentioned in the comments that we would have one up two weeks ago, unfortunately, we then got overwhelmed with work both on the Churrascaria side of things and more so with life. While it's not an excuse, both Will and I have full-time jobs outside of Absurdist Productions that sometimes pull away from our time and attention. While we hope one day for Absurdist to be the full-time job, for now, we need other work to keep paying the bills. Which has unfortunately meant that we haven’t been keeping you all up to date the way we promised. That being said we do have some great news with this update.    

We finally got the last of our art assets in at the beginning of the month and then spent several days getting everything formatted and into the templates provided by our manufacturer. All of the assets have now been sent to LongPack Games in China to get us rolling. LongPack has an excellent reputation for quality and we are super excited to be working with them. Being first-time creators they have already worked with us a lot to help us prepare everything for print.  

They are currently reviewing everything and beginning the process of laying it all out for printing. If all goes well they should be sending us proofs both, digital and physical, over the next few weeks to ensure everything lines up properly and looks right so that we can approve everything for the actual print run. 

The Expansion

While we all wait for that I thought I’d share the Drink Mini Expansion with you, along with explaining how it works in play. 

The six drink cards get shuffled into the food deck. If you draw one you place it above your plate. It counts as a food but doesn’t take up one of your four plate slots. When you use an eat action you can eat it to get its effect, which as you can see on the card is the ability to discard one side or dessert card from your stomach pile. The drink cards can be stolen just like any other food card, and if you use a Look Over There, it goes along with the rest of your plate. 

A Recipe

And since you have to wait for this card along with the rest of the game, we are going to give you a glimpse at how to make this delicious drink from the cookbook, which we will be getting out to you all by the end of the month.  

Caipirinha  

Ingredients  

• Half a lime cut into four wedges  
• 2 teaspoon brown sugar or 1 ½ oz (45 mil) simple syrup if you happen to keep that on hand  
• Ice cubes  
• 2 oz (60 mil) Cachaça  

Place the lime wedges and sugar/simple syrup in a 10oz old fashion glass. Using a muddler or wooden spoon, smash the lime wedges to extract as much juice as possible. Fill the glass with ice cubes and then add the Cachaça. Then sit back and enjoy your refreshing beverage. 

Cachaça is a Brazilian liquor similar to rum, but rather than being distilled from molasses it is distilled from fermented sugarcane juice. Here in the United States, it is often marketed as a rum, thus why we use that terminology on the card in the game. It can still be hard to find in the US, but it’s worth it if you can find it. I have also tried this with a light rum and while it is still delicious, the flavor is a bit different.