Connecting Flights: An Airline Management Board Game
Created by Bazzite Games
Buy planes, fly passengers, make money! 1-5 players, competitive engine builder with dedicated solo & cooperative modes.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Monthly progress update
over 2 years ago
– Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 01:36:29 AM
We have the sample
Last month, we have received the sample from our manufacturer. Although there were a few small issues, there wasn't anything that could not be resolved. We're particularly pleased with the wooden components and the plastic insert:
Out of the two card stock options we've been sent, we opted for 300gsm blue core, which we felt was a better, more durable option compared to 280 black core.
Manufacturing has started
We're happy to announce that mass production is well underway. Our factory in China is working hard to get all the games made, hopefully they will be finished in the next 4 weeks. Unfortunately we don't have many pictures from the factory, but here is a sneak peek at how the wooden airports are cut:
We're sure we'll be able to post more pictures of the manufactured components in our next update.
Pledge manager
In case you missed it, our pledge manager (BackerKit) is now open for everyone. BackerKit surveys were sent to the email address associated with your Kickstarter account. We will be locking the pledge manager orders in around 3 weeks. If you haven't filled in the survey and confirmed your address and card details to cover shipping please do so soon!
If you need to review your information/pledge status, or order an additional copy you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://connecting-flights.backerkit.com.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to message us on Kickstarter!
Monthly progress update
over 2 years ago
– Sun, Nov 07, 2021 at 07:36:16 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Monthly progress update
over 2 years ago
– Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 01:46:23 AM
Pledge manager
We've been setting up the pledge manager (BackerKit) for different pledge levels and everything is looking good. We hope we'll be able to open it by the end of the month - you will receive an email at your Kickstarter email address in the next 2 weeks. We're still waiting on updated freight quotes to the different fulfilment centers around the world to make sure we price shipping based on the most up-to-date costs.
Sample printing
Our manufacturer is close to finishing printing of the sample. It took them a while due to a week long national holiday at the start of October + the industry in China is currently experiencing intermittent power cuts, slowing the production down. Below are the images I received from them - the wooden pieces still need some color of course. I've been told that boards, box and cards are all printed, they're just working on the rulebook, insert/painting the wooden components just now which hopefully shouldn't take too long.
Sample side board (left) and wooden components (right, unpainted)
Rulebook translations
As the rulebook is now finished, we are working with multi-lingual board gamers to translate our rulebook to 5 different languages. In fact, Dutch and Polish translations are almost ready, but the tedious task of copying the text from word editor to the graphic design software is still ahead of us. The translated versions will be available in PDF format only. We still haven't found anyone to translate the rules into German, so if you are interested (or know anyone who may be) then please get in touch!
Next steps
We hope that the manufacturer will be able to finish the sample next week, which we should receive around 2 weeks after that. If all goes well, mass production will be starting in 3-4 weeks and the manufacturer said that production will take 45 days. Best case scenario is that all the games will be printed before the year ends, but of course there may be delays.
Monthly progress update
over 2 years ago
– Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 12:19:54 PM
Hi everyone, as usual here is what we have been up to last month:
Printing
We have sent all the files over to the manufacturer. They have okayed some of them, while others needed some tweaks. We are still waiting to hear from them about our plastic insert design, we're hoping that no changes will be needed.
Most of the changes requested by our manufacturer are done now and we are hoping to print a sample soon. The reasons for printing a sample are:
To ensure that there has been no misunderstandings between us and our printer
To make sure all components fit in the insert/box (with room for sleeves, too!)
Mistakes in mass production can be very costly and cause significant time delays, which is why we decided it's safer to have a sample made. It also allows us to check the component quality to make sure everything is as expected. Once it's printed, we will check it thoroughly and if it's okay, begin mass production. We hope this will happen in October, but this assumes no delays on the manufacturer's side.
Pledge manager
Also in October, we are planning on opening our Pledge Manager (BackerKit). There, you will be able to enter your shipping address, pay for shipping and optionally, add on extra copies of the game to your order. Look out for an email from BackerKit with the pledge manager invite.
Rulebook
In the last update, we mentioned that we have been working on our rulebook - you can take a look at it here: link
If you are wondering why the component list is at the end of the rulebook, rather than at the start, it's because it will be printed on a separate sheet (the component count is different in base and deluxe games). Let us know if you see any mistakes or issues, there is still time to make small corrections before mass production begins.
Overall, we have slipped by around a month on our timeline - we hit a few small issues such as our graphic designer's hard drive crashing (luckily all data was recovered). Also the time difference between us and the manufacturer means that sometimes things take a while to sort out. We're doing our best to limit the delay and get the game in your hands as soon as possible.
Monthly progress update
over 2 years ago
– Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 11:48:44 PM
Here is a summary of what we've been up to in the past month.
Rulebook improvements
We have done a lot of work on the rulebook, including proofreading, removing spelling mistakes/ simplifying long sentences etc. We also improved the graphic design - as you can see below. The new version looks better and has way more examples which will hopefully help you understand the game more quickly.
Previous version (left) vs new layout (right)
Print preparation
According to our planned schedule, we should be sending files to our manufacturer this month and we are still on track to meet this deadline. We are working with a graphic design company specializing in print preparation to ensure our files have consistent bleed, color profiles etc. in line with our manufacturer requirements.
Delays are possible
While most of the files are ready to be sent to the manufacturer, we are still waiting on 2 First class backers to send in their images. We will set a deadline for them to send us the images, as we don't want to delay the production for everyone else. But that's not a huge cause for concern right now.
The main risk to our planned timeline are global port closures (due to covid) and shipping container shortages. This is causing hold ups and delays of cargo ships across the world. Other publishers reported that their board games are stuck in Chinese ports, waiting for over a month to get onboard of a ship.
This situation resulted in a spike in freight prices. The freight costs we were quoted back in April have now quadrupled. We are looking at ways of mitigating this so that the impact of this situation on the shipping cost is minimal. There is always hope that this spike in prices is temporary and that they will return to normal (or closer to normal) by the time the games are printed.
There is however a risk that the original plan to get Connecting Flights to you by January will be delayed. Having said that, we are doing our best to stick to the deadlines we have control over and when it comes to shipping we will keep you updated as soon as we know more.
Apart from the First class backers on the passenger and player cards, our artist has also drawn new illustrations for the Secret Identity cards:
Other minor changes
You have requested airport codes on airport cards - so here they are (left part of the card on a sign above the airport/stars):
For cities with multiple airports, we always picked the code of the airport with the highest passenger volume.
We have also introduced some small rule changes:
- No more setting up the Marketplace in each round of the cooperative game. Instead, when cards are bought you replenish them immediately, plus replacing all cards in the Marketplace got much cheaper. There will be less drawing cards/putting them back each round, as you will only draw new cards when you need them and not each round.
- Balancing of new Secret Identity cards and co-op scenarios - some of the Secret Identity tasks were quite difficult to achieve, so we made them slightly easier so that the difficulty is consistent across all Secret Identity cards.
If you'd like to play Connecting Flights online with us, please join our Discord and let us know, we are happy to arrange a game with all the new content: https://discord.gg/CkyBXGksTQ
That's all for this month and we'll be in touch again in September!
