Seize the Bean - A Light-Hearted Deck Builder about Berlin!

No NA News, UK Ready to Ship, & Asia + EU Ongoing
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 07:12:51 PM

Hey everyone! This will be quite the short update as we don’t have much new information since the last one, but regardless we wanted to keep you informed.

No news yet here. :( If there is news next week we’ll reach out with an impromptu update.

Games were unloaded, made it out of customs, and arrived safely at the warehouse! :) We’ve submitted all backer data and we’re just finishing up the last bits of planning with GamesQuest (our UK fulfillment partner)  before they begin shipping. If all goes smoothly, we expect them to begin shipping next week. As with the US note above, if there is news to share next week we’ll do so in an impromptu update.

Delivery from VFI is still ongoing. As we said in the last update: if you have any specific questions, it’s always best to email us directly at [email protected].

We are still handling the edge cases that didn’t get shipped yet. This includes local pick-ups and unfinished surveys. Thanks for your patience here if you’re still waiting for your game! Don’t forget that if you haven’t heard from us you can email us at [email protected], if you didn’t already. (And please don't forget to check your spam folder!)

Our next scheduled update will be on Friday, September 10th. However, as noted above, we’ll put out an impromptu update between now and then to share shipping news if/when we have it. We know those of you still waiting are very anxious to hear about the current location of your games!

Until the next one, stay safe out there and happy gaming!

Shipping Updates, Backers First, & English Components
over 3 years ago – Fri, Aug 06, 2021 at 06:40:20 PM

Hello everyone! We have shipping news and didn't want to make you wait until the next regular update to hear it. So let's see where your games are...

Some of you have been watching the YM Wellspring, and understandably sent us anxious messages when you saw the boat wasn't actually going to Chicago itself. Allow us to give some details on the situation.

Originally, our North American fulfillment partner, D6, advised us to have the games go to their new San Diego warehouse. Until recently, their only warehouse was in Chicago. Our freight shipper made a mistake and had Chicago on the manifest and not the San Diego warehouse even though we reported the destination to them correctly. They informed us this mistake was made internally because their team was very used to shipping to Chicago. However, due to congestion in the San Diego area, the games can’t even be loaded there so they are headed to Chicago after all. A bit silly, but all is well and once the games are unloaded from the boat they will go to Chicago by truck.

The other thing to note is that the Long Beach port has been incredibly congested for quite some time now. This means that even though our boat arrived three weeks ago, the games were still in Long Beach on Monday when we last heard from our freight shipper. We’ve been informed to not expect the games to reach the Chicago warehouse before mid-August. Our shipper has also promised to keep us updated, but we'll be checking in with them every 2-3 days anyway. We know this news sucks but there is nothing we could've done about it and we're pushing as much as we can to get those games to you. Meanwhile, we’ll do our best to drop notes in the project comments between updates so that you can stay informed and hopefully keep your anxiety levels low while your excitement levels rise.

The UK boat has arrived safely! The games made it through customs (at least we received the VAT invoice), and we've been informed to expect them to arrive at the UK warehouse next week. Meanwhile, we're finishing up the backer order data for the warehouse. Once we've passed over the data and the games have arrived at the warehouse, they will hopefully give us an estimate how soon they can start delivering. We expect to have more news here in next week's regularly scheduled update!

Delivery from VFI is ongoing. They're working with a lot of different hubs, so it's all taking some time. We completely understand any impatience you might be feeling, so please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any specific questions we can answer to help you feel more assured. While we read all the Kickstarter comments (and try to respond to most), it’s always best to email us directly at [email protected].

The majority of packages from our EU warehouse have been shipped! Right now, we're working through any edge cases, such as orders with incomplete or incorrect addresses, local pickups, unanswered surveys, and so on.

If you haven't received a shipping notification from our EU fulfillment partner, aptly named Fulfillment Europe, and you don't know why, please check your spam folder for a message from us. If you don't find one, please contact us via email at [email protected] and we'll get your order sorted out and on its way to you! :)

It's very important to us that all backers and late backers get their games shipped to them first, before anyone else. (Note: “late backers” include anyone who pre-ordered their game before shipping began!) This means that we are holding back copies for anybody who places a new order for Seize the Bean now, as well as copies ordered by retail stores and distributors. We are even holding back the copies we’ve promised to content creators and the press (except those explicitly making how-to-play videos). This is all in an effort to make sure that you don’t have to see the game in stores or all over the internet before it gets to you. (Though of course, you should expect to see backers posting pics as you each get your own copies.)

To those of you who already got the game: thank you for your wonderful responses, nice comments, awesome photos, DIY insert solutions, high scores on the BBG listing page, and for sharing the game with your friends! It seems like there is a lot of interest from people who are playing the game but didn't back it, so if you have a friend who wants Seize the Bean, they can temporarily pre-order it in our BackerKit shop, until we migrate it over to our real web store. Once again, anyone who orders Seize the Bean now will be in a “wave 2” pre-order!

We've set a tentative delivery date for “wave 2” pre-orders to be the end of September. At this same time we will also ship copies to retailers, distributors, and lift the press embargo. The way it looks right now is that we will still be shipping copies throughout August, so we believe that this estimate of late September is giving us enough buffer. If it turns out it's not enough buffer, we will change it to stick by our promise that backers get their copies shipped to them first! :)

As mentioned above, we're not really passing out press copies right now. So almost all content you see around Seize the Bean is from creators who also backed on Kickstarter. However, there is one exception: we're reaching out to a few people to get How To Play videos made.

This is going a bit slow as we're primarily focused on fulfillment, so until those are ready, you can come watch our teaching streams on Twitch to learn the game. English streams are every Thursday, 21:00 CEST / 12:00 PDT / 15:00 EDT (that’s tonight!) and German streams are every Friday, 16:00 CEST / 07:00 PDT / 10:00 EDT (that’s tomorrow!). We're also working on getting these onto YouTube as soon as we can, because we’re aware the VODs on Twitch only last a couple of weeks.

If you want a non-broadcasted environment to learn the game, you can always come ask for a teaching demo in our Discord server. The team is quite busy but you might luck out and be able to schedule a private session with one of our passionate demo pandas!

Also, we have 3 resources available to you all while you are learning to play:

• Downloadable Rulebooks at http://rulebook.seizethebean.com (Note: these are not on BGG yet due to BGG's file size limit. We'll solve this when we have some downtime. No date estimate right now.)
• Learn to Play Resources at http://learn.seizethebean.com (We'll be updating this as we and other content creators post How-To-Play videos.)
• Official Rules & Product FAQ at http://faq.seizethebean.com (Find commonly asked rules and product questions here in case you are wondering about something!)

Some backers who ordered Seize the Bean in languages other than English have been surprised to find the Base Game Good & Bad Reviews, the 5-6 Player Expansion, and the 3 Customer Add-On Promo Packs (Board Game Media, Quality Beasts, and City Celebrities) are in English. While we did mention this in Update #44, it's clear that a lot of people missed it, so we're happy to elaborate.

The Good & Bad Review tokens, 5-6 Player Expansion, and Customer Promo Packs were intentionally not translated. Here's why:

• The Good & Bad Reviews were written by Kickstarter backers. They're actually not all in English to begin with, as we didn't tell backers which language to provide them in, just like real life reviews! To translate them, we would have needed to check in with every single backer who provided one to make sure we understood the detailed meaning of their review. This was unfortunately not feasible. We also felt this would take away a lot of the authenticity of the reviews, and the same logic was applied to editing the reviews at all, for typos etc.
• The 5-6 Player Expansion includes text on the back of the player boards and on the Extra Founder cards. The Founders are just names and wouldn't have changed in translation. The back of the cafes is flavor text and while we would've loved to have translated these we unfortunately did not get enough orders of this expansion to justify the production cost of several language versions. However, what we did do, is made sure that all of the cards with text that you need to play 5-6 player were included in the base game, and thus translated (such as Player Aid cards, Friends & Family Customers, and the cheat sheets on the back of the Customer Awards). We understand that for completionists this isn't perfect, but it's what we needed to do due to project restraints and we did our best to announce it when the decision was made.
• The Promo Pack Customers are all named after real or fictional people, so again would not be changed even if those packs were translated. It’s true that the Upgrades remained in English when they would've changed through translation (as they are not all names) but similar to the 5-6 Player Expansion, producing these in all language editions would've gone past the scope of what we could do with this production.

We are very sorry for anyone that found this out as a surprise and was disappointed, as that wasn’t our intention. We fully understand how important it can be to have every piece of content in your native language, to not break the immersive experience. This is why we went to the extreme effort of doing so many languages ourselves to begin with! So if you have any issues with your items please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected] and we’ll surely find a solution so that you are satisfied in the end.

Our next scheduled update will be on Friday, August 13th, as announced in the last update. We're thrilled to see so many of you finally receiving your games, and can't wait until the same is true for all of you, and we'll stay dedicated to that as our primary focus until they are all safely home. We can't say it often enough: thank you for sticking with us!

Stay safe out there and happy gaming!

Delivery, Delivery, Delivery!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 06:27:40 PM

Hello everyone! We're extremely hyped right now, because we're starting to see backers actually get their games. This is what we've been working towards for the last years, and it's finally happening! Ahhhh! Anyway, let's get into some details.

• EU warehouse - Currently shipping!
• Chinese warehouse - Currently shipping!
• UK warehouse - Boat almost there!
• US & Canada warehouses - Boat almost there!

Both the UK boat and the one to North America are scheduled to arrive within the next week, so we're currently preparing to pass detailed order data to our warehouses in these locations.

If you're in one of these three countries, you should have received an email today about locking down your address. If you have not, please contact us at [email protected] (perhaps after checking your spam folder). The deadline for responding to this final address change email is Friday, July 23rd!

Our warehouses in Europe and China are currently shipping! We've already gotten the first messages from backers receiving their games in Germany and Hong Kong. Please keep them coming, it makes us incredibly happy to finally see the game in your hands. In the case you post on social media and want to tag us, our handles are @_QualityBeast, @QualityBeastDE, and @SeizeTheBean. We also use and follow the hashtags #QualityBeast, #QualityBeastGames, and #SeizeTheBean. (Bonus points for including actual coffee, tea, other beverages, or even snacks in your pics!)

But also, don't freak out if you haven't received a shipping notification yet, there are a lot of packages for our warehouses to send out. So it takes a bit of time!

Finally, a note for European backers who selected local pick-up: you should have also gotten an email from us. If you haven't, please reach out to [email protected] and let us know!

If you want to learn the game but don't feel like reading the rulebook, check out our learning resources page! For now, it links to our teaching streams but later we’ll add some professional how-to play videos from content creators once they are done.

Meanwhile, we're teaching and playing Seize the Bean in English on Thursdays, 21:00 CET, and in German on Fridays, 16:00 CET. VODs are of course available for anyone who can't make those times. 

Our next scheduled update will be on Friday, August 13th (oooo, spooky!). If you need us in the meantime, drop a comment here on Kickstarter, email us at [email protected], join the forums over at Board Game Geek, or dive into our Discord server and chat with the team directly!

And seriously, thank you all so much for reading the updates and sticking with us through this long journey. We are very excited to hear how your reception of the game is once it’s in your hands. As always, stay safe and happy gaming!

Freight Shipping, Arrival, & Delivery
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 03:17:38 AM

Hello everyone! This is a nice update to write as it's a very exciting time for us, watching the games on their way to you all. Again, we'll discuss each region separately. Let's go!

• EU warehouse - Boat arrived!
• Chinese warehouse - Ready to Ship, including to AU/NZ!
• UK warehouse - Boat scheduled!
• US & Canada warehouses - Boat scheduled!

If you've followed the Toledo Triumph's journey, you already know this, but if you haven't: the boat has arrived at Hamburg! Customs fees are already paid, so hopefully it shouldn't be too long until the games arrive at our warehouse.

If you live in one of the following places and have not selected local pick-up, you should've received an email today about locking down your address:

• Argentina, Bermuda, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Martinique, Mexico, Peru
• Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
• Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine
• Mauritius
• Russia

If you're in one of those places and haven't gotten an email, please contact us at [email protected] before Friday, June 25th!

Those of you who selected local pick-up should receive a separate email next week.

If you're in a place that wasn't mentioned above, or wasn't mentioned as one of the VFI countries in the last update, and isn't Australia, New Zealand, UK, USA or Canada, we may not have your correct address! Again, please email us at [email protected].

Since there is not a huge number of games going to your end of the world, VFI (the Chinese warehouse) will be shipping the games to our Australian & New Zealand partner themselves. You should also have received an email about locking down your addresses. Other than that, your games will be sent out together with the Asian ones so read the section below!

We've spent the last 10 days getting everybody's address changes dealt with and preparing for shipment. This is quite a chunk of data that we have to pass to the warehouse in the exact right format to ensure each parcel gets packed correctly and sent to the correct place, so we're doing all of this very carefully. With one of our fulfillment pandas out sick, this has meant a few days of delay. But next week, the warehouse will have everything they need to get your games organized, scheduled, and packed up to leave the warehouse!

Good news, everybody: the UK-bound boat is scheduled to leave June 22nd! If you want to follow along with the vessel's progress, it's called the CMA CGM Bougainville. The current estimate we've been given is that the boat will reach Southampton on July 21st.

Same good news for you: the North-America-bound boat is also scheduled to leave June 22nd! If you want to follow along with the vessel's progress, it's called the YM Wellspring. The current estimate we've been given is that the boat will reach Chicago on July 18th.

Our next scheduled update will be on Friday, July 16th, although a spontaneous update before then is not entirely unlikely. Until then, stay safe, and happy gaming!

Shipping, Shipping, & More Shipping!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Jun 04, 2021 at 06:03:35 PM

Hey everyone, impromptu update time! We're preparing delivery to some regions and need to make sure backers didn't miss our emails. While we're at it, we're of course updating everybody else, too. For more details, read on…

Things have been moving since the last update! We'll elaborate a bit below, but here's an overview:

• Chinese warehouse - Truck arrived.
• EU warehouse - Boat is near the Suez Canal!
• UK warehouse - Boat not confirmed to have left yet.
• US & Canada warehouses - Boat not confirmed to have left yet.
• Australia & New Zealand warehouses - Truck arrived, boat being procured.
• Backers of the Chinese campaign - Boat arrived.
• Quality Beast HQ - Air shipment arrived.

As mentioned above, we're about to start sending out individual packages from the Chinese warehouse. We understand this may be hard to read for backers in other regions, but it seemed pretty indefensible after all this time to make any backers wait longer than necessary.

If you're in one of the following places, you should've received an email from us a few days ago about locking down your address:

• Brunei Darussalam
• China
• Hong Kong
• India
• Indonesia
• Israel
• Japan
• Malaysia
• Philippines
• Singapore
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• Vietnam.

If you live in one of those places and haven't gotten an email from us, contact us at [email protected] before Monday, June 7th! Just do us the favor of checking your spam folder first, please.

While we're talking about the Chinese warehouse: We call it that because that's their central hub, but VFI actually has warehouses everywhere we mentioned above except for Brunei, so you shouldn't have to pay VAT. (Sorry, Brunei!)

As far as we can tell, none of you are getting your games delivered to Macao, Myanmar, or Mongolia. If you do live in one of those places, we may not have your correct address. Again, please contact us at [email protected] before Monday, as those are places we would deliver to through VFI as well.

On the flip side, if you live in a part of Asia that wasn't mentioned above, please read the section on "Everywhere Else" below.

Speaking of the European warehouse, some backers have asked for names of boats so they can track the vessel. We checked, and the boat to Germany is the Toledo Triumph. As of the writing of this update, it's scheduled to dock at Suez Port today.

The boat's estimated arrival date in Germany is June 13th. We wouldn't be surprised if it takes a little longer, though, it's a pretty optimistic estimate. But for now, fingers crossed!

Once the boat arrives, you as well can expect an email about verifying your address. 

We realize it must be frustrating to see this little progress. We absolutely share your impatience. The shipments have been unblocked from our side for a couple weeks now, but apparently the world of freight shipping continues to be a bit of a mess.

As wild as that sounds, it's also possible the boats are already on their way, and we just don't know it yet. When the boat to the EU left, it took a couple days until that information made it to us! We are checking in with our shipping partner every few days, and of course we'll keep you updated as the situation gets resolved. 

As of now, the games for Australian & New Zealand backers have made it to the Chinese VFI warehouse. This is a good stop on the way to Australia because VFI already works closely with VR, our partner in Australia & New Zealand. We're just figuring out some last details this week, but your games should continue on their way in no time! Please keep an eye out for an automated email next week, verifying your final shipping address.

We mentioned this in passing last update, but you may not know: Our Chinese localization partner The Wood Games actually ran their own crowdfunding campaign in Taiwan for the project. Their games are currently in customs, and they'll start shipping any moment. It's possible that some The Wood Games backers get their games before those of you we're shipping to through VFI, simply because the boat to Taiwan was very fast. Please understand that even if they're technically part of a separate campaign, they're still backers just like you who have been through the same long wait!

If you backed here on Kickstarter and would like a Chinese copy of the game, fear not! They didn't all go to The Wood Games, we can totally still get you one. Just write to [email protected] and we'll help you out.

If you're in a part of the world we didn't mention above, don't worry! We may not have a separate warehouse for your region, but our European warehouse ships worldwide, so your game will come from there. Even if your game's itinerary may look strange on a map, we promise that we made shipping decisions with your waiting time at the front of our minds. What can we say, international logistics get pretty strange! 

As this was an impromptu update, the next regularly scheduled update will still be on June 18th. See you then!