Seize the Bean - A Light-Hearted Deck Builder about Berlin!
Created by Quality Beast
Thematic deck builder with brutal resource management, card drafting, set collection, engine building, modular setup & wild components!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Tabletop Simulator, Spanish Edition & Ceramic Cups
about 6 years ago
– Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 08:52:24 AM
Wow, this campaign just flew by! And it has been a non-stop rollercoaster into fun-land the entire time. Thank you all for making that happen and being here with us. It’s certainly been a special experience, to say the least. And now, in the finally 72 hours we ask you all, once again, to help us push and share the campaign as much as you can. If we can go high enough we may be able to unlock even more languages than we already have (more on this below)!
As promised, we're happy to unveil the first, early access, rough draft version of our mod. It’s now available for public consumption in the Steam Workshop. We want to give a huge shout out to Dalton Broback for his work on the mod and also to one of our backers, Gary L. Amoe (aka OgreYama on our Discord server) for getting us through the final hurdles of how to release the mod. Thank you both so much for your passion and insight!
For those that begin to play with the mod, please subscribe as we’ll be pushing updates quite regularly to improve the experience and assets. Whenever you have thoughts about the game, we’d love to hear them so just jump on over to our feedback form to give us your insights: http://feedback.seizethebean.com
(Also, it’s worth noting that this does go public but we want to honor the early access all of you backers have paid for so we’ll be pushing updates out to you only, via the print and play, first, before we update them in the mod.)
You’ve all been asking for more language options so we're doing our best to bring them to you. We cracked the Spanish stretch goal (in case you didn’t see yet) but now let’s get another one in. We’ve priced this out and the only thing we don’t know is which language next? So, please, if you’re looking for something other than English, German, Spanish and Chinese, head over to our Language Preference form and let us know what we’re missing the most!
(We don’t have it planned, necessarily, but if we can climb high enough in these last days we will look at the possibility of extending this to yet another language. Therefore it’s important to put in your first, second and maybe even third choices into the form.)
Please do keep in mind that this form is for submitting your choices for languages we are not already printing. If you want English or German, etc., you do not need to fill out the form. :)
Just when you thought we weren’t gonna offer cups, here comes a pretty wild update! Now, first of all, we have heard the concerns that the more we add on, the more the production is delayed. This can be true if all of the add-ons are by the same manufacturer. So far we are being very careful to only pass the basics to our primary manufacturer. The deck boxes, the plushie, and now, this new specialty item, are all made independently and will not affect our timeline.
With that disclaimer out of the way we're pleased to introduce you to the work of Seattle-native, Adrien Miller!
What you see above is just a very fast, rough draft, concept sample. Adrien has quickly whipped up a variety of shapes and Mario has given them a bit of design flare. While this is just a mock-up for now, the two will be working together to make a severely limited number of high quality, handmade ceramic player cups for some lucky backers to buy. On top of that, there will be a few extra, even more limited, full ceramic sets including 4 player cups, 3 resource jars and an actual ceramic scoop. We’re sure a lot of you will have questions so let’s go through a short Q&A here:
"Why have we chosen to do this?" Because we don’t feel plastic cups do the game justice.
"Why are these so limited?" Because Adrien will be making them by hand and asking him to do a full production run is just not possible.
"Do I have to wait to receive them?" Nope. Adrien will make them after the campaign is over and they will be shipped by him, direct to you, before your receive your game (so you can possibly use them for the print and play in the meantime!).
"What if they break in the mail?" Adrien ships fully insured. If anything breaks, he’ll remake what’s broken and ship out to you again.
"Isn’t the shipping restricted to certain regions and/or going to be really expensive?" Nope and nope! Adrien will ship worldwide and the shipping is built into the price of the ceramics.
"Ok, I’m sold! How can I buy these?" We’ll be releasing a series of new pledge levels tomorrow, Tuesday, February 13th, at 16:00 CET (that’s 4:00 PM, Berlin time). Once again, they will be extremely limited so be prepared if you want some!
"What if I already backed a higher pledge level?" Don’t worry, we got you covered. You’ll certainly see a level that includes your already-backed-for rewards. If not, that is because they are add-ons.
"Where can I find more of Adrien’s work?" If you like what you see, head on over to his Etsy page to see what else he does. He’s a magnificent sculptor!
That’s it from us today. We’ll be back tomorrow with another big update so stay tuned!
Authorities, Translation & Print-N-Play
about 6 years ago
– Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 02:46:37 PM
We’ll be honest: we just cannot keep up! All of you are breaking through stretch goals too fast! We definitely did not expect them to be shattered so close together (time-wise) and we hope our updates are not becoming annoying or overwhelming. If so, please let us know! But otherwise let’s continue by unveiling all of the things you’re adding into the game…
Meet the Authority Figures. Despite us having a few new customer groups to share with you we’ll focus just on these folks today because they really do stand on their own. There to protect the coffee populace and preserve café order, their main danger is the tempting possibility of abusing their power for personal gain. And that’s why this group’s abilities will revolve around removing cards from lines, but just be careful because if there’s no one left to arrest they may just turn their handcuffin’ tendencies towards your best customers!
If you walk or drive (or cycle) the streets of Berlin then you know the ornery Verkehrspolizei. Wanna get caught jaywalking? Or maybe stopped for riding without a helmet? Or how about a healthy helping of parking tickets? The always-sharp Verkehrspolizei has got you covered!
In German terms, the Bundespolizei are basically the Feds. With a regional headquarters in Berlin (covering Berlin and Brandenburg) you’d be certain see them pursuing their many missions if you strolled through the city in search of a hot cup of coffee.
When things start to get wild (which they often do in Berlin, especially during the annual May Day demonstrations) the Bereitschaftspolizei are called in. Well-armored and trained to act fast but stay cool in extreme moments, you can often see them caught up in the middle of the most intense events.
Whew, that’s a serious bunch! But on the topic of German organizations...
That’s right! It’s in reach now! We are so very excited to announce that at €46k we’ll unlock a German version of the game. All text aspects (except for the yet-to-be-seen café names on player boards) including the cards, tokens, rulebook and box will be translated to German.
Let’s all keep pushing to have this campaign climb past that mark so we can honor the country in which Quality Beast was formed!
If you check your Kickstarter messages you may have already noticed that it’s here! As promised, any of you that backed at a reward level should now have early access to the print and play. If you didn’t get the download info via private message then it’s likely you either didn’t back at a reward level or you’ve just recently backed after we’ve sent out the information. In the case of the latter, please simply message us and we’ll hook you up.
Please note that this is just the first of many versions we’ll be sharing with you. Our idea of “early access” means that we’ll be providing you content as we go along. What you have here is the version you’ve seen in the hands of reviewers and press around the globe. It includes the first 6 of the core 10 customer groups as well as everything else you need to play the game (besides the 3D-printed resources, which you can replace with cubes). We highly suggest you attempt to use real coffee beans and a 1/3 teaspoon (1.65ml) spoon if you want to emulate the scoop.
As we release other customer groups we’ll send out more print and play announcements and we’ll do our best to segment out each addition so it’s easy for you to simply print and build the newest cards.
Whew, what an update! We hope you are as excited as us and we look forward to seeing what’s in store for this week!
Families, Health Nuts & KS Exclusives
about 6 years ago
– Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 02:46:19 PM
Absolutely unbelievable! Our team is speechless. Everyone has worked so hard to make Seize the Bean a great game and while we never stopped pushing and our passion was always at 100% it’s easy to say that none of us expected this. Thank you, everyone, for proving our expectations wrong!
In order to further thank you we’re gonna throw more hungry customers your way but we're also excited to unveil a Kickstarter exclusive we’ve been working on which we think you’ll enjoy. Let’s feed those caffeine-craving customers first though...
There has been a bit of back and forth in the comments regarding the sheer amount of customer groups. From concerns that too many could dilute the game, to praise that it adds to the replay-ability, to math that even suggests you couldn’t play all the variations of Seize the Bean until 2073. Whew! That’s a lot for us to take in and we want you to know that we’re listening.
Seize the Bean has been designed to reflect our lovely city of Berlin both thematically and mechanically. This means we want a vast amount of diverse characters with varying abilities and we want the possibility for the game to always be in flux (just like our city). We will stay open to feedback as we go but we’re determined to provide a full experience to our gamers. So let us embrace these new groups with open arms...
If you thought Tourists were a menace wait until you meet the Families. They come in like they own the place, bubbling with overly-positive, sleep-deprived vibes and noisy kids. They mean well, but they just can’t help themselves from annoying all of those around them. And that’s why their abilities will cancel the abilities of other customers. How you use that is up to you!
A tragetuch is the German word for a carrying wrap. It’s super trendy, very useful and the cornerstone of really minimalist parenting. From the front you may not even notice the sneaky adult slip in as they order a tasty beverage like any other customer... until all of a sudden their little passenger wakes up and the cries begin.
While the Stroller Parent is super down-to-earth and quite fun to have around they make one vital mistake: bringing their vehicular baby device everywhere. Without ample outdoor parking these things just take up a lot of space and really make the tiny, hole-the-wall cafés of Berlin impossible to navigate.
It’s not everyday that it happens, but when they go visit a café the entire shop knows it, because the Whole Fam Damily is disruptive to say the least. The last thing those kids need is more energy and while their parents must be tired it’s probably a bad idea to throw caffeine on top of those already stressed-out nerves!
This group is essential to Berlin and we’re proud of that! Despite its reputation for late-night doner kebab the city boasts a relatively health-conscience agenda with bio stores scattered about and a wide array of vegetarian and vegan options for eating out. The Health Nuts help us all to lower the amount of crap we put in our bodies, and that’s why their abilities will revolve around lowering the cost of ingredients you need to pay to serve other customers in your line.
Lovingly referred to as “the pretzel guy” by our awesome backers, the Proud Yogi is somehow proud but not quite smug. With a humble nature and a limber mind, he’s able to remain open to almost any suggestion. That is, except for skipping yoga!
Not everyone can be as ego-free as the Proud Yogi and so in runs the Smug Jogger. She needs a coffee to go, really quick, but one requiring the most amount of special preparation possible. And then she’s off! Well, not before preaching about the importance of having a strong cardio regime to your other customers...
There’s always gonna be a customer who can’t be fully understood and as far as the Health Nuts go that’s gotta be the Esoteric Guru. Often giving insights on non-traditional medicines and suggesting new practices and experimental ideas, the Guru can never be said to not embody adventure and creativity. They can however be blamed for having some weird coffee choices!
At Quality Beast we’ve backed a lot of tabletop projects ourselves and we believe that all of a game’s playable content should be made available to gamers who missed the crowdfunding campaign. Therefore, our Kickstarter exclusives will largely focus on aesthetic upgrades to the game and (while free to backers) will be made available to purchase by non-backers post-campaign.
With that said, we’re excited to introduce our first Kickstarter exclusive!
We’ve been wanting to provide some sort of container for the beans (and possibly the other resources) but plastic cups just didn’t fit our expectations of quality and aesthetics for the game. At SPIEL16 we brought these giant, authentic burlap sacks from a Berlin-based coffee roastery to use as bean bags. Since then we couldn’t budge the burlap from our brains, so we’ve checked with our manufacturer and they are confident they can make some nice, miniature burlap sacks that will sit flat and store the beans for scooping. Our artist, Mario, is working hard to figure out a final design for them, as well as two other bags for the milk and sugar. We’ll share more as we progress but we wanted to explain the stretch goal since it was revealed by now.
(Please note that these will be free for all backers and made available as an add-on for pre-orders or retail purchasers.)
That’s it for today! Thank you all again for making this dream come true!
Upper Class, Fashionistas & Founders Expansion
about 6 years ago
– Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 02:45:43 PM
The success of the campaign so far has really been amazing for us and it seems that for many of you it’s been an enjoyable campaign too. We’ve had some very encouraging comments regarding how far we can go (which we want to thank you all for!) and by our calculations if we can keep up our current momentum we may be able to reach €100k. We’re working on a very exciting €100k stretch goal in case that happens so let’s all keep pushing, keep sharing, and keep enjoying this ride!
Until then, we’ll slow down the updates to about two per week. We’re doing so to respect people’s inboxes. Please let us know if you’d rather see more (or even less) than this and we’ll happily oblige. Now, let’s dig into some of the new customers you’ve unlocked…
Berlin is often referred to as “poor but sexy” so the Upper Class don’t always fit in, at least to that first part. In fact, when you’re the richest in the room, things can get awkward pretty quick. It’s for this reason that the success of an Upper Class customer really depends on the rest of your clientele, and so their abilities will revolve around giving you rewards from other cards in your deck.
Meet the Lawyer. Yup, just the Lawyer. Nothing weird, nothing extravagant, just a normal, hard-working, well-mannered individual. Those are about one-in-a-million when it comes to Berlin’s typical archetypes so be thankful when they come strolling into your café!
Berlin is known as the Silicon Valley of Europe and it’s the Tech Nerds and Start Uppers that earned it that name, but there’s always gonna be a small selection of young urban professionals who rise up from that crowd, riding a wave of success until it goes to their heads. Didn’t someone ever tell this Silicon Yuppie that success isn’t everything?
As an alternative city there are often many perspectives to represent and so it’s not uncommon to see an uncommon position be taken by party officials. However, at the end of the day, they’re still politicians and this is still Berlin!
What Berlin is much more known for than its politics is its fashion scene. One of the few rare sneaker capitals of the world and a frequent home to the infamous Bread & Butter trade show it’s not a strange sight to see the latest trends and weirdest fashion statements on a daily basis, all of which are quite amusing, whether you’d wear them or not. And that’s why this group’s abilities allow you to increase the rewards of other customers in your line.
It all begins with these talented creatures, who dream up the next stylish shape or put together the most popular palettes. No doubt stressed out from the demand of their jobs, they thrive on coffee and long hours to keep their inspired handiwork in motion.
Style, elegance and grace are not often things which can just be bought and the Old Fashionistas help remind us of that fact. This is one of the most interesting aspects of Berlin; that the city doesn’t have a single face for the fashionable, but permits many varied styles to earn the title of fresh, especially those of a vintage nature!
Speaking of vintage: last but not least is the infectious Sneakerhead, who can’t be pinned down to wearing, collecting, amassing or reselling, but traverses all aspects of the shoe industry. From vintage kicks to new drops every weekend, you can often find this individual camping out on the street for a week straight to get the hottest new releases.
We’ve had a lot of potential extra content and diverse gameplay ideas for Seize the Bean since day one. We’ve tried a lot of them too and some things which worked we’ve saved for later, intent on bringing you a core game that is at its cleanest possible. Since the campaign has begun it’s been delightful to hear how many backers make suggestions that go exactly in-line with what we’ve been planning. This is such a great feeling for our team and only means that (once implemented) our ideas will really match what all of you want!
Although not unlocked yet, we wanted to highlight the newly revealed Founders Expansion. This mini-expansion will add Founder Cards into the mix, which players can use to alter their starting setup and perhaps even provide unique actions. Along with that will be player boards that at the very least will offer unique artwork representing different cafés. If testing goes good we will look to implement some variable mechanics here as well. We'll keep you up-to-speed once we can provide more information and aim to include this mini-expansion in the print and play at some point. Until then, let’s keep sharing to make it to €57k and get this mini-expansion unlocked!
That’s it for now, we hope you’ve all enjoyed your weekend and are excited for the week to come. We know we are, as by now we owe you a few more stretch goals to reveal and we think you’re gonna like what you’ll see…
Media, Locals and F&F Expansion
about 6 years ago
– Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 02:45:08 PM
We’ve taken a bit longer to get this update out because we fainted from excitement. The entire team is in a big pile on the Quality Beast office floor. The amount of superb ideas and the extremely strong positive energy flying around our Kickstarter messages and the comments section of the campaign page is overwhelming. Thank you all for the love, excitement and belief in Seize the Bean!
Besides crowd-fainting we’ve been busy (as promised) crunching numbers to provide (hopefully) better shipping prices. We’re not 100% there yet but getting much further and should have an announcement soon. We’re also collecting emails for play-testing and getting close to a public release of Seize the Bean on Tabletop Simulator. If you haven’t signed up already please do so at:http://playtest.qualitybeast.com
That’s it for future selling, let’s talk to some currently waiting customers…
Cameras are everywhere. Microphones too. And no matter how grimy, indie, or alternative Berlin wants to be, it also can’t escape this reality. But it doesn’t have to be all bad, actually. When using the media to your advantage you can really achieve some success, but be careful because it might be at the expense of others! Thus, the Media group’s abilities will allow you to swap good and bad reviews, improving your position and lowering that of your opponents!
Just a plain old Journalist, right? Better think again. From ridiculous antics like anonymous artists live-painting busy intersections to the rise of the squatter community to political demonstrations to explosive startups, there is never a dull moment in Berlin. And that means the life of even the most traditional journalists can be a wild and hectic ride, full to the brim with interesting stories.
But on the flip side, there’s a lot of fake stuff going on, with movies, series, commercials and music videos being filmed throughout Berlin’s already-busy districts. Therefore it’s not uncommon to see a Film Crew blocking a street or flooding a train station or taking over your favorite café. Don’t these folks have jobs? Oh, wait, right...
Beyond the traditional folks, there is another media creature in Berlin, this one much more focused on the artistic and independent side of things. While quite talented, the Indie Filmmaker is not a rare breed, but actually a common archetype that you can find scattered throughout Berlin. Competing to put the most amazing works into each Berlinale (Berlin’s own famous international film festival) you’d be hard-pressed to catch the Indie Filmmaker lazing about in a café sipping a latte.
The joke here is that German culture is quite unique in the way people typically express excitement or happiness. There is not much over-exaggeration or dramatization, which is very nice and pragmatic. This does mean that often visitors to the beautiful city of Berlin don’t always call it “friendly” and frequently have things to say about the service in general. That’s why this group’s abilities will allow you to return customer’s to the top of your deck, whether that be the locals themselves (to return every day) or the frustrated out-of-towners (that you never end up serving) is up to you!
It all has to start here, and actually, it’s hard to complain about the service of kebab shops across Berlin, because overall they are top notch. Whether you want a gourmet veggie kebab or something super trashy for that early-morning stumble home from the club you can find it in Berlin. The Doner Chef has you covered, alles komplett!
With such a city in flux it’s no surprise that buildings rise and change like the tide of the canals (which, actually, doesn't change, but you get the point). And who is at the center of all this action? The Architect. Blamed for the dot-com-boom-like gentrification across town, the Architect does a lot of good too: restoring the beautiful “altbau” (older buildings) of Berlin and finding ways to provide much more eco-friendly energy mechanisms for large apartment complexes.
Berlin, although young, has been through its fair share of history, and therefore can be considered a bit of an old soul, just like that storytelling, advice-giving, know-it-all Old Bartender who seems to work in every pub across the city. Sure, there’s a lot of “youth” going on in Berlin, but don’t forget the value and power of the elderly in today’s culture!
This mini-expansion is something we’ve been excited to share for a while. It may seem subtle but it should add a very interesting twist to the game for those that have played before. Let's look a bit deeper at what it does and why...
The added expansion will provide a total of at least 8 unique Friends & Family (F&F) for players to choose between. “Unique” here refers to the abilities, not the art (which may end up also being unique across the whole group, depending on how much time we have to get creative with these cards). At the beginning of the game, players will shuffle the F&F into a single deck, then each draw a hand of 8 and draft them around the table until everyone has 4 (with the rest being discarded). This will allow for a wide variety of asymmetrical starting strategies. Do you take a lot of cards with Opa’s ability to eject customers? Or rather the Popular Friend’s ability to attract extra customers? It’s up to you! And what you take goes into your deck so other player's won't see it until you're serving them, keeping your strategy hidden for the first few turns...
If the space on the punchboards allow, we may also introduce a few additional F&F rewards, for example, one that nets you 5 Good Reviews at the end of the game if you happen to have successfully stolen any extra F&F from the other shops (codenamed “The Betrayer” award)!
That’s it for today. We’ll be back in a few days with more customers and some news about Solo Mode. Stay tuned and keep on spreading the word!
