An innovative city-building TCG for 2-4 players with exciting gameplay and collectability! Printed by WJPC. www.animalkingdomtcg.com
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Community Promo Poll!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Oct 12, 2024 at 12:06:54 PM
Good evening Mayors,
The community vote for the bonus promo card is here! We've selected a dozen cards for you to pick from, and whichever one gets the most votes by the end of November 2nd will be the one that gets the full-art treatment! All of you who backed will be getting a copy of this with your pledges.
You can vote using the above form, and you can vote for up to 3 cards as we understand that it can be hard to just pick a single favourite!
These are the finalists that you get to pick from!
You'll be able to edit your votes up until the final day in case you change your mind at any point, so don't be afraid to get your votes in early even if you're not entirely decided on your choices.
And don't worry, the survey for the Hero Packs will be coming very soon. We just wanted to make separate announcement posts for both of these things :)
- Monster Channel
September is here, as are the Hero Packs!
over 1 year ago
– Sun, Sep 01, 2024 at 08:59:26 PM
Hello Mayors!
We hope that you're all having a good summer and that it's not too stuffy where you are? It's been a bit stifling here in the UK, but our moods have been greatly improved by a recent large package that we received...
Hero Packs!
Things of beauty!
They're finally here, and we are SUPER thrilled at how cool they are! Professionally printed foil cards in actual sealed booster packs, it's something that we wouldn't have imagined a couple of years ago. Now we have them in hand, and we're very excited to get them to all of our wonderful backers (you!) to see what you think of them.
As we mentioned when we ran the Kickstarter, all of these are cards that are available in the full It's a Wild World set, BUT this is the only way you're going to get any of these cards in foil. In fact, this foiling style is exclusive to the Hero Packs themselves, so even the foils in the main set won't have this lovely foiling pattern to them! Exclusive foils to show off to friends and players who didn't get in on the Kickstarter :)
Whilst we're here, why don't we actually take a look at what's in them? If you've been hanging around in our Discord server then you'll already know the contents. It's the extra cards that we allowed in the tournament earlier in the year, that were added to the Tabletop Simulator mod and printable decks! But for those of you who haven't seen them, here are a couple of pictures.
Packs, and some of the things you can find in them!
A big ol' uncut sheet, showing off the beautiful foiling as well as the full selection of cards!
We've opened a few of these packs in order to check the quality of the cards, and they are excellent. It sounds silly to say that 'they feel like professional high budget trading cards', but it's really the best way we can describe them. We're very happy with the print quality and card feel, and we look at these as a successful test for what we'll get when the full set and Starter Decks are sent to print.
That said, there is one thing with these packs that didn't go exactly as we planned. When we sent them to print we'd asked for all of the cards to be randomised, as you'd expect when you open any kind of sealed booster product. What we weren't told until after they arrived is that the randomisation available for an order this size wasn't the full machine randomisation that we thought it would be. The cards in these packs have all been randomised, but it was via what they called 'manual random packing'. This means that they were done by hand, and as a result a few of the packs that I've opened have contained 3-4 of the same attribute. Thankfully I haven't seen duplicates of the same card in packs, but from what we've opened it appears like a portion of the packs may be biased towards a single attribute due to the randomisation method.
We did talk with the printer once we noticed this, but it's not something they can do anything about as with the numbers of Hero Packs that we ordered, this was the only way they can do the randomisation.
We apologise that this it the case, but we do want to say that: - This will in no way affect the It's a Wild World booster boxes and packs, as they far exceed the minimum number of cards they need in order to do full machine randomisation. - Although some of the packs have the single-attribute bias, there are still exactly the same number of each card spread among the set so it's unlikely that it will lead to people opening multiple packs that are heavy in one attribute.
How do I get my hands on these packs?
The big question! They're currently here in our office, and all of you have 2 options.
1 - You can get the Hero Packs shipped out early, and receive them soon. If you choose this option it will require you to pay the shipping fee to send them out (roughly £3-12 for most counties, but it will be detailed in the survey).
2 - You can wait for the full product release, and they'll be shipped alongside your full pledge. This won't cost any extra shipping, as they'll be posted along with everything else that you're due to receive.
We will be sending everyone a survey in the near future to allow you to select which option you wish to take.
Additionally we have the League Promo cards from our tournament on hand and ready to ship, and for those of your who are eligible for them we can ship them alongside your Hero Packs. Everyone who entered the event should be in the Discord server, so please keep an eye out for an upcoming announcement.
What about those cool uncut sheets in those pictures?
We have a limited number of these that we requested alongside the packs, and we plan to give them out! How exactly? We suggest that you follow us on our Social Media pages and keep an eye out for some upcoming giveaways! We will be sure to announce them here when we run them, but you'll need to be following us on Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter (X), or be part of our Discord server to enter.
How's progress going with It's a Wild World, and the Starter Decks?
We are still working to finish up the artwork for the set at the moment, and that's the main thing we're waiting on now. We're getting there, but with artists only able to work on a single piece at a time we did underestimate the amount of time that it would take to get the hundreds of pieces or art that we needed for the set.
Whilst we wait for this, all of the finished cards that we currently have are being prepared for printing, so that there will be minimal downtime once we have all of the cards ready. We're also in constant contact with the printer, so once the artwork is all finished and we have all the cards prepared correctly, it shouldn't be a long wait to get into the print queue.
So! Please keep an eye out on our social media pages and on your e-mail inboxes in the coming days and weeks. We will of course post here once the surveys have been sent out too, as we don't want anyone to miss the chance to get their packs early!
Take care of yourselves, and please enjoy this gif showing off the fancy foiling exclusive to the Hero Pack cards!
- Monster Channel
Since a static image can't really do it justice, enjoy.a gif that hopefully won't be compressed too much...
The Quest for the Hero Packs: Printing Complete!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Jul 23, 2024 at 07:50:39 PM
Good Evening Mayors!
We hope you're all doing fantastic! We have some incredibly exciting news to share with you today – the Animal Kingdom Hero Packs have been printed!
And we couldn't be more thrilled to show off how they look with you. The style of foiling that we picked for these prints is exclusive to the Hero Packs, and we think it looks awesome! As we’ve said before, these cards will all be non-foil in It’s A Wild World, so this is the only way that you’ll be able to have these in any kind of nice, shiny foil!
Now that they exist as a physical product, the Hero Packs are being shipped out out to us imminently. We are keeping a close eye on the shipping process as we can’t wait to get our hands on them and share more pictures, and we will update you as soon as they arrive at our headquarters.
Once they are here we’ll make another announcement, then send out another Backerkit Survey to all of you. This will allow you the option to have your Hero Packs shipped to you now for an additional small shipping cost, or to wait until It’s a Wild World is released and have them shipped alongside the rest of your goodies.
We appreciate your patience and support throughout this journey. Your enthusiasm and encouragement have continued to be our driving force, and we can't wait for you to get a hold of these packs yourselves. Thank you once again for being a part of the Animal Kingdom adventure!
- Monster Channel
P.S - I couldn't embed it into this post, but if you go and take a peek over on our discord channel you can see a video of a pack being opened!
Hero Packs are here!
almost 2 years ago
– Sun, Jun 02, 2024 at 05:34:26 PM
Hello Mayors!
First thing’s first, we’re very sorry for the length of time that it’s taken to get this update to you. We didn’t want to be making Kickstarter update posts without large significant news to report, but we’ve since heard and realised that we should be more vocal on here and not just on our Social Media platforms and Discord. As such, please accept our apologies, and expect more frequent updates on here, even if they might not always be huge updates!
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With that said we’ll begin the biggest most exciting news; we’re delighted to announce that Hero Pack 1 has officially gone to print! We’ve been told that the estimated time for printing is about a month, and shipping will be a couple of weeks once they’re printed. We know you’re eager to see the progress, so we’ve asked for pictures and videos of the production process, which we’ll be sharing with you all as soon as we receive them. Stay tuned for these sneak peeks as they're going to be awesome!
Once they’re in our hands, as we've previously mentioned we will be happy to ship them early to people who want them immediately, but there will be a small additional shipping cost for this. We’ll be asking you all through backerkit nearer the time, so keep an eye out for that update!
These packs going to print almost marks the culmination of a long back and forth to get all of the details ironed out with the printer, and make sure that these will be printed exactly how we want them. Now that we’ve finally made it to this point with them, the Starter Decks and It’s a Wild World Booster Boxes will have *much* less of a delay once they’re ready to print, as the groundwork has been done. We’re just waiting on all of the artwork to be finished, and once we have that they can basically be sent off immediately. We’re sorry that we can’t give you an exact date for these as artwork takes time to produce, but we’re confident that the Kickstart Product will be all shipped this year.
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Also from the Kickstarter, we have the Stretch Goal for the community vote promo to sort out! Later on this month we’ll be doing a popularity vote to decide which card gets this promotional treatment, and you’ll have a lot of cards to pick from! We will let you all know how to vote in a future update, so start thinking about what your favourite cards are.
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Speaking of promotional cards, we're happy to inform you that the Tomoe & Natasha Patreon promos/playmats, and the Goodbye Namatori! Tournament promos are in-hand and ready to ship. For anyone who is due these please keep an eye out on Patreon or Discord as we'll be reaching out this week to confirm shipping addresses.
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We're afraid to say that those giant cards aren't playable... Unless your entire deck is giant cards, maybe.
A lot of you might know that we’ve just returned from an incredible time at Confuzzled; a convention here in the UK, where for the 2nd year in a row we had the opportunity to show off Animal Kingdom to people and give away a few things! The event was really really fun, and we were thrilled that we got to meet many of our wonderful backers in person! Your enthusiasm and support mean the world to us, and it was fantastic to see and share in your excitement firsthand. We hope to be allowed to attend again next year, with product in hand and an event slot to play the game with those of you who are there!
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One piece of feedback that we got from those of you that we met last weekend is that lots of you don’t use the various social media channels that we are on, which means that the more granular updates we do might get missed. We’ll make sure that the information from those posts makes it’s way here as well, although slightly less frequently as we don’t want to spam you all with new updates a couple of times a week. With that in mind, at the bottom of the post you’ll find a gallery of a lot of the latest spoilers that you may have missed.
February update - Roadmap, Hero Packs and League Progress!
about 2 years ago
– Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 10:03:24 PM
Hello Mayors,
First of all just a quick note to say that the 2nd week of the League Tournament has just come to an end and we're now in week 3. Close to 400 points have currently been earned, more than 2 dozen people are a part of the league, and there are still 2 weeks left for you to get involved as well!
The artwork for all of the cards in Hero Pack 1 has been complete for some time, and the cards themselves are now ready to go to print. The process of preparing the Hero Packs for production has taken longer than anticipated due to issues in communication with our printer, particularly in the language barrier and timezone differences, but thankfully we're now in a position where we're happy to send the cards to print. Lunar New Year means that our printer is currently shut down until the end of the Holiday, but as soon as they’re back open we’ll be sending them all of the files and updating you with whatever printing estimate they provide us!
As previously promised, all backers who are receiving Hero Packs will be given a choice of whether to receive them early, or to just have them arrive with the rest of their pledge rewards. Once we have our estimated delivery time from the printer we’ll send out a Backerkit survey to find out who wants them early, and to get the address of those who do. Getting them early will incur an additional small shipping charge, which will be listed in the survey.
It’s a Wild World Booster Box and Starter Decks update!
Unfortunately, we have to delay the estimated delivery date for the full set, as well as for the Starter Kits. We're sad to have to announce that, but there are a couple of reasons for this:
Although many members of the team are no strangers to the world of illustration, we weren't fully prepared for the reality and logistics of commissioning art and co-ordinating with our artists on such a large scale. Additionally, the process of finding suitable artists who are willing to do commercial work and then working out contracts with them has taken longer than anticipated, occasionally bottlenecking the commissions process.
This is a case of important lessons being learned on our part, as we now have a better idea of just how long it takes to co-ordinate commission work on this kind of scale. This does also mean that we now have working relationships with a lot of artists, which will make future artwork and future Animal Kingdom releases go a lot smoother.
Like with the Hero Packs, dealing with our printer has unfortunately caused a few delays, with the language barrier causing confusion several times during the process of trying to organise everything. This has been compounded by the almost 12 hour timezone difference, meaning that back and forth e-mail communication has often been just a single message a day due to their opening times.
Thankfully we are now at the point where all of the technical details have be sorted, and we’re just waiting on the artwork to all be finished so that we can send it over to be printed.
We're very sorry that this has caused a delay, as we know many of you were looking forward to a March delivery. Unfortunately we can’t give you an accurate estimate yet since our printers are closed until the end of the month for the Lunar New Year, and their printing estimates change on a month-by-month basis depending on how much work they’ve taken on. With the current workflow we're looking to have all of the art done and files ready to submit in the next couple of months, and as soon as we do that we’ll be given an estimate for printing, which will in turn allow us to provide an accurate shipping estimate. In the meantime, we intend to continue marketing the game, and will fill the new time with more community events, such as 'learn to play' and 'play with the devs' days, giveaways, and more. Card spoilers will also return, this time as cards from the main set!
If you have any further questions please feel free to ask them here, or in our Discord server, and we'll be sure to reply as soon as we can.
