Mon Feb 4 '19 Announcement
about 5 years ago
– Mon, Feb 04, 2019 at 04:01:33 PM
Dear Armchair Detective Company supporter,
As the New Year opens we have some very sad and unfortunate news to share with you. Shelby Arnold, majority shareholder and the very backbone of the ADC, has suffered a debilitating illness that will require the shutting down of the company.
As the holiday season approached, Shelby came down with a respiratory virus. As the week went on she began to feel oddly weak and shaky, and collapsed at work. By the weekend she had sought medical treatment several times, but tests for the flu and pneumonia came up negative so she was sent home.
The next morning, one week after initially getting sick, she woke up unable to lift her arms. She went back to urgent care where yet another doctor told her to go home and get rest. By evening, however, the paralysis had intensified to the point where Shelby could not lift her head, sit up and she was struggling to breathe.
The hospital did myriad blood tests; CT scans, x-rays, MRIs, an EMG, a nerve conduction study, and two Lumbar Punctures, but found nothing to explain her symptoms. Among other things, Shelby couldn’t swallow properly, and required oxygen and bipap breathing support.
Currently Shelby is unable to live independently. She cannot use her arms and can only slightly move her wrists and grasp with her hands, but her dexterity is vastly reduced, in addition to the significant pain she experiences daily from the damaged muscles. Her neck is also very weak and she requires part-time breathing support. A follow-up EMG test finally did find severe damage in all of the affected muscles. Medical specialists are now considering that Shelby may be a case of Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM), a new polio-like condition that mostly attacks children, though some adult cases have been recorded. The damage happens very quickly but heals extremely slowly, so while there is hope that Shelby will regain muscle control, there is no way to estimate how long it will take, as well as no guarantee that it will occur at all.
You can learn more about AFM here: https://www.afmanow.org/
Due to these terrible circumstances, the Armchair Detective Company is unable to produce or ship out any further Mysterious Cases or other products.
In the event of this kind of situation, as per your Terms of Agreement with Indiegogo, a campaign creator can offer an alternate perk, of equal or greater value, instead of the original perk.
Your contributions are non-refundable by Indiegogo and are made at your sole risk based on the evaluation of the campaign you are backing.
We are so very sorry that this has occurred and apologize and will be working on the alternate perk and hope to have it out to you in the next few months. Thank you very much for your patience and your continued support of what we tried to create.
The Armchair Detective Company
Fri Oct 26 '18 Announcement
over 5 years ago
– Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 06:35:22 PM
Hello All!
We have been sending out batches of Kidnapped Crossworders every week, and we have just about 100 left to go. Thank you for being so patient with us as we put them together.
We have heard back from many customers who are really enjoying the all the hard work and detail that has been put into this case - THANK YOU! We are so grateful for your encouraging words.
New store launching soon on our website!
As we are catching up on backer rewards for the Kidnapped Crossworder, we will be moving it over to a new store on our website. We’ll no longer take contributions for the Kidnapped Crossworder through the Indiegogo page, and instead will offer it as a product on our website. This will allow us to have control over inventory numbers for the store so we can make sure that we stay on top of our orders. We also want to give a heads up that when this happens, we will be raising the price of the Kidnapped Crossworder from $75 to $100.
Our new store will also host our Combo Lock Greeting and Postcards, as well as a NEW product:
“Alzeron and the Portal to the Beyond,” a mini-mystery from The Armchair Detective Company.
Each folio holds an envelope of interactive clues which must to be solved in order to unlock the card - revealing your prize inside!
Druids’ Catacomb: After the last round of prototypes failed to meet our quality standards, we had to make a difficult decision: the locking mechanisms on the boxes needed to be redesigned. It has been heartbreaking to have to go back and re-do work that we completed so long ago, but we knew we really needed to make sure that everything works and that we ensure the highest quality for the final product. We will have images in our next update to show the new lock configuration.
Star-Crossed Scientists: We are a small team, and it has worked out that we are having to focus on production for one major project at a time. As soon as Druids’ Catacomb enters the shipping stage, we will be starting on production for the Star-Crossed Scientists.
We thank you all so much for your patience.
Until next time,
The Armchair Detective Co.
Fri Sep 7 '18 Announcement
over 5 years ago
– Fri, Sep 07, 2018 at 12:50:27 PM
Hello everyone!
We have been sending out batches of Kidnapped Crossworder every week. If yours hasn’t arrived yet, it should be on its way soon!
Thanks for being so supportive as we work towards making this dream come true!
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We wanted to share this stellar review from the Escape Room Adventurer, who rated the Kidnapped Crossworder with a 9.5 out of 10 points!
“The beautiful boxes and locks included lend an immersive quality to the game that cannot be beat, and the handcrafted nature of the props included is just amazing. The game is just a joy to interact with on all levels. So many puzzles and clues are included, as well as a plethora of engaging story items that really draw you into the mystery. The game is set up perfectly for multiple players, as it is completely non linear from the start, allowing you go begin puzzling wherever you like! This also allows each player to solve puzzles that play to their strengths and preferences, making this an excellent and highly unique date or board game night activity. So much of this adventure is incredible and tactile, bringing the experience of an escape room into your home in one of the most convincing ways I’ve ever seen.
Most puzzles are some form of code breaking, but the myriad ways that this is done keeps the game flow feeling fresh from start to finish. The threads of each puzzle’s path are intuitive and challenging, eliminating any ambiguity. There really aren’t any hiccups to the flow either; we were constantly working on something new or making narrative connections throughout our time with the game. Overall, the amazing attention to detail, immersive storytelling, and tight puzzling make this just one of the most mind blowing at home experiences currently available on the market!”
We are so thrilled to hear that our careful attention to quality and detail is shining through in the final product! Be assured we are putting this same care into the production for Druids’ Catacomb and Star-Crossed Scientists.
You can read the whole review here: https://escapeadventurer.com/2018/09/05/the-armchair-detective-company-the-kidnapped-crossworder-review/
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Druids’ Catacomb: We are currently waiting to hear from our manufacturer about when we will receive the next set of box prototypes. After prototypes are approved we'll be placing a production order and should have stock soon after that. In the meantime, we are gathering and finalizing the other components for the case - for example, this week we placed a large order for printed materials. It's coming together!
Until next time,
The Armchair Detective Co.
Thu Jul 26 '18 Announcement
almost 6 years ago
– Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 12:54:27 PM
Dear Backers,
We are excited to share with you the latest working production samples for the Druids’ Catacomb. We just received these from our manufacturer overseas! For the most part the samples came out great. We have given our manufacturer some notes and tweaks to make sure the boxes work perfectly every time, but overall they look outstanding!
Here you can see just a few of the nesting boxes laid out and ready for inspection.
A detail of the main box's complex etching.
A mysterious chart, understanding its secrets might be the only way to get to the final case…
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We also wanted to share with you a couple of the notes we are sending back to the manufacturer about these samples. Some of you have asked why the timeframe for delivering the cases has been postponed, and we want to show some of the reasons that this happens so you are not in the dark about the process.
We have also spotted other issues and made suggestions for adjustments. Some of these things (like peeling paint) may seem like small details, but this sample stage is a critical one to make sure the final product works properly for our customers! For example - peeling paint could gum up the lock mechanism and make the box not open as it should.
Every time we make a correction, it takes time for the manufacturer to create a new sample and send it back to us. Some samples from one manufacturer might need to be checked against samples from another, causing a delay while one waits for the other. This troubleshooting is the main reason for the slowness of the production process. It's hard for us to predict if a new issue will pop up when we fix another. Because of this, unfortunately, we are unable to give an exact date for when all the cases will be shipped.
We were expecting the Druids' Catacomb's boxes to be ready for us to make our final full production orders before now, but these latest samples show they are still not ready. We will keep you posted - now that the manufacturer has our notes and will begin work on these latest adjustments, they should be able to get us a revised schedule for final production.
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For the Star-crossed Scientists, our team is working to fine-tune the drawing machine, the keystone of this entire case. As we perfect it and make it market ready, the other pieces we have been sourcing will work in tandem with the drawing machine.
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Printers have also been a time-consuming problem for us: print vendors have struggled with the sheer number of different items and varying paper stocks that our products require. This time we've decided to make an investment in a printer of our own to help facilitate some of our bulk printing needs for the cases. We've done our research and found a great heavy-duty printer that can handle the job of generating high print-quality clues! This will help us considerably in speeding the design-to-production process.
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The Kidnapped Crossworder second edition:
Besides shipping out a number of Kidnapped Crossworders every week, we have been finalizing our stock of a certain few components so that we can crank the assembly line all the way up to full-speed at our upstate workspace.
The last edition of Kidnapped Crossworder took about 3 weeks of full-time assembly to get an edition of 500 copies out, but the process is much more streamlined this time. It is quite a spectacle to see all the clues combine and disappear into their respective mysterious cases!
Get ready, they'll be in the mail very soon!
Happy Summer,
The Armchair Detective Company
Mon Jun 18 '18 Announcement
almost 6 years ago
– Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 03:22:32 PM
Dear Backers:
We are excited to let you know that a large freight shipment of boxes and other components was just delivered to our studio from our overseas sourcer!
Our team is ready to start compiling and assembling the components together tomorrow. We will have more updates on the assembly process now that they are here. We are excited to get these cases to you!
Keeping you informed:
It is very important to us to keep you informed as best we can about our progress. We post updates every month here on our Indiegogo page, which emails you the updates, and we've also begun posting links to these updates on our Facebook page.
However, we've heard that a few backers have not been receiving these updates. This may be because you are unsubscribed to all emails from Indiegogo. If you are not receiving our updates via email, but would like to, you may need to log into your Indiegogo account and make sure you have selected to receive email notifications for this campaign. We are not able to change your email settings from our end.
Keeping you updated on our progress with the other two Mysterious Cases:
We are striving to keep our backers informed of the progress on all three Cases, but it is true that we end up trying to highlight the tangible strides we are making rather then the bland bureaucratic aspects of sending out product orders and the setbacks that have come up with sourcing.
However we will work to inform you about the status of all three cases, their progress, as well as clear dates for their release. We want you to have a sense of where we are at with them and when you will have them.
Our next update will have specific information on all three cases - once we have sorted through the big shipment that came in today.
In the meantime, here are some of the components that have arrived for The Druids' Catacomb:
To close, here is a peek at some online content we also have in the works...
Best,
The Armchair Detective Company
