Dear Nanobackers,

April is coming to an end and it's time to update you on the state of Nanolith's completion. We are very happy about the progress our - and your - game has made this month. Let's start:

In this update we talk about:

• The layout progress and timeline.
• The production at LongPack
• The comics

Layout and Timeline

The most important part of our work in the last weeks was to assign the layouters the relevant work and all the necessary resources for it at the right moment. This sometimes resembled a puzzle with thousands of pieces, because in order to start one task, often another must have been finished first, and so on. We are very grateful to have found such professional and friendly people to help us with the layout of our game. 

Max and Marc looking through the testprints.Glad I built myself a gaming table :D

Our goal was to finish all missing chapters in the encounter- and storybook in April. Unfortunately, this did not work out. 

Katherine is pretty much done with Chapter 4, but Chapter 5 and Sector Alpha still need work. Chapter 5 and the Sector Alpha side mission chapter are less laborious in layout than Chapter 4, or - especially - Chapter 3, but still, Katherine will be working on the scenario and campaign book for at least another week before she can turn her attention to the rulebook. 

That means our deadline moves from early May to mid/late May. LongPack's timeline states that if we turn in the print data by early May, we can ship the game in September. However, there were some buffer zones and gaps in this timeline to accommodate any delays. 

We still hope to start shipping in September, but to do that, the next few months have to go by without any further delays. 

encounter sneakpeak chapter 3

No matter what else comes our way: You can be sure that we are fully committed behind the completion of the game. We are working every day to produce Nanolith as quickly and professionally as we can, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making this dream possible.

We would love to show you our heart's project at the Spiel in Essen 2023 and we will try everything to make it possible :)

Another big item in working through the layout was and is the cards. In order to match the printing capabilities of the presses at LongPack, all the cards in the game have to be redone. Quite a mammoth project, which Emese Viragh has thankfully taken on. The whole thing is going well and thoroughly and I think by the end of next week we should have all cards in the new layout format. 

This complication could hardly be avoided, since we didn't know at the time of the prototype if and by whom our game would be produced. For the next project, however, we have already made the experience that it makes sense to adjust the layout to the production conditions of the partner right from the start. Lesson learned :)

Otherwise, we can distribute the remaining tasks (acrylic punchboards for the deluxe box, rulebook for the deluxe box, the dice, the bookmark and the box layouts) well among our team and have both the capacity and the time to finish these things by around May 21st. 

We are highly motivated and are entering the final spurt.

Production

Communication on production with LongPack has been excellent. A week or two ago we had a video meeting about the upcoming busy period and since then we have been in daily communication with the responsible people at LongPack via various chat services and emails. 

It's a good feeling to get very precise and understandable instructions from the production company, which can often be passed on to the layout artists without further editing. Overall, we feel well taken care of and have great confidence in the processes of our chinese partners.

The first of - hopefully - many packages made it from China to us in Germany. 

And of course it was the miniatures reworked and printed by LongPack! It was a great feeling to see these sculpts revised and somewhat improved again. LongPack adjusted some parts of the miniatures to eliminate possible breakage. 

sweet sweet miniatures

We are very happy with the samples and hope you like them as much! Now the sculpts of these minatures can be used to make appropriate molds and then we will soon receive a package with the cast Nanolith miniatures. That will be a party!

Comics

Last night was the last stream of our comic artist Agustín Graham Nakamura. In the last few weeks he has been regularly broadcasting his work on our game on the internet. Now he is finishing the last comics of the game and is already drawing the different endings of the campaign. It was beautiful and a bit sad to watch him for the last time as the concepts turned into lineups and later into colored images. 

You can still see the streams on YouTube here, by the way:

click the banner to get to to the playlist

The world of Nanolith that Max and I developed in hours of conversations a few years ago became reality under his hands. We owe him and all our artists a huge debt of gratitude for visually creating this world. It was wonderful to work with them and we are looking forward to the next project!

You might be interested in how the comics are created, so here's a brief summary of the production process. 

First, Max and I have hours of excited conversations about what the storyline of the chapter will be. Then I write a short technical storyboard for Nakamura.

He draws sketches, the so-called concept drawings, which he submits to us for correction.

These later become the colored pages. As a final step, our layout artists add the text bubbles and the game-relevant texts.

As a final step, our layout artists add the text bubbles and the game-relevant texts.

I hope we could give you a comprehensive insight into the production of Nanolith and we thank you for your support, feedback and interest!

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to write us in the comments.

Get through the spring well and we'll hear from you soon on the next update.

Kindest regards,

Marc, Max and Fabian