Meowlloween 2020: Last Weekend for Prosperitea !
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 02:32:33 AM

Greetings, Hoomins. It has been some time.

A great many things have happened in our cantankerous corner of the world since we last made an announcement in this space. We have toured the country, made many catnip teas, and found promising new friends in the Pacific Northwest last year. We also managed to finish our second project: Prosperitea!

Prosperitea needs your help to make it across the finish line. And we have employed the help of a new friend to reward our cantankerous communitea for supporting this new project:

New Character: Nikki M. Dimas

This year, we are pleased to welcome a new friend of into the neighborhood for this most devilishly delightful of holidays. 

Nikki Morgan Dimas is the legendary force behind Mischief Night. It is said that long ago, there was once a witch (or wizard. Or...sorcerer? Nobody knows for certain) that tested the wrong Scottish noble on Mischief Night many hundreds of years ago. Their transmutation spell backfired, and trapped them in their current, superior feline form.

Nikki has become astoundingly adept at utilizing their feline agility to deftly deploy various acts of mischief on Hoomins for as long as we cats have told stories.  While they are most well known for stealing Hoomin souls, they also enjoy confusing Hoomins by taking the place of unwitting Domestic Cats. They also seem to have retained their Hoomin desire for tea...

Hoomins, be warned: Nikki is an agent of chaos. While they are bound to make things interesting, their abilities are quite powerful, and will definitely upset the balance when active.

We hope you have enjoyed this gracious introduction to our good friend Nikki. If you have enjoyed your time with Cantankerous Cats, Nikki is bound to add a new level of Mischief for your future games. We are also quite proud of the work put forward by the Hoomin designers of Prosperitea. While it is a simpler game, it retains a level of depth and artistry reminiscent of our world.

We look forward to seeing you for our latest Meowlloween celebration on the Prosperitea Kickstarter page. As always, we wish you well and hope you are having a most enjoyable and safe time with your family, friends, and frenemies during this time of maximum mischief.

Regards,

Lord Purrcival XVII

Master of Mischief

---

Al Gonzalez

Alpha Hoomin of Cantankerous Cats

Master Barista of Prosperitea

Greetings, Hoomins! We Have a New Game! It is called "Prosperitea." And it is launching October 8th!
over 3 years ago – Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 12:14:42 PM

We are excited to announce the impending launch of our latest creation: Prosperitea!

Prospritea is the creation of Al Gonzalez (your narrator here at Cantankerous Cats) with help from Jose Pimienta (one of the artists from Cantankerous Cats)! We have put a lot of love, care, and creativity into this new venture in an effort to bring a pot of cheer and joy into your gaming space.

Prosperitea shares a lot of visual DNA with Cantankerous Cats, but is a much simpler game aimed at families and casual experiences. You MAY even find a few catmeos from some of our favorite cats hidden in the deck of cards!

We hope you will join us on this new journey into the world of tabletop gaming. We are very proud of the cooperatively competitive game we've crafted and the exciting new blends of tea we have assembled to compliment your experience.

Thank you for all of your support so far and we look forward to continuing the journey together!

Al Gonzalez

Alpha Hoomin of Cantankerous Cats

State of the Game - Feb 2018
about 6 years ago – Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 12:59:32 AM

Greetings, Hoomins of Kickstarter!

February marks ONE YEAR since our first batch of games landed and fulfillment was started. It has been an incredibly wild time since launch and there is a lot to cover in the coming weeks. To summarize: our small team has been INCREDIBLY busy trying to keep up with the unexpected demand for our project. We are already on our THIRD print run with Breaking Games/Ad Magic in the first year: a huge accomplishment for a first time publisher!

As a result, we haven't been able to get to fleshing out our multimedia content like we originally planned. This includes additional videos, website revamps, and strategy guides. We've brought on a couple of new team members to help so I can personally get back to working on that content. To that end, we learned a lot during our first holiday rush and it has resulted in a change of focus for the first quarter of this year:

"Kitten Rules" for Families and Casual Gamers

While many people do enjoy the challenge we offer in the game, we have noticed about 30% of comments from ALL of our sources say the game is too difficult for the audience that is flocking to the game: Casual Gamers, Families, and Children.

We've heard the feedback and made Priority #1 for 2018 to streamline the game and create a rule set for this audience. The result is the PDF linked here:

DOWNLOAD THE KITTEN RULES

While many folks do enjoy and respect the amount of "weight" they get out of such a small package, most of the folks that have been purchasing this and other cat themed games are used to simple party games. As a result, more than a fair share of buyers have been disappointed with their purchase because the game does not meet their expectations.

To address this, we mobilized to create a new, simplified rule set. We debuted and tested these rules at the local HSC Discovery Con last week and are giving our backers the first crack at downloading this document. We invite you to use this with your families, friends, and occasions where you may only have a few minutes to squeeze in a quick round.

The core mechanics are still present in the Kitten Rules, but we've stripped away much of the strategy and decision making to make a simple, clean experience. Over the next few months, we will also be reworking the game manual and website to better feature these distinct ways to play the game.

The Dog Expansion

This new shift in focus means we will not be launching the Dog Expansion as soon as we planned. After multiple rounds of testing, we've made the expansion simpler than originally imagined, but physically more involved to produce. The rules are just about done, so I plan on releasing an Alpha Print and Play version of the expansion to our backers. This should land some time in spring if everything goes smoothly with the Kitten Rules.

Other Games

While I love the product we've made with Cantankerous Cats, variety is the spice of life. Part of what has been keeping me busy is working with two other game projects over the last year as a visual designer and consultant. Both are great games, but the target audiences are VERY different than Cantankerous Cats. If you follow me on instagram @menthadesigns you can see more behind the scenes looks of what we're up to when not working directly on Cantankerous Cats.

In Closing,

I hope this answers a lot of the "whatever happened to that thing?" questions floating around in the community. If you skipped here to the bottom, the TL;DR version is this:

It's been a crazy year, we grew faster and bigger than we expected, but we are still a small team of artists doing our best to keep up. We are hearing you, we are paying attention, and we appreciate the patience and support as we do our best to address the feedback without losing sight of our original vision. For now, go download our new rules and let us know what you think. :)

DOWNLOAD THE KITTEN RULES HERE

Thank you all for the AMAZING 2017. We could not be here without all of your support and I hope you are all enjoying this thing we created with all of you.

Al Gonzalez III
Alpha Hoomin of Cantankerous Cats
[email protected]
www.cantankerouscats.net

Summer Update: It's Been a While!
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Jul 07, 2017 at 05:19:17 PM

Greetings, Hoomins of Kickstarter!

First off, I want to apologize for the silence since we ended fulfillment. Life has been incredibly nutty at our respective day jobs since Spring/Summer are peak times for advertising and conventions. (where we get most of our design work from) We have also been hard at work supporting Cantankerous Cats post Kickstarter to make sure our project has a healthy future.

To that effect, we have been active on Instagram quite a bit. ( @menthadesigns ) If you follow us there you will likely already know some of the things in this update. ;)

UPDATE THE FIRST: EVENTS!

 

We will spill details as we get closer to August, but for now we will say that you will be able to find us at booth TT32 at CatCon and roaming the halls at Labyrinth.

UPDATE THE SECOND: LOOSE ENDS

It's been a little over three months since we finished fulfilling orders and there are still a few folks we haven't heard back from yet. Also, it's about time to say If your order hasn't arrived yet, it isn't coming. If either of these is the case: we'd like to fix that!

If you have NOT received your items, please send an e-mail to [email protected] so we can get you sorted out. We try to keep great records, but we are still a tiny team and need you to wave your hand so we can spot you.

We want to make sure every backer gets everything they paid for so everyone can feel like they've been taken care of.

UPDATE THE THIRD: DISTRIBUTION

Our last note for this update is that we've entered a distribution agreement! We've signed on with the wonderful folks over at Breaking Games (The publishing arm of our printer: AdMagic). They have already done some wonderful things for our project and have shown a lot of enthusiasm for our work since we wrapped up the Kickstarter campaign.

To that effect: If you own a game store or board game cafe: Let us know! Now that we have some logistical support we would love to connect with as many game stores as we can.

IN CLOSING

There will be more than a few things to announce as summer progresses, but for now I want to express our gratitude once again. We started out as a few friends that had some ideas for a silly cat game and this community gave us a launchpad to turn that into something that can have a future.

Now that the project is getting to a point where it can start living on it's own, we just might have some time to crack our knuckles and start working on some of the extra content we've been meaning to finish and share with you all.

Thank you for the support and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend,
-Al Gonzalez
Alpha Hoomin of Cantankerous Cats
[email protected]
www.cantankerouscats.net

Shipping & Pickup Update
about 7 years ago – Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 09:50:45 PM

Greetings, Hoomins!

We've been hard at work packing and shipping all of your orders since we received our Freight order on January 19. We've been prepping everything in batches of 150-200 and the last batch should go out this week.

To celebrate the END of fulfillment, we will be hosting our pickup event at Game Haus Cafe in Glendale, CA on Tuesday, February 21st! The cafe opens at 11:00AM and we will be there until all 35 bags are picked up or until they close at 11:00PM, whichever comes first. Details are as follows:

Cantankerous Cats Pickup Event @ Game Haus Cafe

I (Al) will be sitting at the large picnic table in the center of the cafe with all of the bags for our Will Call backers. When you enter Game Haus, just let them know you are here to pickup "Cantankerous Cats" from Al and they will know where to send you. Please bring a government issued ID (driver's license, ID Card, Passport, etc) so I can confirm we are releasing your game to the right person.

I will hand you your bag of goodies, then you can take off! If you would like to stay and play Cantankerous Cats or any of the other 1400+ games, there will be a small cover fee of $5 per person. ($3 if you arrive before 4:00PM)

There is no designated parking for the cafe, but there is street parking in the surrounding boulevards and neighborhoods. If you do not arrive to claim your bag, we will pack up your game and ship it to you the day after the event.

I will ALSO be selling Retail Editions at Game Haus for those who missed our Kickstarter campaign or would like to snap up a copy as a gift. We prefer cash, but can accept cards through our Square reader.

We have some more announcements planned for the week including our first retail outlet, convention schedule, and ways to help spread the word about our game. We thank you all for your continued support and hope we see all of you LA folks at Game Haus next Tuesday!

-Al Gonzalez
Alpha Hoomin of Cantankerous Cats