Life of the Amazonia Jungle Photo Contest
8 months ago – Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 12:26:26 AM

Hello, everyone! 

It’s Bad Comet’s Lucya back with a quick update.

It hasn’t been too long since our last update but I wanted to make sure to check in as we have some exciting news to share with our Backers😊. With LOTA delivered to many of our Backers, more and more people are enjoying and sharing their experiences with us. The reviews from players and reviewers alike have been positive and overall pretty amazing! This was a project that each and every one of our Bad Comet team members put a lot of time and effort into and I’m happy to say the positive feedback really makes our day and keeps us going!

Now that many of our Backers have received their copies of Life of the Amazonia, we’d like to invite you to a small event of ours! A LOTA Jungle Photo Contest!

1. Life of the Amazonia Jungle Photo Contest

Anyone who has a chance to play Life of the Amazonia can participate. The winners of this contest will be gifted a copy of the prototype of our new upcoming project, “Wondrous Creatures”(more on this in just a bit). The rules are simple, to participate,

1. Play Life of the Amazonia.
2. At the end of the game, take some pictures of the jungle you created!
3. Upload the picture of your jungle to one of the designated social media or community platforms with the conditions that follow.
   
   List of the Social Media and community platforms available for participation:
   Board Game Geek - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368305/life-amazonia Upload your image to the LOTA BGG page with “LOTA Photo Contest” in the title and you’re done!
   Instagram - Tag @badcometgames in your post and upload it with the hashtag #LOTAPhotoContest to participate!
   Facebook - Tag “Bad Comet Games” (https://www.facebook.com/badcometgames ) into the posting and use the hashtag #LOTAPhotoContest to participate!

Please note that for Instagram and Facebook, if the photo or account is set to only be visible to friends/followers, we will not be able to verify the post, and therefore will not count towards participation in the event.

A total of 5 winners will be selected for this contest. The criteria in which we will be considering when choosing the winners will be as follows. 1) Artistry: How beautiful is the photo, 2) Engaging: How many viewers have liked and commented on the posting, 3) Creativity: The creativity seen in the jungle created during the game.

The Bad Comet team members will come together to select the winners and the winners will be announced on the 20th of September. Therefore, only posts uploaded by midnight of September 17th MTS will be reflected in the evaluation.

We hope many of you who enjoyed and are enjoying Life of the Amazonia will participate!

2. Peek into Our Exciting New Project: “Wondrous Creatures”

As you’ve read in the beginning of this post, we mentioned the winners of the photo event would be sent prototypes of our new project “Wondrous Creatures”. “Wondrous Creatures” is a new board game in the works that we are currently in progress. In recent years, we expressed our love for nature and animals through our projects like Life of the Serengeti and Life of the Amazonia. This year, we developed a game that features fantasy creatures unbeknownst to our reality!

The core mechanics of “Wondrous Creatures” are Worker Placement and Tableau Building. As mundane as this could sound when put like that, this game features a unique Worker Placement mechanic we’d love for you to check out😉.

Here are a couple of key points in what we believe to be “Wondrous Creatures” strengths.

•  Unique Worker Placement: Wondrous Creatures’s worker placement mechanism provides an intriguing Hex Puzzle experience. Your deployed worker interacts with surrounding icons to bring in resources or cards, and works to activate special effects!
•  Transforming Terrains: As the game progresses, powerful special effects are newly placed on the map. Get creative and use these special effects to unleash your very own powerful combos!
•  100+ Different Creature Cards: Collect and combine various different creature cards. Every creature holds its own distinctive ability and provides a deep strategic tableau-building experience. Each card beautifully illustrated by Sophia Kang, will immerse you into a wonderful world of Wondrous Creatures.
•  Evolving Worker Abilities: Your workers hold their own unique abilities. As you progress through the game, unlock their abilities and strengthen your workers!

If “Wondrous Creatures” sounds at all like something up your alley, enter for a chance to win a prototype through our “Amazonia Jungle Photo Contest” or if it sounds like something you’d love to learn more about when the time comes, click the link below to visit our Kickstarter Pre-launch page for “Wondrous Creatures”. Click that “Notify me on launch” button, join us for the launch, and stick with us from the beginning stages of the campaign😊. It would be an amazing boost for us to see you there:) For those of you wondering, the campaign is scheduled to launch towards to end of October so we hope you come by!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/badcomet/wondrous-creatures

As always, thank you for your support.

Lucya 🍊

Fulfillment Complete!
8 months ago – Mon, Aug 28, 2023 at 02:38:02 AM

Hello, everyone! Lucya from Bad Comet here with updates on Life of the Amazonia!

There isn’t a ton to go over this update, so we won’t take up too much of your time, but they are crucial bits, so we ask that you please take a bit of time for a read-through.

Fulfillment Complete!

As many of you may already know through the delivery of the goodies that may have already arrived at your doorsteps, fulfillment for Life of the Amazonia has been completed!

Now, this doesn’t mean that everyone should have received their packages. This means that all packages have been packed and shipped to their destinations. So no need to worry if your package hasn’t arrived. Especially for our Backers in Asia, some country's hubs have either not received their products or have yet to ship the products out, so the wait could be a bit longer. However, you can check in with us either through Kickstarter Messages or Email([email protected]) if you would like to double-check that your rewards are on their way.

Quickly, would like to mention here, our Replacement Request process.

Our replacement request forms for our replacement parts have endured a slow start but we are either catching up or waiting on confirmations on our fulfillment centers, so we thank you for your patience beforehand.

For those of you who still need to input your requests, we please ask that all requests be made within 3 months after arrival as later requests may endure quite an extensive wait/fees/customs/etc.

Please note depending on the destination, replacements can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. We thank you for your patience beforehand as we get these products out to you.

Following the news about fulfillment being complete, we would like to quickly talk about some of the complications that are occurring with some of the products.

With fulfillment complete and packages delivered to our Backer’s doorsteps, more and more Backers have had the time to unbox the products and build out their copies. In this process, there have been cases of broken platforms and pieces with the Wooden Waterfall of Life.

After thoroughly testing several prototypes for the product, during production, we also took the time to employ a quality inspector to inspect each of the products at the manufacturer factories as we weren’t able to attend the final production process in person. We felt it necessary to also have an outside view of the products first hand as well, so we could ensure that the products were easy enough to build and the quality was assured. But even with all this, there seem to have been factors that we did not expect and overlooked. Nonetheless, our sincerest regrets for the inconvenience and please know that we are ready to handle each and every case with care.

There isn’t 1 perfect solution that would fit everyone’s needs so reach out to us, either through Kickstarter’s direct messaging system, email ([email protected]), or even our Replacement Request form. Let’s figure out what we can do to make things right.

For those of our Backers who have yet to build the Wooden Waterfall of Life, here are a few tips we collected from our Backers.

• If you have a dremel readily available, using a dremel to widen the slots could assist in the process of opening up the slots to ease the process of assembly.
• If not, using higher grit sandpaper or careful use of a utility knife or similar to open up the slots a bit more could greatly assist in the process of assembly.
• As wood is prone to change with its surrounding atmosphere, giving the product a few weeks to acclimate to its forever home could really help the product in its assembly process.

Again, our apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused. Moving forward, we will take the necessary steps to make sure the suggestions, feedback, and experiences you’ve shared with us are not overlooked.

Thank you.

;

It has been a journey and a half getting to this point. With an estimated December 2023 delivery date, here we are in August of the same year, 4 months earlier than anticipated, opening up our copies!

Thank you to everyone who has updated us on your deliveries, first impressions, and honest opinions on the game through the comment section, messages, and DM’s! Your excitement and joy really keep us going 😊. To everyone who has taken the time to send us a heartfelt message, we’d like to thank you again! And to everyone here with us, thank you for being a part of this journey, it truly means a lot to us to be able to bring these games to you and into existence.

But, our journey isn’t over yet! We will hope to see everyone here year after year 😉.

For those of you who tried out your copies, please let us know! We would love to hear your take on gameplay either through comments or ratings on BGG, Instagram, Discord, or wherever you may find us🥰.

To finish up today’s update, a quick fun fact about our Caimans!

Did you know that Caimans are better at swimming than walking? They have squat bodies, with long tails and short legs. They use their strong tail to propel them in the water while they swim, not using their legs at all!

That’s all for today!

Until next time,

Lucya 🍊

Shipping Update #3 & KS Edition Unboxing
10 months ago – Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 02:00:14 AM

Hi everyone👋!

Lucya from Bad Comet here, back with updates regarding Life of the Amazonia😁.

1. Unboxing

An unboxing video of the Kickstarter Edition of Life of the Amazonia is ready for viewing! 

For those of you who would like a quick peek into our final product and what has been or is waiting to be delivered to your doorsteps or if you’d like to see our rendition of boxing our copy, check out the video below!

Product close-ups, what should be included, and how we like to box our copies should be all down below😁. Check it out! 

2. Replacement Policy

It would be our wish if all Backers are able to receive their products in their 100% condition, but we know that in reality, defects in products during production are almost unavoidable.

Therefore, we are always happy to replace defective items, but we ask that replacement requests be made within 3 months of the date the item was delivered. Replacement requests after the 3-month mark will incur a fee including component costs, shipping costs, customs, and/or duties, if any. 3 months after fulfillment is when fulfillment companies start prioritizing other active projects. Thus, processing for replacement requests after the 3-month mark usually tends to be considerably delayed depending on the fulfillment company. Therefore, we please ask that the product is thoroughly reviewed for abnormalities within 3 months of arrival.

3. Incomplete Surveys

There are still some Backers who have not yet completed their Backerkit surveys and there are some who just recently completed their surveys. We locked all addresses on the 27th of June and delivered all addresses to each of our fulfillment partners. Therefore, we’d like for those who completed their surveys after this date, to know that you will most likely receive your pledges at a later date than those who completed their surveys beforehand.

4. GenCon 2023

For those who will be attending GenCon 2023 next month, Bad Comet will also be participating through Envoy! Though we won't be participating in person this year, you’ll be able to demo Life of the Amazonia, Wild: Serengeti, and Shaolia and even collect an Amazonia meeple promo!

If you wanted to try out our previous games like Shaolia and Wild, make sure you stop by. You can also reserve your space in advance here. For those of our Backers who have yet to make the plunge on Life of the Amazonia, this is your chance to try out the real deal:).

5. Shipping Update

📣New updates regarding fulfillment are as follows

AU/NZ

Shipping has been completed! All the steps must have been perfectly taken since completion happened earlier than we expected!! 👏👏👏

Canada

The shipments started their journey from our US warehouses to Canada on July 13th. It is scheduled to arrive at the local warehouse on July 24th and expecting an early August ship out!

UK

Our UK fulfillment partner, Spiral Galaxy, has let us know that the shipment has been imported and they’ve received confirmation for the incoming products! They’re currently in the process of booking now and expect the products to arrive at their warehouses next week. This means we’ll hopefully see individual fulfillment start by the 24th of July🤞!

Europe/ROTW

We are still awaiting confirmation from our European/ROTW fulfillment company, Premium Solutions, on warehouse arrival. They have let us know that they are completely swamped at the moment and would work to despatch all the shipments for individual fulfillment to be completed by early August before the holiday term in Greece that takes place in mid-August. But, if this timeline does not work out, we’re looking at a late August ship out. Rest assured, once we know of more concrete dates, we’ll be here to let you know as well.

👍👍

That pretty much covers today’s update!

Now on to our fun fact!

Today will be about our Hoatzin.

Did you know that Hoatzins, in order to digest food, they use an intricate fermentation of food in their digestive system? That fermentation method has given the Hoatzin the nickname, “Stinkbird” because of the bird’s foul odor. Pee-yew😖😆!

That’s all for today! Until next time:)

Lucya🍊

Shipping Update #2 & Address Updates Closed
11 months ago – Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 06:40:47 PM

Hi there, everyone!

Lucya with Bad Comet here with some more updates for Life of the Amazonia!

There isn’t much content today, but each of what we’ll be going through is pretty significant so please follow along🙂.

1.  ADDRESS UPDATES CLOSED

First order of business! 

Address updates/changes are NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Depending on your location and the fulfillment company, they might provide an address verification email service which then you’ll be able to make your last-minute changes. However, we can no longer accept any address change requests moving forward as final addresses have been inputted and sent off to each of their local destinations.

2. SHIPPING UPDATE

Now on to some exciting news! A brief update on how our shipments are progressing and estimates for when individual shipments will begin!

Many of you may have had a slight peek at our update through our comments but a full lineup of estimates are as below!

*Please note these times are IF we have no issue with customs, therefore, these dates may very well vary.

We estimated delivery to be December 2023 during our campaign for Life of the Amazonia, but I can’t believe we’re only halfway through the year and already have Backers with their copies!! 😁

1-1. ASIA

Individual Fulfillment is already in progress. Depending on your country the ETA will differ, but products are already on your way!

As you know, VFI in China is handling our fulfillment in Asia. VFI ships the product to each of their partner hubs in the various countries,  then their partner hubs ship the game to the individuals, therefore, the ETA will vary a bit depending on the destination.

[NOTE] VFI does not ship the products to their partner hubs until they have a full shipping container. Therefore, the actual expected arrival date to each of the Hubs may differ from the table above. So a bit of extra time may need to be considered in these estimates.

Deliveries to Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, and Brazil will also be handled by VFI Asia. They’ve let us know that it takes at least 1 month to ship from VFI China’s warehouse to each of the corresponding countries’ hubs.

Thanks, everyone for your patience!

1-2. AU/NZ: Aetherworks

The products arrived at Sydney Port on June 15th and Individual fulfillment is set for the week of the 17th of July. Before Individual Shipments, Aetherworks will send out an email to verify your address or for any last-minute changes.

1-3. US: Gamerati

The goods arrived at Seattle Port on June 17th and are due to arrive at our US warehouse on July 1st. It’s unclear if Individual fulfillment will conclude within July but they have let us know it will commence come late July.

1-4. CA: Pick and Pack Logistics

For all Canadian deliveries, Individual fulfillment will begin once the shipment arrives at the US warehouse, and from there the US warehouse transfers the designated stock to Canada’s Pick and Pack Logistics. We expect Canada’s individual fulfillment to begin in mid-August. We’ll be able to provide a more accurate schedule once the shipment arrives at the Canadian warehouse.

1-5. UK: Spiral Galaxy

The products are set to arrive at the SOUTHAMPTON Port on July 2nd and once it arrives at the fulfillment center hopefully by the 6th or 7th, we’re looking at the week of July 17th for the start of individual fulfillment.

Before individual shipments, Spiral Galaxy will send out an email to verify your address or for any last-minute changes.

1-5. EUROPE: Premium Solution

Set to arrive at PIRAEUS GREECE Port on July 4th, individual fulfillment is set to begin within 3~4 weeks after arrival. Currently, Premium Solutions have told us there may be a bit of a delay, but we should have a detailed schedule once the products arrive at the port! We’ll be sure to inform you once the exact schedule is available.

Before individual shipments, Premium Solution will send out an email to verify your address or for any last-minute changes.

....

I believe with these 2 things, today’s update has come to an end, but we can’t go without a fun fact so today we’ll be investigating our River Turtle here!

Did you know that River turtles are omnivorous, feeding on both vegetation and small animals all the while also feeding themselves by extracting particle matter from the water surface?! So cool right?

That’s all for today!

We’ll see you again real soon😉.

Lucya 🍊

Shipping Update #1
11 months ago – Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 02:55:34 AM

Hello, everyone! 

Long time no see! Lucya with Bad Comet here, back with SHIPPING UPDATES for Life of the Amazonia!🚢🥳

We wanted to come by with an update earlier on but with the timeline estimates from the logistics companies being constantly pushed and delayed, getting an update took a bit longer than we expected.

Deliveries for Asia differ from our other regions, so please check the contents of our updated shipping schedule for more information on your specific region.

1. ASIA

VFI in China is handling our fulfillment in Asia. VFI ships the product to their partner hubs in each country, and then their partner hubs ship the game to the individuals, therefore, the ETA will vary a bit depending on the destination.

[NOTE] VFI does not ship the products to their partner hubs until they have a full shipping container. Therefore, the actual expected arrival date to each of the Hubs may differ from the table above. So a bit of extra time may need to be considered in these estimates.

Deliveries to Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, and Brazil will also be handled by VFI Asia. They’ve let us know that it takes at least 1 month to ship from VFI China’s warehouse to each of the corresponding countries’ hubs. We’ll be sure to share more accurate delivery schedules as soon as we hear back.

Thanks, everyone for your patience!

2. Rest of the world (US/Canada/EU/UK/AU/NZ…)

I have below the message we received from our Freight Forwarder on June 8th.

“I know you have been eager for info here but it’s still a touch to early.  Sorry, this is just how ocean can be at times.  But all this information is going to solidify very soon once the shipments sail and the pre-alerts are issued.  When the carriers issue the pre-alerts that is “hard” info to work off of…even though that can change some too at times. I suspect to have this in the next couple work days.  Please bear with us.  Thanks”

As you see in our forwarder’s message, we have not yet received what is called “pre-alerts” from the carrier. Therefore, the table below is highly variable and may not be precise. I actually wanted to share a shipping update with our Backers once we were delivered the pre-alerts, however, with shipping in Asia about to begin, we wanted to make sure to share how our delivery is progressing, albeit a very rough estimate, we wanted to make sure to share everything we’ve been updated on.

Currently, cargo shipments bound for Australia, US, Europe, and UK have been loaded and the details for each of the shipments are as follows.

  *information above is subject to change

If the ETA we received from the logistics company doesn’t stray too far from the actual ETA, the ships to Australia and the US should arrive real soon! :) As our forwarder has informed us, in the next couple of working days, if we receive that pre-alert and learn a more accurate ETA, we’ll be sure to share that right away! Also, once that pre-alert arrives, we’ll speak to Aetherworks, Gamerati, Spiral Galaxy, and Premium Solutions to make sure we can update you on roughly when individual deliveries will begin.

So hang tight! We hope we can get those to you soon!

Now we can’t say goodbye without fun facts, can we?! To end today’s update a fun fact about our Woodpecker.

Did you know that Woodpeckers' tongues are usually about twice the length of their bill so that they can reach for insects inside the holes they peck out? These tongues are also sticky, either barbed tongues or sticky saliva that help them pull out insects they find in their holes!

That’s all for today, we’ll be sure to be back when we’re updated with new news!

Until then,

Lucya 🍊