The public demanded it

Recently we told you about the launch of Diamond Trust of London's Kickstarter campaign, as after a lengthy approval process game creater Jason Rohrer needed money to pay for the manufacturing of the DS game cards and packaging. For those that have pledged in the hope of getting their hands on the game, there's the good news that the target has been hit and the game will be made.

Rohrer is understandably rather pleased that the game will see the light of day, and posted the following update which also gives some interesting details about the process of having over 1000 games manufactured for distribution.

Thanks everyone for making this possible!

The first thing I need to do this week is make final changes to the packaging (adding name credits to the manual and box for the people who got those rewards). And then, the updated packaging needs to be sent to Nintendo for final approval (yes, they need to approve every little change to packaging). Here's hoping they don't give us any (additional) trouble!

After that, I need to wait for the money to transfer out of Amazon ($79,070.68 appeared in my Amazon account literally ONE MINUTE after the campaign ended---yeah, it's not $90K, because fees have been subtracted, and some credit card charges have bounced). As soon as I get the transfer at my bank, I can wire it through to Nintendo and the printer to start the manufacturing (which will cost about $60,120---the rest of the money will cover me shipping the game to 1300 people worldwide from my garage).

The estimated turn time for Nintendo cartridges and package printing is 35 days. But it will be slightly longer, because we need to sign/number 1000 of the cover sheets right in the middle of the packaging process. Then, once all the pieces are put together by the packaging company, I will have 125 boxes (11 pounds each!) delivered to my house by freight truck.

After that, we will be hand-assembling the limited edition packaging, which will take a bit of time. August is the estimated ship target for the first batch---we'll see how it goes!

The project has certainly attracted some enthusiastic backers, with four pledging $1000 and one opting for the rewards at $3000. By our reckoning this is the first DS title to be successfully funded in this way, so our congratulations to Rohrer and his colleagues.

[source kickstarter.com]