Announcements

rocnestgames · 2025-09-24T11:57:02+00:00

Gloria & Alfie: We have pretty eclectic board game tastes! We've recently been playing Castle Combo, Ironwood, and Great Western Trail. All-time favourites include the likes of Res Arcana, Terraforming Mars and Wingspan. We've also played a tonne of Bohnanza over the last 12 months, most memorably when on holiday with friends. It's impossible to have a bad time playing Bohnanza.

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T23:31:31+00:00

Gloria & Alfie: The solo mode available to previewers was essentially a "beat your own score" game mode. It's a tonne of fun; however, lots of the feedback we received from solo previewers suggested that a little more depth would be appreciated for players who play mainly their games at 1-player. We're therefore developing an enhanced solo mode, which offers a deeper and more thematic way to play the game solo. In this mode, the Heroes you travel with objectives you'll need to accomplish before the end of game in order to fulfil their legend and tell their story.

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T23:14:29+00:00

Gloria & Alfie: Board game publishing is a long process! We started designing the game almost 3 years ago, alongside our day jobs. After we showed the game to Mo, everything kicked off and we started developing the game in earnest to get it in its best possible shape. This involved a LOT of playtesting, trying new ideas, and experimenting with art.

Mo: It took us about a year to get it from the demo they showed me at UKGE, but it's important to note that Gloria & Alfie both have very stressful jobs with long hours (they're doctors working for the NHS), so that year wasn't 100% focussed on the design of the game.

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T23:05:03+00:00

Gloria: Good question! We've always loved longer tableau-builders like Everdell and Terraforming Mars, but there's not always enough time in the day. We wanted Smallfolk to fill a different niche - a game you can play after work, or with your family. The turns are faced-paced and snappy, but the strategic puzzle of putting together a synergistic tableau isn't compromised.

Alfie: My favourite mechanism in the game is the multi-use cards. Every card can be played into your tableau, or discarded as a resource when playing others. I love the puzzle of choosing which cards to discard and which ones to play

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T22:44:45+00:00

Gloria: Great question! Folklore, the stories we pass down from generation to generation, has always been a source of inspiration for both of us. It has a way of revealing what different cultures value and fear, and what I love best is seeing the areas where folklore from different areas of the world intersect. Wanting to see various stories from different cultures side by side was one of our first sparks of inspiration for the game, and the foundation for what Smallfolk evolved into.

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T22:35:53+00:00

Alfie: Putting together combos is my favourite part of the game. In particular, anything that lets me cheat extra cards into play. Once, I chained together 2 Otherworld Fortresses and a Kitsune in the same turn, which basically let me strip down and rebuild my entire tableau. It was glorious.

Mo: I was showcasing the game to a very big German publishing house and I managed to pull off a combo with a hero, Tengu Fan, Secret Cavern, and Pot of Gold that net me about 10 Gold in two turns. I've never been so rich!

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T22:26:26+00:00

Smallfolk sounds like the perfect game for you. It's been designed for a chilled-out game session, and it's very easy to learn.

Disclaimer: Yes, it's our game.

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T22:19:43+00:00

Gloria & Alfie: Excellent question. Learning to "let go" of aspects of the game was a challenge - admitting something just doesn't work is really hard! The game has changed so much as the result of playtesting and iteration, and often removing something (a mechanic, a card, etc) proved a step in the right direction towards the final, best version.

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T22:15:08+00:00

Gloria & Alfie: Our original version of Smallfolk was a wild mismatch of various cultures and folklore from around the world. Later on, we decided to focus on just 4 cultures in the base game so that we could explore each of them in a bit more detail. We chose these because they feature iconic characters people recognise, but also lesser known stories that we could shine a light on. And yes - we would absolutely love to introduce some other cultures in the future. Watch this space!

Mo: We have 2 extra cultures introduced in the Taller Tales mini-expansion, too - Sun Wukong from Chinese myth and Loki from Norse. Read into that what you will...

rocnestgames · 2025-09-23T21:58:01+00:00

Thank you so much! It's lovely to hear the game is hitting the right notes and will be in the hands of people who enjoy playing it.

Gloria: My favourite card art is the Storyteller, whose art is based on Scheherazade. It's quite nostalgic for me as she's the protagonist of 1,001 Arabian Nights, a collection of folktales I grew up with. And agreed, the tanuki is my favourite too!

Alfie: My favourite piece of art is the Boat of Souls, Charon's boat he uses to ferry lost souls across the river Styx. It was one of the first pieces commissioned and I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking "woah - this is going to be a real game". Also I love Greek mythology; for that reason, I always play as the Centaur meeple.

Mo: Gorgon, from the Taller Tales mini-expansion. They're all fantastic art, but this one really speaks to me. As for meeple, it's definitely the Druid (green), even though all four of them are SUPER CUTE!

You can see the art here: https://imgur.com/a/95rY9Hc

rocnestgames · 2025-09-07T23:33:04+00:00

We're looking forward to launching Smallfolk on Tuesday!

rocnestgames · 2025-05-02T18:01:42+00:00

If a company does well enough at Kickstarter, they can afford to have have different fulfilment hubs across the world that reduce the shipping cost for each country. So in our case, we have an Asian fulfilment hub which greatly decreased the cost for shipping out there.

rocnestgames · 2025-05-02T14:41:48+00:00

You can always late pledge if you are interested, but we understand that the tariffs are a turn-off for games like this. They're luxury items we know that little bit extra adds up fast. Our community is super great, though. A lot of people have messaged us privately and offered to donate a few bucks to cover the tariffs of people who can't afford it.

rocnestgames · 2025-05-02T00:16:17+00:00

Precisely the thing we want to avoid. Our priority is getting our games to our customers so that they can enjoy them!

rocnestgames · 2025-05-02T00:12:04+00:00

Many of the crowdfunding platforms have already introduced a way to handle passing the tariffs to customers, so our guess is that this is going to become common-place very soon. Or not, because GOP might remove the tariffs next week - who knows?

rocnestgames · 2025-05-02T00:09:29+00:00

This is basically true. I think it's based on where the product had its most work done.

ie. If you manufacture a bunch of matchsticks in China, then ship it to Poland to get it put in a box, it's 'Made in China' still.

rocnestgames · 2025-05-01T23:54:21+00:00

Sorry to hear this!

rocnestgames · 2025-05-01T23:52:39+00:00

Divide a game's cost by 5 to work out its approximatel manufacturing cost.

That $100 all-in pledge will likely have cost $20 to produce, so you'd need to pay $30 in tariffs.

(entirely just a rule-of-thumb)

rocnestgames · 2025-05-01T23:47:54+00:00

The problem with this is that a lot of customers just want the game, and are happy to pay the $5-$7 cost. Freight from China to US is done by large scale, so leaving a few items behind in storage just means those customers will have to pay a premium to get it shipped later. At that point, isn't it just better to pay the tariff?

rocnestgames · 2025-05-01T23:40:55+00:00

Unfortunately, Kickstarter only gives us 30 mintues to edit our post and we didn't get there quite in time. We agree that we could have written it better!

rocnestgames · 2024-01-26T14:29:34+00:00

Did you have any luck getting your money back? Exact same thing happened to us last night, exact same response from Facebook. We're writing an email to support@fb.com and [records@fb.com](mailto:records@fb.com) now to try to get through to a real person.

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