Stretch Quest Complete!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Sep 10, 2019 at 11:58:29 PM

Free Covert Pouch for All Kickstarter Backers!

Thank you everyone for participating in our Stretch Quest.  This unlocks an exclusive pre-order bonus as a token of our appreciation for your efforts. The design has been updated a bit, we wanted to go with tactical stealth operations theme so we've gone and made a vertical military duffle. It has a pull-string top and a side strap (still being improved) to wrangle up cables. Outside is currently black and inside is a camouflage pattern but we're thinking of flipping it, what do you guys think?

For those of you that backed later and have no idea what backers had to complete, the Stretch Quest was to complete 4 of 5 tasks as a group:

And yes, one Covert Pouch is included with *each* Covert Dock ordered.  If you want to order multiple Covert Docks you can simply double (triple, etc) your pledge amount and there won't be any additional shipping.  

I know we put a lot of photos up last time of the stretch quest so I'll try my best to sum up the winning submissions in 3 montages: 

PAX West Quickie

We've been putting Covert Dock to the stress test, running everyday at 12 hour intervals with zero hiccups. In the process we got to meet some cool people share with us their thoughts on Covert Dock, here's a short video: 

For those that don't know, Tim Schafer has been designing adventure games for three decades now game but more importantly when he started Double Fine Studios he paved the way for indie games to launch on Kickstarter, bringing in over $3M and essentially starting the practice of games getting funded this way.  Again thanks to Chris at Batterystaple Games for lending us their booth and game to demo with and all the backers who stopped by to visit!

Production Update

So everything is moving forward as we hurdle toward our final goal. All of our tooling will complete towards the end of the next month and we'll begin test production, literally producing 200-300 units that will be used for some intensive testing which will make for an interesting update, such as:

Drop / Smash Testing: Repeated drop testing at standing height and smash testing by dropping a stainless steel ball onto the Covert Dock.  

Case Flammability: Incinerating the Covert Dock to make sure it wont catch fire after fire has been removed.

Puncture Test: Using a big nail and scientifically hammer it into covert dock to make sure the case is strong enough to overcome "normal" usage.

Surge Test: Pulsing 1000 voltages into the covert dock, to make sure it can handle even the greatest instability in the grid.

Port Stress Test: Plugging in ports and unplugging it over 10,000 times to a docked Switch to make sure it will be durable over time.

We've also been doing a lot of research and meeting with Europe certification authorities and there's a new law in place this year that are a bit stricter for us to get certification. One impact is that now we have to make a more a secure attachment for each adapter which makes it more sturdy with the European one having to have it directly attached upon shipment. The second thing however is that we are more limited to how much we can modify the adapter which means some of the ideas we had about chopping some of the plastic edges or making it foldable, slidable etc is not compliant (this actually means that pretty much all of those multi-country global plug adapters are not certifiable this year, but if they have already been certified they're okay, sigh).    

So anyways, this leaves us with a couple really tough choices. We did have some discussions with some European retailers and gamers at Gamescom and the feedback so far has been that the global pack is great and hard to even tell that it wasn't built-in. We are making it more streamlined but we still have to design for compliance and safety so this means foldable EU/UK prongs is not possible anymore (which we're really bummed out about).  

The video above is of Joris from Kickstarter and Arne from NMag weighing in on our early swappable head designs (they are still being optimized). We did design some preliminary regional version just in case which means they're not possible to use globally but our priority for this year's delivery will be the global one and if it comes to fruition we'll let people switch it out and have a survey to confirm.

Less than Four Days to Go! 

Running a Kickstarter campaign is one of the most stressful things ever and it's a bit bittersweet that it's moving forward to the next phase.  Some of the more recent backers will start to see that we're shipping in multiple batches, so for new backers the new ship date will go out in January 2020.  If you've been with us before the last week you're all good to be the first to get your hands on it. Please, please do share this project with all your friends this week as we hurdle toward the finish line so they don't miss out any KS goodies and discounts. We still have some cool things lined up that we don't want to over-commit to but have planned ;)

We've also signed up again with BackerKit so for those of you who are new to Kickstarter basically after the campaign ends we'll be using a pledge manager.  This lets you confirm all the add-ons you would like to add, including our previous products at a discount and any other accessories as well as fill in your address. We'll probably have this sent out a few weeks after the project and you can control whether to lock or not lock your address in case you intend to have it shipped somewhere else over the year.

Another pretty cool Kickstarter project just launched

We got our hands on the latest MOFT phone and tablet stands and I must say they're pretty cool.  True to their first laptop stand project, they've built their stands to be thin, light and portable for modern road warriors at a very fair price. We're working with them to potentially launch a collaboration product designed for the Switch so stay tuned. 

Pressing the Start Button and Sharing our Global Design
over 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 04, 2019 at 06:42:57 AM

We’re trying not to spam with too many frequent updates but there’s a few important things we wanted to get out there. But before that, I want to thank everyone again, this campaign has surpassed all of our expectations and blew past our previous project’s funding in 37 hours. Incredibly, we’ve taken to the top project on Kickstarter at the moment and that’s leading us to plan for production plans to start earlier. 

An Early Start

This is a crazy amount of financial risk for our startup until funding is closed but it means we’ll be able to have more production iteration cycles, a more comfortable buffer for global certifications, and ultimately deliver more units faster. This also means, we’re going to be running around a lot, so please don’t get offended if we’re a bit late in responses. Especially the private Kickstarter messages, clicking through each of them actually is kind of a slow process and there were over 1,100 of them this weekend.

Covert Dock is a Global Adapter

We shipped to 84 countries on our last Kickstarter so we designed the Genki Covert Dock to be international from the start with 110-240v support, including EU-friendly shipping. I know some have suggested the global adapters are an afterthought or that we’re prioritizing the US but this just isn’t true. After we put together the whole kit though, we started to think about how we could have a lower entry point and that’s where the idea came about to drop the interchangeable adapters to have a barebones version. And from a fulfillment perspective its a nightmare to have various packs with different adapters in each pack, it led us to spending more than 2 months working on the factory floor last year doing various combinations of dock adapters, mics, stands, and various button colors.  

So it essentially works like the Apple adapters, except that instead of adding additional bulky components (the metal ring, the old school power socket) into the main adapter, we have a clever way that uses the US/Japan prongs as a substitute without all the bulk inside of an Apple plug.  

While Chris is off doing more important design things, you'll have to settle with my poor photography and PowerPoint skills to explain how our Global Ops Kit works: 

When we studied the EU Nintendo adapter as well as foldable solutions we didn't find anything that would come close to keeping our form factor:

When people think of ingenious global adapters they think of Apple's innovative little swappable heads. They're great and well we basically have the same thing without leaving a big hole in the corner: 

We really believe in our global design and will make sure its refined to feel like you can leave them on without worry. If you're still angry about this, after seriously considering the three slides above, we can consider a custom version that doesn't fold or work with global adapters. To justify it we'd need to confirm at least 5,000 backers in a specific plug region that are willing to wait a few extra months and give up international compatibility, if so we'll suck it up and admit failure and work on getting more detailed estimates (we're having flashbacks of offering extended USB-C heads last year). We'll still prioritize our global edition and won't do anything that will come at the expense of delaying our current timeline. Here's the current breakdown by region:

Come say Hi at Gamescom

We just booked a last minute booth at the Indie game section at Gamescom so you can try out the Covert Dock in action. I’ve never been to Gamescom but when we have more details of our location we’ll share that around. If anyone wants to volunteer at our booth that'd be awesome, I don't know any other European languages other than English despite having worked in Frankfurt a few months. For those that don't know Gamescom, it's the big European game show in Cologne, Germany.

In the meantime, we’re also looking for games to demo, which leads us to the next point. 

Are you an Indie game developer?  Or know of any Indie Game Developers?

If you’re an Indie game developer and want to show off your Switch game at our booth please send an email to [email protected]. Since we don’t really have a game of our own we are happy to spread the love. We might do the same PAX West and Tokyo Game Show if we’re able to get our act together on preparing a booth (on top of all the other stuff we have to do).

And a Bit of Light Reading

We're getting a lot of articles published about our project and so if this update isn't enough to quench your Covert Dock thirst you can read even more!

• Human Things' Switch charger is also a portable TV dock - Engadget 
• Genki tries to crack portable Switch docks with its new Covert Dock - The Verge 
• This Unassuming Charger Will Power a Switch, Connect It to a TV, and Charge Other Stuff Too - Gizmodo 
• A portable Nintendo Switch dock is blowing up on Kickstarter - Polygon 
• Human Things’ Genki Covert Dock is a tiny Nintendo Switch charger and dock  - Venture Beat 
• Genki Covert Dock is a tiny HDMI charger-sized gadget to connect your Switch to any telly - Stuff 
• This Tiny Nintendo Switch Dock Has Just Obliterated Its Kickstarter Goal - NintendoLife 
• This tiny Genki Covert Dock is the Switch accessory Nintendo doesn’t want you to have - mobilesyrup 

And Just to Close Things on a Fun Note

The whole scene in our video with the couple browsing through wedding ideas on the iPad and playing games in bed - here’s a peek at behind the scenes:

Essentially we had a projector shooting up onto the ceiling so that Ivette and Charlie could play in bed. I think that message was completely lost if anyone was confused as to (a) why they were staring up in bed and (b) why the game looked off-center. Actually did anyone get that on the first watch? Let us know in the comments!

Gamescom -> PAX West (lots of photos)
over 4 years ago – Sun, Sep 01, 2019 at 11:49:59 PM

(Stretch) Quest Update

Mario Maker 2 Genki Maps 4/5 Completed! 

Love the creativity shared here!  I'll let the screenshots speak for themselves but let's just say players of all ages got to experience the Covert Dock through these levels.  Thanks everyone - just one more to go!

Genki Tattoos 1/5 Completed!

Just one!  C'mon this is an easy task, here's numero uno:

Sticker Graffiti 7/20 Completed!

So in my mind I thought these were going to be tagged on Instagram... but I guess they're scattered on imgur and Twitter, well we'll coordinate better next time!

Adopt a 🐶 1/1 Completed!

Tori, our fantastic backer #5123 adopted Genki!  Genki is a one year old with heterochromia - his one blue eye and one brown eye just means he has special ninja powers if I've learned anything from anime. His favorite hobby is to sneak up behind Miyuki the Alaskan Malamute and steal all the toys.

Wikipedia Page 1/1 Completed 

We violated Wikipedia TOS (oops) by technically incentivizing the creation of a Wikipedia page.  Still if you'd like to contribute there's a draft here setup by Jeff!  We thought about changing the challenge but we'll just mark this one as completed since it's our fault.

Gamescom Wrap-up

So our booth didn't turn out that bad, except that most people didn't have a clue what it was and we were placed next to MSI which was filled with screaming people scrambling over free swag.  

I also stepped out of the comforts of our booth and discovered some fantastic treasures, including toys of yesterday:

And toys of tomorrow:

I got a personal demo from developer Shin'en The Touryst and I love the premise... you stop on a mystery island and you just mess around till you discover cool stuff, reminds me of the first Zelda.  And the designer let me in on a little secret, that the protagonist was named after Tom Selleck, and called "Tom Select" haha.  Tons of fun, please support these guys, and really I would love to collaborate with them in the future!

PAX West Begineth

First thing, we didn't have the time or resources to build and prepare a booth. But not to worry, the good news is one of our backers Kevin got us in touch with Chris from Batterystaple Games (makers of 20xx, that crazy procedurally generated co-op Megaman)  have graciously let us demo Covert Dock at their booth showcasing Jamestown+,a 4-player cooperative shoot-em-up that takes place on 17th-Century British Colonial Mars coming soon to the Switch.  I haven't tried it but I am excited to play it with you guys if you stop by the booth.

We'll be hanging with the cool kids at Batterystaple Games on the 6th floor booth #7401.  Seriously come say hi, and if I'm not around I'm probably wandering around being a geek in that bright red Genki shirt or stuck in some line.  Ping me here in the messages if you want to say hi or even tweet @GenkiThings.  I'm super excited, my first PAX!

(and crap I don't even have a hotel booked yet!  Seattle here I come!)

Woah.
over 4 years ago – Sun, Sep 01, 2019 at 07:24:06 PM

Goal!

We are ridiculously impressed, we didn't even get a chance to blink and we crossed our funding goal in 40 minutes.  We're still trying to recover as the team has literally been up for the last 48 hours putting together the final touches.  We just want to say thank you soooooo much and it'll take us some time to get through all the replies.  

We've already been featured on Engadget, The Verge, and VentureBeat which is incredible (and haven't even had a chance to read them). 

Also! A lot of you guys had questions about the global kit and how it works.  We're still refining it but here's a quick video of how it would work:

Talk to you guys soon!

Human Things

Let’s play a game!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Sep 01, 2019 at 07:22:52 PM

Hallo Köln! (Hello Cologne!)

Unlike all the other Gamescom participants out drinking, I'm completely wiped out from assembling the booth and completely jetlagged (airborne as we crossed the one-million mark!)  ...And this is the booth that welcomed me this morning... 

Anyway by tomorrow this should look a lot better!  Our booth is confirmed in Hall 10.1 D12 of Gamescom. We seriously pulled this off last minute especially so I don't even think we're on the directory. Come swing by, check out Covert Dock in action, take some photos, play some games :)

Stretch it

A lot of you have been asking us about stretch goals and honestly we’re already super stretched already with all the work ahead of us. Anytime when you make one new thing it’s pretty difficult, and the difficulty exponentially increases when you have to make 10,000 extra of something. So we’re going to trial an easier social goal and see how it goes.

Introducing the Covert Pouch Social Goal!

It’s simple, and it’s covert; please don’t lose it. It’ll protect your beautiful Covert Dock shell from scratches and try to wrangle up your cables on-the-go. This isn’t the final design yet but it gives you a direction of what we're thinking.  It's neoprene, opens kind of like an airpods case, and has a velcro strap for your cables.

So how do you get it? As one big group of 15,000 backers we're just going to ask you to collectively  in co-op fashion  accomplish 4 of 5 of these tasks as a group and in return every Covert Dock will come with the covert pouch.  Here are the challenges:

Meet Kumo: A Boy in the Clouds

Also I really want to share this special project on Kickstarter that I think everyone should be checking out. It’s a project by a one-man designer named Benjamin who studied environment design and turned his vision into a beautiful atmospheric puzzle game called Kumo. Chris is getting strong ICO vibes from it and I would almost describe it as a cross between The Witness with the art style of Rime. Anyways please help him hit the amazing stretch goals, he just toppled his funding goal on Kickstarter and I must say the pledge rewards are pretty amazing.

Seriously, we love the dedication put into this game and most importantly it’ll be on the Nintendo Switch. You can check out and support his project here, there’s 2 weeks left!