A fantasy worker placement game from Haakon Hoel Gaarder, designer & illustrator of Villagers, Streets, and Moon.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Yonder Progress Update #8 – First Shipment On The Water
about 1 month ago
– Wed, Mar 04, 2026 at 02:29:14 PM
Hi everyone,
I want to give you a clear update on where things stand with Yonder.
The good news first: the shipment of games for backers in the UK and the rest of Europe is loaded and due to leave the port of Shanghai tomorrow (March 5th), with an estimated arrival in Southampton of April 18th.
You can follow voyage 019W of the good ship YM THRONE here.
As is now my standard practice, I won't estimate delivery times until I know for a fact that fulfilment has begun, but sometime in May seems reasonable. We will have copies of the game for sale at UK Games Expo at the end of May.
Getting to this point has taken longer than I ever intended. A combination of things pushed the timeline out: the GameTrayz insert delay, tariff changes that caused me to abandon an earlier shipping date, plus various health & family issues that have kept me away from my desk. To add insult to injury, we discovered a production issue with the recent mass production samples where the round tracker token was missing from the Kickstarter edition and had to be manufactured and added to the production run - this has now been resolved.
Now, because of all the time lost, the company’s financial runway is short. When it came time to arrange and pay for freight from the factory, I had to make a practical decision about how to handle things responsibly.
Rather than risk overstretching the company by paying for worldwide freight all at once, I’ve arranged for fulfilment to happen in two waves.
Wave 1 – UK & EU The container I talked about above contains the copies for the UK and rest of Europe. Once it arrives in Southampton and clears customs, those copies will make the short trip to GamesQuest and fulfilment will begin.
Wave 2 – US & Rest of World The remaining copies will ship later. Splitting the shipments this way allows me to raise some revenue and complete fulfilment in a controlled way and make sure every region receives their games. Please bear with me - all my focus is on timing everything responsibly so we can get things moving as soon as possible. As soon as I know anything, you'll know.
As a token gesture for US backers, we will try to tariff fees and not ask you for any more money.
In the meantime it’s business as usual here. We have a couple of direct-to-retail titles close to release which are being funded through localisation deals rather than company cash, so they aren’t competing with Yonder for resources. Those releases will help strengthen the company’s position as we finish fulfilment. Haakon is close to finishing new villager illustrations for the upcoming Villagers Big Box edition, which will launch on Kickstarter after the completion of Yonder fulfilment. We also have a number of other direct-to-retail games in the works which we'll fund externally. So, I'm not sitting on my hands here.
I know delays are frustrating, and I’m very grateful for the patience people have shown over the past couple of years. My aim now is simply to land the final stretch cleanly and get everyone's pledge delivered.
I’ll post another update when I have firm fulfilment dates for the UK & Europe.
Customer Support If you'd like to change your address, you can do so by accessing your BackerKit pledge manager account here.
Thanks again for sticking with me on this. As ever: take care, and play games!
Dave
Yonder Progress Update #7
2 months ago
– Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 06:39:02 AM
Hey everyone!
A super quick-fire update today - I'm sharing good news, and then getting back to work!
The final production samples of the three different editions (Retail, Kickstarter, and Deluxe) have arrived from China! Look see...
I'm currently going through them carefully to see if there are any errors (all looking good so far). As soon as I report to our manufacturer that everything is OK, final assembly will take place. From then I'm told we have 12 days until everything is packed & ready to ship out.
Here's a video of me expertly unboxing the Deluxe Edition...
I'll update again when I know what's happening with freight shipping. I won't speculate on dates, I'll just tell you when the containers are confirmed to be en route. Hope that's OK with everyone?
Regarding US tariffs - it's still hard to say precisely what the situation is going be, but we're going ahead with shipping no matter what. (Unless Europe is at war with the USA in a couple of weeks or something. Let's hope not.) It is likely that we will need to ask US backers for a few dollars to cover tariffs - as far as I know we will be required to pay when the goods arrive at port in the US, and they won't be released from customs until the bill is paid. BackerKit has a new tariff management feature which should make the process fairly painless.
Anyway, thanks for reading, I'll catch you all soon. And as always, take care, and play games!
Yonder Progress Update #6
4 months ago
– Tue, Nov 25, 2025 at 02:22:17 AM
Hey everyone - it's another belated Yonder update :D
This will be very short, but it's good news, are you ready?
Production on Yonder is finally locked in and is slated to finish on January 10th.
That's it, that's all the 100% verified Yonder news!
Speculative news: We are looking at the possibility of transporting copies of Yonder into Europe by train and splitting European fulfilment between hubs in Germany and the UK. If we can do this, it will mean backers in Europe getting their copies sooner than if we use ocean freight. I will let you know what plan we settle on.
Dave is now just going to ramble for a bit news: I made it to Essen Spiele for the first time ever, and it was amazing. I managed two days at the fair, and they were filled with meetings & getting lost in the halls. If you've never been, I heartily recommend it. We were there touting Yonder and our other new games to publishers and distributors, and we're currently in talks with several of them. Everyone is very excited for Yonder to see the light of day! We hope to be at Essen next year with a trade stand.
We're currently working on several new games, all of which are in need of playtesting. If you'd like to get involved and you have Tabletop Simulator, please join our Discord and make yourself known: https://discord.gg/UK8NPJB5
Our cute & cozy tile laying game Tulip Season is still available for pre-order. To avoid complicating things and causing potential delays to Yonder fulfilment, we are not making Tulip Season available via the Yonder pledge manager, but you can find out more and order here.
That's all for today. Instead of agonising over a lengthy update when there's not much to say, I'm going to get back to work!
Love you all, and as always - take care, and play games!
Yonder Progress Update #5
7 months ago
– Fri, Sep 12, 2025 at 07:31:26 PM
Hey everyone,
I'm sorry this update is late. We've had a hectic summer with kids at home and lots of Sinister stuff happening, but I finally have good news for you all: we have placed the manufacturing order for Yonder. Huzzah!
I currently have no start & finish dates, but as soon as I get that information, I will pass it on. At this stage of the game I don't like to estimate, because the manufacturing & shipping process is completely out of my hands. If it's OK with you guys, I will just report on what is happening and hold off on any guesswork.
That is literally the news for this update. Thankyou so much for your patience once again, and apologies to the nervous people in the comments - I do understand your frustration.
Now, if you were in a hurry, you can dip out here, and I thank you for your attention. But, if you want to know more, and especially if you need help sleeping, then I am here for you! The following wall of dry text that you have apparently elected to read will give you some insight into what riveting office work we've been forcing ourselves to do behind the scenes for the last couple of months...
There has been some upheaval with the way we distribute our games. This is about the retail side of the business and nothing much to do with crowdfunding, but there is some knock-on effect. Basically, our one & only distributor (or rather consolidator - Flat River Group - who sell our games to other distributors on our behalf) are getting out of the hobby games business, citing the instability caused by volatile US tariffs as the main driver behind their decision. Most of FRG's clients (including us) are now moving to Luma Imports for US distribution, leaving our existing retail stock in limbo while it moves to the new warehouse. Flat River Group used to handle our distribution sales for the entire world, and it was a very low-admin deal which suited us very well: we would release a game, FRG would take a bunch of copies and sell them for us worldwide. Amazing! But not so much when it suddenly stops. So rather than leave all our eggs in one basket again with Luma, we decided to let them handle the US only and we'd look for new partnerships with distributors in the UK, Europe, and around the world. Fast forward to now, and we have several deals in place, and waiting on a few more to finalise. We had hoped to get this done sooner and secure pre-orders for the retail edition of Yonder, which we wanted to print alongside the Kickstarter editions. However, we're not quite there with the pre-orders yet, so rather than make you guys wait even longer, we've taken the decision to delay the entire retail release until early next year. Other than the time lost these last two months, this won't effect Kickstarter fulfilment at all, it will just mean you get your copies well before the retail release (other than the retailers who backed the campaign of course!).
So there you have it - I should have talked about this stuff as it was happening but I naively thought we could navigate it without causing any complications with this campaign. It would have been good to print everything at the same time because it makes the shipping and some components cheaper, but I know many of you are done waiting, and so am I.
Inbetween meetings and waiting for people to email us back, we did get some other work done, so in very-brief-but-way-more-fun news:
Tulip Season is going to print with Yonder and will have a discounted pre-order soon.
We signed a really fun & mean little card game that I like more than Flip 7.
Work has started on Villagers: Big Box. I've done a new double-sided playmat, and Haakon is putting together a combined rulebook. This one will come to Kickstarter only when it's completely done & dusted!
We're in development on an unannounced card game which you can help playtest if you wish. Join us on Discord or Facebook and look out for announcements.
Yonder Progress Update #4
9 months ago
– Tue, Jul 01, 2025 at 02:27:20 PM
Hey everyone!
So I have the Yonder Deluxe Edition sample in hand, and it’s wonderful!
First up, I want to give you a condensed picture of where we are overall, and then I’ll share some more pictures of the sample.
We need to make a few improvements to the rulebook. Those will be done this week.
We’re waiting on new improved samples of the “1” value metal coins.
We’ll make the manufacturing order when these issues have been corrected.
We’re delaying the US retail release for a while, although retailers who backed Kickstarter copies will get theirs along with other backers.
US backers will be asked to pay any extra fees relating to tariffs on goods from China. We plan to charge for this via the pledge manager.
Deluxe Edition Bits
The view from the top. Everything fits so nicely! Yes, there's room for sleeved cards in there.
Resource trays are so cute! I can't fault them.
Boaty good worker trays.
The large "V" coins have the improved straight edges, and the smaller coins will be the same in the production version. Deluxe Arcana tokens look good enough to eat!
Deluxe Edition comes with four of these player component boxes. You'll need to put everything in them the first time, but who doesn't love organising game components!
Deluxe Edition atop the Kickstarter (and retail) edition box. It a heckin' chonk!
What Else is Happening?
With the delays to Yonder, we've managed to push on with some other projects:
We're expecting sample copies of our new direct to retail game, Tulip Season to arrive very soon. We'll do a pre-order for it via our website sooner or later, and I'll be showing more once the samples arrive.
I'm designing a game! Can't say much until I've tested it some more, but things are really starting to come together and I'm thoroughly enjoying the process. Art & design is happening alongside development, which is probably an odd way to do things, but I have access to a pre-existing trove of wonderful unreleased art so I figured it would be wrong to make a scrappy-looking prototype. More in good time...
Haakon and I are hatching up something that's still a HUGE secret. Oh I'll just tell you - it's a Villagers "big box" edition, which will include everything ever made for Villagers, plus some new villager cards and other fun stuff! I would put my money on a Kickstarter late this year / early next.
That's all for now!
If you need help with anything, you can reach me on [email protected] - we are backed up a bit, but I will get to you.
