Hi from Hyper Forge!
We are a small company based in Amsterdam, NL. Our passion is for Miniature painting and Roleplaying Games. In 2017 we started designing a modular building system to allow the creation of 3D environments on the fly. Our dream was for Roleplaying games and miniature-based Tabletop games to be played on a quick to assemble/dynamically changeable environments that could be arranged with a solid structure of magnets.
INTRODUCING SNAP TILES©
MODULAR, MAGNETIC, COMPACT, INDESTRUCTIBLE
The result of our development, design and sculpting is called SnapTiles©: a true modular building system that features:
Built-in, ready to use interlocking magnets. Parts just Snap Together, almost magically.
Extreme modularity, beyond anything seen before. With forward compatibility in mind.
1x1 grid based modular pieces. lets you build anything!
85% smaller footprint when stored (compared to standard “dungeon tiles”.)
Lower walls for improved visibility when sitting at the table
more playable surface (as walls don't overlap floor tiles you have more actual spaces to put your minis)
Solid plastic tiles, small but heavy and nice to the touch.
Insane Detail, almost unbreakable parts, down to the thinnest piece.
Multi-floor houses/castles can be built thanks to the strong magnets
Led-lit battery operated tiles with interchangeable elements like torches, flamethrowers, fireplaces, magic portals, water fountains and more.
Tons of Amazingly detailed Fantasy objects and furniture that comes in perfect scale for the system.
THE (long) JOURNEY TOWARDS PRODUCTION
We sculpted everything with incredible care, using CAD, VR tools and Photogrammetry to mix Real world object scans for surfaces and hand sculpted details for shapes. We achieved impressive results: our models look so detailed and realistic that you won’t believe your eyes.
We wanted our product to be produced with high quality plastic molds that will be able to capture all of the amazing details we sculpted while keeping the price as affordable as possible for our backers.
Some might think that producing plastics outside of the EU would be the only possible way to keep the prices affordable (we thought so too). What we found out instead is that because of technical challenges particular to its design, this is not really true in the case of SnapTiles. Actually all of our potential manufacturing partners came back with price estimates way higher than we expected.
It has never been our intention to bring this into market as an elite product with a very high price tag, so we looked for alternative solutions to cut costs even for a relatively small initial production run.
The solution to this was to actually develop a new production technique that will allow us to rapidly insert magnets by hand inside the molds as parts are produced.
From here our decision to acquire the production line for ourselves and start running it in the Netherlands.
By producing parts in house with no middleman and setting an appropriate Funding Goal for the campaign, we can cover production costs even with very low margins. This translates to a KS price that is way lower than we could have made it even through a foreign Manufacturing partner.
Magnets
The Neodymium magnets that come pre-built in our tiles are certified to lose less than 1% of strength over 90 years.
You will be able to play these for your whole lifetime without worrying.
OUR THERMOPLASTIC RESIN AND PROCESS
The material we picked is a Thermoplastic resin with incredible qualities compared to every other option available:
Incredibly resistant to impact and bending. Its literally almost indestructible.
Renders incredible amounts of sculpted detail. Impossible to achieve with Traditional Injection Molds.
Is completely non toxic
Comes Pre-Primed for paint
Works well with new generation contrast type paints.
Magnets come pre oriented and pre inserted
PRODUCTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
We are very worried with the current situation of our Ecosystem, and we know that producing plastics can have an extremely harmful impact on all of our lives and the planet if its handled without the proper consideration. For this reason we are happy to commit to the environment in 3 different ways:
The wasted material with our production technology is no more than 1%.
This means that as we produce parts, all of the injection sprues and runners will be melted again and again inside the machines to produce new parts, instead of being shipped with the product. As this extra weight of plastic doesn’t have to travel overseas, a good amount of pollution for transportation is avoided. These sprues and runners also don’t get a chance of ending up in the oceans.
Packaging without the polluting nonsense
We will limit packaging as much as possible, as sets will come in recycled cardboard boxes, and tiles will be packaged only with their included tough carry-case.
our production facility AND OFFICES WILL RUN on 100% green energy
Everyone has a voice about how we should create electricity. Our vote goes to wind and solar energy. We believe in a healthier, greener, more sustainable future, and we want to be part of the change.
Dear followers and backers,
It is with the utmost sadness that we bring this announcement to you.
As of today, 5th December 2019 we will be stopping this campaign by canceling it.
Our project comes from our true need to make 3D terrains a flexible, easy-to-use tool to create endless adventures.
We wanted a compact, easy-to-use system made of dynamically interchangeable parts. It needed to solve visibility problems and overcome issues with size, map geometries, and multi-floor capabilities while retaining fantastic looks.
To achieve this we invested personal funds and countless hours developing and perfecting it. We never doubted the quality of the design and its revolutionary capabilities, and we genuinely put all of ourselves into this project. This for us meant sacrificing not only our full-time jobs, but also all of our weekends, holidays, and lots of nights of sleep over 2 and a half years. We designed, produced, magnetized, and painted thousands of prototype parts, to make sure that everything was as ready and tested as it could ever be.
This was our first experience with Crowdfunding, and we are sorry to say that mistakes were made.
With more time our products could have been communicated better, and the compactness and modularity of the system could have been displayed more, together with all of the little improvements over standard designs that make Snaptiles so unique and, in our endeavors, worth the effort. We now realize that a few things need to be done differently on this platform for a project to properly gain push and momentum, and we failed at that too.
We are extremely sorry to have disappointed our fans with this false start. We want to assure you though, that our intention remains to get this product in the hands of customers and to revolutionize the way RPG games are played. We will regroup briefly and we will be back with a new, improved campaign by 2021.
A very special thank you goes to all of you who have pledged to this campaign in these first days. We can never thank you enough. You deserve our undying gratitude.
Thank you for your continued interest and support! Stay tuned on our social media and website for more information.