Dear Woolfe backers,

When Rebellion acquired Woolfe back in October we promised we’d honour as many of the digital and physical rewards as possible, and we kicked off the process of packing, labelling (and envelope-licking!) in November, shipping out the first wave of outstanding posters, stickers and certificates.

But we have some more great news to finish the year off! Our in-house art team have been busy creating both a stunning, custom-designed Boxed version of the game, and also a Hardcover Artbook which were originally offered as optional “Add ons” to backers of the Kickstarter campaign.

Not only are these now designed and printed, but we have started shipping them to all the appropriate backers - this means some of you may even get all your rewards in time for Christmas!

And if that’s simply too far away, you can check out this video we made with our Head of Art, Chris, to get a sneak preview of what to expect!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59tfdP40tg8&feature=youtu.be
As the backers who made Woolfe possible, we hope you enjoy finally getting your rewards as much as we have making them.

We understand you’ve probably still got a few questions, so we’ve also got a published a quick FAQ below, but as ever feel free to get in touch at woolfe.support@rebellion.co.uk

From everyone at Rebellion, we wish you a great Christmas and a cracking 2016!

If you purchased the “Hardcover Artbook” add on...
… you get a 60 page, 18cm x 26cm Hardcover Artbook designed and published by Rebellion featuring a Foreword from Grin’s Wim Wouters, as well as art from pre-production, characters, environments, graphic design and even fans themselves!

If you purchased the “Boxed” version add on...
… you get the Woolfe PC game on DVD and the soundtrack on CD, all presented in a custom, double-sided box and sleeve, gloss black printed on matt black, and finished with a triple spot UV thorn “embossed-style” design created by the artists at Rebellion.

You’ll notice too that the box has a unique double-sided design both inside and out, featuring Red and BB. Woolfe.

We’ve only made a tiny batch of these Boxed editions, and we don’t have plans to sell them at retail, so they are very rare indeed!

If you purchased a “Deluxe Boxed” Version physical add on...
...you get:

• The new special Boxed version which includes the game DVD and soundtrack CD (as detailed above)
  
• The Hardcover Artbook
  
• 5 Woolfe posters, including one signed by members of the original dev team at Grin
  
• Sniper Elite Steam key
  
• Sniper Elite V2 Steam key
  
• Sniper Elite 3 Steam key

If you purchased the “Poster pack” physical add on...

You will receive 4 posters as outlined in the original Kickstarter.


We’ve already begun shipping! If you live in the UK or Europe, there is a chance you’ll get your items before Christmas. Shipping times will vary depending on where you live, and what you originally ordered. Hopefully all of you will have your items by the first week in January!


Grin’s original Kickstarter campaign included the option to purchase a “Deluxe Boxed” add on for $120 that featured a complex 3D printed design.

While there was an illustration of the design on Woolfe’s Kickstarter page, no completed samples or designs were ever given to Rebellion when we purchased Woolfe in October 2015.

To replicate the design Grin proposed, we discovered that each individual Deluxe Boxed version would cost many hundreds of dollars to produce!

To make up the value of what you originally ordered, anyone who ordered the Deluxe Boxed version will get the beautiful new Boxed version (including game DVD and CD soundtrack), the Hardcover Artbook, 5 posters (including one signed by members of Grin), and also Steam keys for Rebellion’s Sniper Elite series (three games worth $90) which you can use yourself or gift to anyone you like.

We’re sorry we couldn’t deliver the exact specifications of Grin’s original add on plans, but we think you’ll still appreciate the care and design that we put into the (very rare!) Boxed Version that you receive, as well as the other gifts.

It’s been a couple of weeks since we at Rebellion announced our big Woolfe news and made the pledge to try and deliver all the physical Kickstarter rewards that you, the backers, are due.

Today we’re delighted to say we’ve begun the process of sending out rewards!

Now, when we say “the process,” we’re talking about something that isn’t going to take place over a few days. To give you a rough idea, we’ve started sending out Woolfe poster packs as well as letters containing official documents of enlistment and limited edition stickers.

With the latter, there are actually more than 1,100 letters for us to send out – by hand! And we have a limited team organizing everything and making sure rewards go out to the right people.

Then there’s the small matter of the rewards we’re making ourselves! The art book, for example, is something we’re physically creating in the studio, as is the deluxe boxed edition of Woolfe.

The long and short of it is that this is going to take us some time! But we’re still confident in our aim to get everything into your hands by the end of the year. And hopefully you are one of the many this week to find the first batch of rewards on your doorstep, finally in your hands.

We’ll make sure to keep you updated on our progress both on Kickstarter and through the Woolfe Twitter and Facebook[www.facebook.com] pages, so please stay tuned. Also, we wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you for your support since our announcement. We appreciate this kind of transition is never an easy thing for anyone involved, so to read positive messages and such passion from Woolfe fans has been so encouraging and gratifying.

Right, that’s all for now, except for a reminder that if you have any questions about the news, the rewards, or what all this means for Woolfe, please read last month’s update and FAQ.

Thanks - and stay tuned!

In August, GRIN’s founder Wim Wouters wrote a brave and searingly honest statement about the sad closure of the studio and the end of Woolfe as they knew it. If you missed this, then we highly recommend you read Wim’s post before continuing. But in summary, GRIN was unable to continue as a business and had to apply for bankruptcy, and so Woolfe (and everything related to the game) was put up for sale at auction.

It has been a difficult time for those involved with Woolfe and for you, the backers, but today we’re writing to tell you that Woolfe is still alive, and now in the hands of a new owner, Rebellion[www.rebellion.co.uk]– that’s us! We’re delighted to add Woolfe’s gorgeous, twisted universe to our burgeoning list of indie games and we hope you’ll join us for the ride.

You’re still probably wondering what this all means. Where does this leave backers? What’s the future of Woolfe? Who are Rebellion anyway?

We’ve tried to answer all your questions below so please take time to read our responses if you can, and if you can’t find an answer to your question then feel free to get in touch with us at woolfe.support@rebellion.co.uk, or hit us up at @Rebellion on Twitter!

Thank you for reading this, and we hope to meet you in the forums and on social media in the very near future.

- Jason and Chris Kingsley, Co-founders and owners of Rebellion.

For those who don’t know us, we’re an independent games studio with headquarters based in Oxford, in the UK.

We’ve been around for 23 years and we’re probably best known for the Sniper Elite series (which has just turned 10 years old!), Zombie Army Trilogy, Rogue Trooper and of course the seminal Aliens vs Predator games.

Aside from developing our own IP, Rebellion occasionally acquires unique and exciting projects from other developers, and we like to think we have one of the most diverse games portfolios out there.

Interestingly, our book imprints have published quite a few dark and twisted retellings of classic tales, and so Woolfe’s gorgeous, twisted take on Red Riding Hood immediately caught our interest when we heard it was up for sale.

But aside from our experience of self-publishing games on Steam for PC, we dug a little further and discovered many of Woolfe’s Kickstarter backers had still not received their rewards.

With our connections to merchandise companies, book printers and the like, we realised we’d also be better placed than most companies to step in and provide backers with their rewards.

That’s the plan! When we purchased Woolfe we were also given access to some of the unsent merchandise and backer rewards, both digital and physical.

We’ve still got to do a full stock-take of exactly what rewards we have, and which rewards we’ll have to produce ourselves, but for now it looks very likely we’ll be able to provide all outstanding physical add-on rewards at no further cost to backers.

Here is a full list of the rewards we will be delivering to backers:

• Art book (digital and physical)
  
• Regular DVD copies of Woolfe
  
• Deluxe Boxed versions of Woolfe (including CD soundtrack)
  
• Poster packs
  
• Limited edition stickers
  
• Official documents of enlistment
  
• Original soundtrack (mp3)
  
• Ringtone (mp3)
  
• Wallpapers (HD JPG/PNG)
  
• Custom answering message (mp3)

Our aim is to deliver all these rewards to backers by the end of the year. Some items might take longer than others, and some may have to be changed from their original specification depending on the assets inherited from GRIN, but we’ll keep as close to original designs as practically possible.

Not in the short term. Woolfe is built in Unreal Engine 3, which is completely separate to and incompatible with Rebellion’s own in-house game engine, Asura. For now it’s too early to say if we’ll be able to support the original Woolfe game in the future. That includes development of the previously mooted console versions, but we’ll be sure to look at and consider all possibilities as we evaluate what to do next.

To be honest, we’ve only just got our feet under the table, so it’s too early to say yet! Part of our purchase does include assets from a second volume of Woolfe that was in development, but the new game was far from being finished.

At this stage, we’ve not had time to dig into all the game’s assets and code to properly assess what we have. Taking a game originally designed for Unreal Engine 3 and making it work in Rebellion’s own Asura engine is a huge task, and one we can’t take lightly!

We’ll update you when we know more.

Rebellion has taken immediate ownership of Woolfe’s Steam page. We’ll update it with some of the points discussed in this FAQ to make buyers and backers aware of the new situation, but aside from having a new name next to ‘Developer’ and ‘Publisher’, nothing major will change.

The price will remain the same, and we’ll put the game on sale from time to time for Steam’s seasonal and weekly promotions.

We’ll have access to the game’s Steam Community Hub and will try to check in, moderate and update you where we can but please be patient - we have multiple projects at Rebellion and they have their own communities we need to work with too!

Yes, and we will continue to update it when we have relevant news. So make sure to check in when you can!

No money has passed to Rebellion with the purchase, only Woolfe’s IP and all assets (including some of the backer rewards) related to the game. Of course these were all at least partially funded by your pledges, so that’s why we want to make sure as many backers as possible who are missing rewards still get them!

Rebellion has a small in-house customer support team, so feel free to get in touch via the below options. Please remember that we typically work in UK office hours (9am-5.30pm, Monday-Friday) and try to respond within 24 working hours.

The Steam Community Hub
The Rebellion website contact form[www.rebellion.co.uk]
On Twitter: @Rebellion
By email: woolfe.support@rebellion.co.uk

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries!

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on
twitter or Facebook[www.facebook.com] for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Tuesday at 10AM Pacific Time

It’s done, there is no way back. We tried, we failed.
The team is now dismantled and we have requested bankruptcy unable to pay outstanding bills.

I guess our public silence the last few months already said a lot. It is not out of disrespect that our communication dropped to almost zero… it is out of shame. It is truly devastating to read the negative comments we received by some press and players. With Woolfe being the most passion driven thing we have ever created, it feels horrible to live with the feeling we let you down.

Once the sales numbers began rolling in, the consequences of our beautiful adventure started to become painfully clear.

This is not just the end of Woolfe, but the end of the studio that I founded and nurtured through ups and downs the past 13 years. In 2002, when I founded GRIN with 2 partners, it was our goal to develop independant games. At the time we were focussed on browser based 3D games. Not an easy market to make a living from at the time. Less than 2 years after we started my 2 partners stepped out; there just wasn’t enough work to go round.

While not losing my passion and still spending every minute of spare time, I generated my basic income doing work-for-hire jobs. Every year the company grew a little stronger, a little better, a little more stable. Until 2 years ago, GRIN had 5 full-time employees exclusively making games for clients, we even made enough money to save a little cash on the side. We would use these savings to create the game of our dreams. Little did we know this would be the beginning of the end…

The optimist in me led me to believe we could actually pull off making a “bigger” indie game. I really wanted to prove an indie game did not have to be rendered in pixels or stylized as a solution to cut development costs. I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong!

At first we could not believe that our “baby” was not more successful, in our emotions we started looking for explanations not related to the game. Maybe gamers are just spoilt brats, bashing on everything, maybe there is an oversaturation of indie market, maybe all the free-to-play games by big studios are giving players a false sense of value. How could less than $10 be to expensive for a beautiful game like Woolfe? How could this be our fault?

Of course none of the emotional excuses above are the reason of our mixed steam rating. We can only blame ourselves…

Our lack of experience just could not be compensated with passion alone.

Why on earth would we want to increase the scope of our game without increasing the budget. Ok, it is understandable that you get inspired to try new things in gameplay, you have to experiment to come up with creative ideas and solutions. I’m not saying the ideas we came up with were impossible. But changing gameplay from 2D to 3D had a major impact on overall development cost (we found out a little too late). Collision detection for instance (and you can’t even really see that) became such a big issue so fast. Instead of having a simple 2D track where you would not be able to collide with small environment props like crates, piles of stones or skulls. Now every little element had to collide, every crooked stone on the floor had to trigger correct foot placement.

The same goes for the fences that seem to cause so much frustration with some players. Although is was a conscious game-design decision, I believe the feeling of freedom the 3D movement opened up, gave players the sense that Woolfe was no longer a platformer, but an open-world type game (more than once compared to Assassin’s Creed, which is an honor, but also a curse as we would never be able to compete).

Although our rules for fences and borders were used very consequently throughout the game, we just couldn’t get players to see them as an environmental gameplay challenge.

Not to mention the combat… OMG! How much more work it turned out to be having enemies follow and engage with the player in the semi-open environments we had grown to love.

Like a “smart” drug dealer might say: Don’t get high on your own supply…

What about our Kickstarter backers?

The people that believed in us from the beginning? People we made promises too. People we have let down. Even worse… people we will not be able to give the full rewards they invested in.

The crazy thing is, that we have most of the rewards ready for postage. All the backer stickers and letters of enlistment just need a stamp. All the poster sets printed, signed and ready. The artbook is ready to be printed, the soundtrack is ready for distribution, the DVD case is ready for production. But we have literally no money whatsoever to pay for stamps, let alone print the artbooks and dvd-cases.

What about Volume 2?

I think it is quite obvious now that we will not be able to finalise production of Woolfe Volume 2. With the low rating of Volume 1, all interested publishers have backed off and we no longer have the financial means to self publish… But we still have loads of assets and we think it would be a shame to let them all go to waste… maybe there are other developers out there that would like to take a shot at making new volumes of Woolfe. Maybe they can achieve what we were unable to accomplish. If our visual style is our strongest element we should make this available for others who are stronger at making gameplay. We would want nothing more than that the legacy of Woolfe would live on forever, or at least longer than a few months.

So with a heavy heart I have to communicate that as of now the IP of Woolfe, all of the assets and source code is now for sale via the appointed trustee Cathérine Lannoy. (c.lannoy@etrevia.be)

I would like to end this post with a very big thank you to my wife for standing by my side in this turbulent period, I hope she forgives me for pulling her into this dangerous adventure. I want to thank my parents and family who have supported me all the way, even financially when things got really rough these last few months. My friends for putting up with my limited conversation topics and recent period of isolation. My former employees that have become some of my best friends. The people who invested in GRIN. The amazing fans that helped us push the limits of what we could achieve. But I would also like to add word of thanks and support for my colleagues and fellow game developers here in Belgium and the rest of the world. YOU ROCK!!! Never stop doing what you’re doing, you have the power to make your dreams come true, but beware of the pitfalls. Beware what you risk, you do not want to be in my position now. You do not want to lose everything you worked so hard for.

As for me, I going to take it easy the next couple of weeks/months, but I have learnt so much about game development the past few years and I don’t plan on letting that knowledge go to waste. And as always, if there is anything I can do for you or help you out with, don’t hesitate to contact me (but give me a little time to get my shit together first please…).

If you want to know more about what game developers go through, I suggest reading this very interesting post of a former game developer on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3cg2hc/repost_as_a_former_developer_theres_a_lot_of/

Thank you,

Wim Wouters

It’s just over a week since we launched Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries on Steam.

We have received a lot of constructive feedback on how we might improve the game, for which we thank you.

Today we hope to show you that our team of 6 have been (and still are) listening to your ideas. Instead of taking a little rest after release, we have been working hard to fix bugs, add polish and even integrate some new elements.
Yes, we now have lip-sync in the cutscenes where Red actually talks, but also new kill and die animations and effects, fixes in subtitles, difficulty based checkpoints and more...

The complete change-log will be available in our discussion forums once the build is live!

We have noticed that some of you have troubles with Red grabbing pipes and ledges. This is identified as a performance issue. Please consult our post about checking and optimizing performance on your computer (http://steamcommunity.com/app/281940/discussions/1/617330406663384799/)

Again, we want to thank you for believing in us!

The Woolfe Pack

Hi, my name is Wim Wouters.

Many of you know me already, but for those of you who don't, I am the founder of GRIN.
This will be my first "personal" public post on our Steam page.

First of all, I would like to take the opportunity to express how proud I am of our small team for pulling off what we just did. For the last year and a half we have been working with a core team of 2 artists, 2 programmers and one writer to create Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries. It has been a real roller-coaster of emotions and challenges, but we survived them all. Nobody in our team has ever worked on a project of this scale and I believe every single one of them has exceeded themselves. So once again: Thank you for your wonderful work!

Ever since we started development on Woolfe, our nicest compliment but also our heaviest burden has been the HIGH EXPECTATIONS we seem to have created. This is of course fantastic and we feel so honored to be compared to other much higher budget and even AAA games out there, but from the start we have tried to warn people that we are just a small studio with a limited budget trying to make our first small, but beautiful indie game... Our fanbase is very aware of this and seem to really respect us for our honesty all along, but now that we have officially launched, I’m not so sure that our growing audience is equally aware of the shorter game length and other budget-driven limitations…

Some people were taken by surprise by the “shorter” play-time of our game. I thought that I had addressed this in our game description on the store page and by setting a reasonably low launch price. But I now realize that I may not have communicated this clearly enough so I have now also changed our short description to reflect game length.

There are other things we wish we could have done better of course. As every developer knows, we are painfully aware of every bug or every element that we could have fixed or done better given the time, budget and maybe experience. Things like a deeper combat system, lip-synced animations, etc…

But I am not ashamed by the end result, I am in fact very proud. Proud that we were able to build an inclusive game that is reasonably priced and accessible to most. Proud on the story that we were able to tell and very thankful that a lot of people really love what we have made. Thankful that a lot of people have been, and still are supporting us in our efforts launching our first game as an independent studio.

Thank you,

Wim Wouters

Keep an eye on: http://www.woolfegame.com

It’s D-day, you guys... After a lot of blood, sweat and tears we’re counting down the hours to the official release of our big bad Woolfe. To say that we’re excited and shitting our pants would be an understatement. As we speak, we’re trying to distract ourselves by cleaning out the studio (believe us, it was necessary :-).
Later today, we have a bunch of people coming over to celebrate the official release with us. We’ll propose a Twitch toast as well, so feel free to join us for a short livestream and a virtual Belgian beer. The more, the merrier!

TUESDAY MARCH 17th at 1 PM PDT (9 PM CET)
http://www.twitch.tv/WoolfeGame

And, yes, this might sound a bit cheesy but it’s true: we couldn’t have done it without you, our treasured Early Access community. You’ve all helped us out in so many ways: we are sincerely and eternally grateful for the part you played in developing Woolfe.
A THOUSAND. TIMES. THANK. YOU.

We hope Red and B.B. Woolfe will make a nice impression out there, and that the story we crafted with love will be enjoyed by many. Dear Early Birdies, we’re off to comb our hair, clean our desks to release the Woolfe and welcome our guests in a few hours.,
Hope to see you on Twitch (if you’re not too busy playing Woolfe, of course)!

Love!
The Very Nervous Woolfe Pack

Nobody likes people repeating themselves so I’ll keep it brief. With our deadline only a few days away, everyone’s working around the clock to get everything ready for release. That means a lot of polishing and fixing prior bugs, but also working on an updated release trailer...

That also means it’s time for another changelog. Let’s go over some of the more important updates in today’s build.

• Audio
  Red now has some new taunts to tell the big rat in the sewers. New ambient sounds during the fight are added as well.
  Water sounds in the sewer level when the water rises or declines.
  Again, in the sewers, the double-ticking sound of the timer is fixed.
  You’ll also notice there’s now a new bit of music accompanying the dancing guards in the market.
  We did some normalization of the new voiceovers.
  
  
• Animation
  There’s a new little cinematic during the rat fight to accentuate the poison clouds.
  Red’s footplacement while she’s sneaking should now be improved. Her footplacement on the boxes in the first level should look a whole lot better now as well.
  
  
• Collision fixes
  Quite a lot of collision fixes for this update. Like in the Toy Workshop, in the tunnel towards the investigation files, the trees in the marketplace,...
  
  
• Changes in the levels
  There’s now a fence in front of the stream pipes in the sewers.
  Your calm and easy rides on the rafts in the harbour have now become a bit more difficult as we’ve added a couple of hurdles.
  The hole in a ground at the sewer rat fight is now fixed as well as the issue of the framedrop during the poison phase.
  The time reset for the sewer puzzle is working again properly.
  The crate you push down in the market level now saves instantly.
  
  
• Other
  We fixed the state resets when opening the pause menu.
  And there shouldn’t be any more kismet warnings.
  There's a whole bunch of other stuff, most you might not even notice...

Alright guys, that’s all for now!
We’ll be back very soon with more news and updates.

Cheers,
-The Woolfe Team