Excited

For the second time in a few months I’ve been really excited about a friend’s game.

Both created by designers at Newcastle Playtest.

Which is growing and gaining strength every month.

In both cases I’ve wanted to publish the game.

I’ve spent this week playtesting the latest with my mum, and The Wife and Daughter the Youngest a bit too.

Ideas fizzing.

Working on naming.

Playing with art styles.

But he’s not ready to hand it over to a publisher yet.

And the designer of the first one wants to try to find a bigger publisher.

Which is fair - we’re tiny.

Everything we’ve published so far I’ve designed or co-designed.

I’d love to branch out to other designer’s games.

But my time is very tight, so I don’t want to announce we’re open to submissions - I’ve not got the time to review them or do them justice.

Newcastle Playtest is perfect - I’m there already.

Hopefully at some point we’ll get there.

Maybe even with one of these two…

Me waiting patiently for the perfect game to drop into my lap...

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Family

My parents are visiting for a week.

They live 300 miles away, and so I see them rarely.

Two or three times a year.

And dad is getting less mobile.

So it’s harder for them to travel.

It’s going to be lovely seeing them for a whole week.

Not just a brief video call.

But I run Eurydice Games in my spare time.

Around a full-time job.

And a youngish family.

So visitors pretty much pause game company work.

The print and play rewards are almost done though. Half a page left of the rulebook, then proofing and it’s ready to go.

It’ll be a month late :(

I have at least done some playtest of my mate Joe’s solo dungeon crawl (it’s very good!).

Loads of fun!

Mum, The Wife and Daughter the second joined in too!

Back

It's been a very busy week post-Expo.

There's been loads of Expo tasks to catch up on.

We've had a very busy week of UK sales (post Expo ones?).

So loads of bookkeeping.

And I'm back on the P&P rewards graphic design.

One thing I needed to do was physically print the dashboards.

And cut them out.

In their Print and Play configuration.

For two reasons.

One: it's easier to spot errors in physical form than on screen.

And two: I needed to check that I'd lined the backs and fronts up correctly for the P&P rewards.

In that the correct fronts and backs were together.

And the orientations were right too.

The good news is the P&P configuration was all correct.

But I spotted a few issues with the dashboards that needed fixing.

Cheaper to fix them now, than after printing 350 of them!

Conventions

I'm back from the UK Games Expo.

I'm knackered.

But it was so good.

We had our box manufacturer, W. MacCarthy & Sons, hand-deliver some Xeno Wars boxes to the Expo, from London!

We sold more games than ever before!

We demoed FlickFleet to loads of new people and could see how much fun they were having.

I had a few really useful business meetings.

We had a crowd of spectators for most of the time.

We had people go out of their way to come to our stand, just to tell us how much they love FlickFleet.

And someone even came up to us during dinner, to tell us how much he loved it!

I've done conventions in four jobs now.

Games ones with Reiver Games and Eurydice Games.

Scientific ones in the day job.

And during my PhD.

I really enjoy them.

Games ones in particular feel like I'm among my people.

And I love meeting so many people I know.

Missed

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I've a lot on.

So has Paul.

Our laser-cutter failed.

Two weeks before the Expo.

So Paul took up an offer from the amazing team at Harps Corp.

To use their laser-cutters for a couple of days.

So we had stock for the Expo.

And fortunately, our laser-cutter has been fixed already.

Meanwhile I've been working on the graphic design for Box of Xeno Flicks 1.

Dashboards are almost done.

And preparing for the Expo.

The Expo deadline cannot slip.

And it was Daughter the Youngest's birthday and party this weekend.

That couldn't slip either.

As feared, that means the graphic design had to, despite burning the midnight oil.

The P&P rewards are due on Saturday.

I think they will be a couple of weeks late :(

Guesswork

We crowdfund to raise money for print runs.

We print everything that we need for the next year.

In runs of 100-800 copies.

Tiny print runs.

Because they are small, they are expensive.

So we need a decent campaign total.

Some of that comes during the campaign.

Some during the pledge manager: shipping, extras, and late pledges.

We need to kick off manufacturing early. Boxes and wooden bits have long lead times.

Before we know what we’ve raised in the pledge manager.

We need to ensure the total raised is enough to fund the print runs and cover campaign shipping.

And VAT.

And Gamefound fees.

And royalties.

But also order enough to keep us in stock until the next campaign.

It’s a guess.

We’ve made our guesses.

Ordered boxes accordingly.

Now we are waiting to see if the pledge manager ends up where we guessed.

Or not.

Deadlines

I’ve got two pressing deadlines the moment.

The UK Games Expo.

We’ll be in Hall 2, stand 2-494

And Print and Play rewards for Box of Xeno Flicks 1.

The Expo starts on the 29th May for us - driving down to Birmingham and setting up.

The print and play rewards are due on the 31st.

The Expo deadline cannot move.

I really want to hit the other one too.

Lots to do still on both though.

I see some late evenings on the horizon…

Meanwhile Paul is down the laser-cutting mines. 

Cranking out copies of FlickFleet and the expansions.

To cover web sales. And the Expo. And the start of fulfilment.

He’s finishing last year’s print runs.

We’re running low!