March Report

Big month for me! As usual, play first.

Play

By the numbers, it was a fairly average month, but in the flesh it was a great one. I spent a weekend in Newcastle with old friends playtesting games, the next weekend we were down South playing games with yet more old friends, plus there was a week when I made it to both of Paul's games nights, my last two gaming sessions with Dave before he moved down South, a night in the pub when we ended playing drinking Jenga, and a visit to Hugo's for a gaming afternoon. Here's the multiples:

• Race for the Galaxy - 8 plays
• Jenga - 6 plays
• Border Reivers - 5 plays
• N-Tropy - 3 plays
• Memoir '44 - 2 plays
• Category 5 - 2 plays

And the singles: Puerto Rico, Revolution!, Carcassonne: The Castle, Bang!, The Pillars of Venice, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects. It was my first outing for N-Tropy, Revolution!, Bang!, The Pillars of Venice and Cleopatra and the Society of Architects. I wasn't a big fan of Bang! or The Pillars of Venice, N-Tropy was alright. My favourite new game of the month was Cleopatra etc. Nice theme, beautiful chrome, I like that the box is used as part of the board (like Niagara), and I love the corruption mechanic, where scoring the most points often means getting corruption counters, the player with the most at the end of the game loses, regardless of their score. Nasty :-D. Special mention goes to Revolution! by fellow blogger Philip duBarry. Dave and I played it, and I enjoyed it but felt it would be better with more players. Then I read the box. 3-4 Players. Muppet! I took it along to Hugo's but there were too many of us, so I'll have to try at Paul's instead.

All in all, it was a great month for playing games. Great to see so many old friends, and to be invited to yet more games sessions :-) Still, it was a shame to see Dave leave, I'll miss our Tuesday nights together, and our nights in the pub chatting about game design.

Creation

Ooooh. Exciting month. I finally stopped prevaricating about whether to quit my job and set up Reiver Games full-time, and just did it. I also started making a splash to try to build awareness of my company, and to drum up more submissions. I posted a few things on BoardGameGeek, which attracted attention, and lead to a brief story on Boardgame News. In total I think I've had around thirty or forty submissions. It's a bit overwhelming. For the moment I'm just replying telling the designers I'll look at them next week. At least I'll be busy in my first week at home :-)

It's Alive!

Sales have been slow since Christmas, but they've started picking up this last week as I'm more active, and making a splash about my company. I've sold nine during March, and I'm hoping that having some time to invest in publicity (and the quitting my job story) will raise awareness and lead to some more sales in the coming weeks. I've almost run out of the massive pile of finished stock I built up several weeks ago, time to get constructing again. Looking forward to next month I've a couple of appearances at the local game store (their games night and a Saturday slot) which should also lead to some sales.

Codename: Network

I've been working on this the last few weeks quite hard. I've started putting together some graphic design and been bouncing ideas back and forth with the designer. I started a thread on BGG asking for title suggestions and got hundreds. I need to pick one, and then start publicising it properly.

Codename: Jorvik

Jorvik's gone on the back-burner for now. I had some constructive feedback from Mal & Paul that made me think it wasn't quite ready. So I'll continue working on it, and release it when it is ready, rather than rush it out too soon.

In other news, all the fuss has led to the most hits in a single day here on Creation and Play. I'd like to welcome all my new readers, hopefully you'll stick around and join the discussion every now and again. It's going to be an exciting few months here on CnP I hope you enjoy reading about it.