Zombology!

I started work in earnest on Zombology in November 2013 for NaGa DeMon, starting from an idea I’d had for a game for my employer to give away at trade shows. I worked hard on it for that month and then continued plugging away at it for a year and eventually decided to make 30 hand-crafted copies and sell them at cost for NaGa DeMon 2015. It took me 6 months to sell those, and then slowly over time I built up a short list of people who after playing we’re interested in getting their own copy.

Early Zombology card 'art'

In September 2017, six years after shutting down Reiver Games I started a second board games publishing company, Eurydice Games to make and sell a second print run - this time at a profit so I would have money to invest in other projects. My goal was to sell 200 copies within a year (I’d sold 100 copies of Border Reivers and then 300 copies of It’s Alive! within a year each at the beginning of Reiver Games). Conscious of the fact that Reiver Games went wrong due to trying to scale up from hobby hand-crafter to ‘professional’ publisher too soon, I was determined not to go into retail this time round.

The 30 copy run

It’s taken two years to sell throughout Zombology, but this week the last few copies will go to our retail partner: Travelling Man. Remember how I said I didn’t want to go into retail? That didn’t last!

It’s just as well though. Travelling Man have bought 79 of the 200 copies and sold at least 57, 22 of which were through a single store. In the middle of restocking three of their stores with another 11 copies I told the small press coordinator that I only had nine left and they they took those too.

The final version

What with that and the 27 we sold through the first FlickFleet Kickstarter over half have gone through routes I didn’t expect to take - which shows how important being willing to change your mind is!

Zombology is now sold out. You can get the Print and Play files from our website, but we have no plans to reprint it, despite it selling well in the shops. It has a BGG average of 7.1 from 22 ratings, which is pretty good, but FlickFleet by comparison has an average of 8.4 from 28, which is my highest ranked game ever!