Momentum

I'm mostly focussing on Gal4Xeon at the moment.

Tweaking the graphic design of the player sheets.

Playtesting with more people.

Getting more feedback.

And a couple of new ideas.

Trying to make it the best I can.

It's been in preview on Gamefound since just before Christmas.

Because I've been advised by Gamefound to get it up early.

It's been gaining more followers than I've been expecting.

It's now overtaken Exodus at launch.

With probably 3 months before the campaign goes live.

It could be our biggest roll and write campaign.

In terms of funding.

And backers.

Possibly our best ever campaign in terms of backers!

I need to keep improving things.

There's still time to make it even better.

Success

Rocky ‘Roid was over 500% funded.

The ads didn’t do very well though, probably broke even at best.

Still, FlickFleet is going great.

Website sales for the last five weeks are over 13 times our normal sales.

13. Times.

That’s crazy.

A run of great reviews.

More people finding out about FlickFleet.

The Expo. 

A bit of buzz.

It’s been great. 

At the beginning of the year we had 4 weeks without a sale. 

This week we had eight consecutive days of sales.

It’s our best ever week for sales outside of a convention or crowdfunding fulfilment.

Feels like we’re building momentum.

Mojo

I’ve struggled during the pandemic.

With games design.

I hate playing games solo.

And solo playtesting.

My games aren’t a good fit for Tabletop Simulator.

I lost my mojo.

My game design almost ground to a halt. Barely ticking over.

We’re starting to see the other side.

I’m vaccinated, careful, regularly masked and regularly test myself.

So I’m starting to do things again.

And with it, my mojo is returning.

I’ve made progress on three different designs in the last couple of weeks.

The pencils are to make changes!

To the playtesting table!

Building Momentum

We moved into our new house last Thursday. Thursday, Friday and the weekend were spent moving and trying to sort stuff out, Monday I was at the old house, cleaning and waiting in for three orders to be collected by the couriers.

The first was an initial stocking order for my first Canadian distributor - yeay! They were one of three new distributors who have contacted me since I ran the competition on BoardGameGeek. The second (a new US distributor) has placed an order which I'm going to ship on Friday (I've had to wait until I can go to York to get more It's Alive! stock - I've sold through the pile I was keeping at home) and the third has only recently enquired.

The second order shipping on Monday was a re-stock from one of my UK distributors. This was really gratifying, since they'd ordered less of Sumeria than they had initially ordered of It's Alive! and Carpe Astra, and three weeks later they had to ask for some more :-) I was expecting their sales to be slower since several of the larger UK shops had bought from me directly at or since the Expo, but this doesn't seem to have affected their sales much at all.

Yet another US distributor has also enquired in the last couple of weeks. This third new distributor is even better since a Danish/Norwegian distributor I've been talking to for months told me a while back that if I dealt with PHD they would buy my games from them, rather than me directly. So, if PHD also sign up, that will be two new distributors for the price of one :-). I don't know whether they will bite yet, but so far so good.

On top of all that I spoke to another distributor today on the phone. He's going to start soliciting my games. Hopefully this will lead to them picking them up, but it was effortless to get him to consider it.

I'm feeling pretty positive at the moment. The new house is lovely, and has a nice big office that I can store things in much more tidily than I could at either of our previous places. Feedback on Sumeria has been pretty good so far and June's sales will be my second-best ever (out-stripping January, the previous holder of that title, but not a patch on last October and Essen :-) ).

The only fly in the ointment is that most of my European distributors have yet to place a Sumeria order, so European availability is pretty patchy.

It's interesting to see how my mood varies. Entrepreneurship requires boundless enthusiasm and optimism. I try, but a dry spell like Feb-May gets me down, but a good month like June and I'm straight back up again :-)