Extras

With the Gamefound campaign for Xeno Wars (almost) complete, I can move to the next item on my list.

The website.

One of the advantages of getting it redone was a proper shop.

With shipping calculations.

So we could easily add more products.

A couple of weeks ago I added Xeno Wars and the Xeno Wars P&P files.

This week it’s been extras.

The scenario booklet.

Extra dice.

Extra asteroids.

Pretty!

Next up is extra nebulae. And extra wreckage.

We’ve a couple of playmats left too. Might put them up.

Then move along to the next item on my list.

It’s a long list!

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.

Reviews

We live a boom and bust cycle.

A big influx of cash when we do a crowdfunding campaign.

Which we spend on materials. And then shipping.

Then our overheads slowly eat away at the remaining cash until we do another campaign.

Sometimes we need to loan the company money.

Then we do another campaign. And we’re flush again.

Our overheads have gone up.

A lot.

Paul’s small salary. Various things to free up my time.

Website sales are usually minimal.

We need to get to the point where they cover our overheads.

Then we survive between campaigns.

We have a new website. I want to run ads pointing at it. 

I’ve been putting it off until Paul finished the Xeno Wars rewards. We had no stock.

Now we do.

But the website has been doing better.

Because of great reviews.

Happy with that!

By Hunter and Friends. And Tabletop Gaming Magazine. And Board Game Quest.

The sales we’ve got from each of the reviews are enough to cover the week‘s overheads.

And the cost of the review copy and shipping is probably less than the amount we’d have to spend on ads to get the same sales.

Good value for money :)

P.S. Rocky ‘Roid finishes tomorrow!

Friendship

I’ve known Paul for 17 years.

He brought two friends to my first ever public playtesting session.

All three of them ordered Border Reivers.

Reiver Games was born.

Paul invited me to his bi-weekly games night and we became friends.

When I moved away we stayed in touch and though I saw him infrequently, he was one of my best friends and playtesters.

We designed FlickFleet together in 2017.

He joined Eurydice Games in 2018.

Despite living 100 miles apart he’s my best friend.

We chat regularly on Slack, occasionally on FaceTime and meet up every few months.

We’ve just spent the last four days in each other’s pockets.

Breakfast and dinner together. On the stand all day together. Playtesting together in the evenings.

Road trip buddies

We evening shared a room and drove down from York together.

It’s been great.

It’s lovely to have a proper catch up.

Plan what’s next for Eurydice Games.

We don’t see enough of each other.

Finished

And yet not quite.

We shipped all the FlickFleet: Xeno Wars rewards. Including the ones due in July.

The EU ones are now with ShipQuest. We’re waiting to hear when then will be shipped.

Some of the US ones were returned because they thought they contained prohibited items :(

They don’t like the big boxes for some reason.

Need to work out how to accurately describe them that doesn’t fall foul of the rules.

But it’s nearly done.

I’ve had a slower week - since my parents were visiting.

Paul is still flat out, making stuff for the UK Games Expo this weekend (We'll be on stand 2-564 in Hall 2 if you're going - stop by and say hi!).

Then he can finally slow down.

Just over 24 hours till launch!

And Rocky ‘Roid launches tomorrow lunchtime!

Got a fun few weeks ahead!

Red

It’s a good news/bad news week.

When we do a crowdfunding campaign I feel the weight of the pledges.

People have lent us money. Lots of money. In some cases, huge amounts of money.

We owe them. We’ve promised them something in return. I don’t like to break my word.

Until the pledges are all fulfilled I feel those loans. Weighing on me.

More so when we’re late. We’ve broken our word. Let people down.

This week I shipped the last of the non-EU deluxe rewards. Almost four months late.

Paul shipped the EU rewards to ShipQuest. Some almost four months late. Some over two months early.

On their way!

Then he parcelled up the non-EU standard rewards and either posted them or booked shipping for them for today.

Two months early.

The loan is repaid. 

A weight is lifted.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I miscalculated. Shipping is more than we’d planned.

We’ve had to lend Eurydice some money again to tide us over until the Expo in a couple of weeks.

I’d love to get to the point where we’re not utterly dependant on crowdfunding cash injections.

Regular website sales covering our monthly overheads would be great.

Need to work on that.

After the Expo, and Rocky ‘Roid though.

Confluence

Lots going on this week.

I met Paul last Wednesday and he came up Saturday with the last of the non-EU deluxe rewards.

I’ve got to ship them this week.

Before my daughter’s birthday party on Saturday and then my parents visit for a week on Sunday.

We played a couple of prototypes 

that are improving too

We’ve also got an advisory board meeting Wednesday evening.

And the Rocky ‘Roid Gamefound campaign is only a couple of weeks away.

And the Expo is only 3 weeks away too.

Lots to do.

And not much time to do it.

Best crack on.

378%

The other day I saw a LinkedIn post about daily habits.

If you make 1% progress every day for a year you’ll make 377% progress!

There’s a rounding error. It’s actually 378%.

You’d think it was 365%, but the joys of compounding give you a little more.

At two years the compounding is even more pronounced. Instead of 730% you get 1,428%!

I’m only 150 days, less than half a year, into my daily games design habit - but I’m already feeling it.

I have multiple games on the go.

Making decent progress on them.

Playtesting loads

Some days it’s tiny progress. It can be a struggle to fit it in around FlickFleet shipping, Rocky ‘Roid prep and family commitments.

Others it’s huge.

Want to become good at something?

Do it every day.

Delays

We’ve had some (more) problems with the laser-cutter.

It’s cost Paul time while he worked around them.

He phoned the manufacturer. They’ve discontinued this model.

I’m not surprised. 

It was the ‘newer version’ of the one that caught fire.

Newer isn’t always better

The old one was pretty good up until the fire.

This one has been nothing but trouble.

I spent last week helping Paul with the shipping again.

Then met Paul again on Friday night to collect more stuff to ship this week.

Rocky ‘Roid is slipping as a result.

Still, we’re getting there. 

The end of the Xeno Wars campaign is in sight…

Ideas

After cancelling meeting Paul due to feeling rough the previous week, we met up last Wednesday.

It was an opportunity to exchange 20 more Gamefound orders for me to ship from Newcastle.

And a chance to catch up.

I also brought two prototypes.

Troll and Wizard.

Both codenames pending real names.

Troll was an idea I had several months ago.

It has been slowly taking shape in note form.

But I knew Paul was interested in the idea when I pitched it to him.

Wizard was 5 days old at this point and I’d already played it twice.

We played both games.

Paul had great ideas for both.

I’ve made a new prototype for Troll incorporating the changes.

Subtle changes!

I might not need to change the components for Wizard.

Both games are still Sharpie on blank cards.

Makes it really quick to iterate the design.

I will hopefully test the new Troll today at lunchtime games.

Reborn

I’m constantly amazed at the changes I’ve experienced since the worst of COVID.

Over two years I did almost no games design.

I struggled to think of changes for the one or two ideas I had.

No new ideas.

Since November I’ve been completely transformed.

New ideas. Rapid progress on existing ones.

Lots of spinning plates and progress being made on all of them.

Friday I was supposed to meet Paul to collect more stock to help him ship.

I’d felt rubbish all day and cancelled so I could get an early night instead.

A game mechanism came to me while feeling awful, sat in bed at 8pm.

By 9 I’d designed a game. And written enough notes to make a first prototype.

I slept really badly. Body aches and a blocked nose keeping me awake a large chunk of the night.

The next morning I felt awful.

This idea didn’t exist 24 hours before I finished the prototype!

But I managed to make a prototype that day.

Filthy cold and I still managed to get from first idea to prototype in 24 hours.

The next day I started soloing it in public, a bunch of kids came to watch. One joined in and played it to the end.

Despite it begin an early, broken version, they wanted to make their own copy. 

They were fighting over who got to play a second 4-player game (before their parents, sat nearby, whisked them off for lunch).

It has potential.

In the last few months I’ve committed to doing four things daily: meditate, walk outside, some basic bodyweight exercises, and games design.

Is the transformation down to one of those? Two of them? All of them together?

I daren’t stop any of them. This feels awesome. So productive.

I’m a game designer reborn.

Mornings

I’ve spent the last week in a big house in the country with the entirety of my clan.

Nineteen of us. Aged 14 months to 77 years.

I’m still waking up early.

I was up first every day.

I did my chain of daily habits.

Then turned to games design.

Evolving rapidly

I finished the first Codename:Troll prototype.

Soloed it a couple of times.

Found a bunch of things to change.

Made a new version.

Soloed that a couple of times. It’s better.

Made some changes to Siren.

Tried them out.

They showed some issues.

I need to figure out how to address them.

Feels good to be prototyping.

Finding flaws.

Making progress.

Make games design a daily habit has been amazing.

My progress this year is night and day from the last couple of COVID years.

I have more headspace though, without the worry of that hanging over me.

Progress

I spent last week shipping the Xeno Wars rewards that Paul had brought up last weekend.

And starting to flesh out the Rocky ‘Roid Gamefound page.

Very rough at the beginning!

And starting to create a first prototype of a new game.

Paul’s been down the laser-cutting mines.

We’re making good progress on a number  of fronts.

I’m on holiday this week though.

So not much from me.

I still want to do my daily game design though.

Some days it’s just making a couple of quick notes.

Some days it’s writing rules.

Or prototyping.

Or playtesting.

But the daily commitment means I’m making continual progress.

My output has been way higher as a result.

Which is really motivating.

Hoping to make a start on the next FlickFleet thing soon…