Busy

It’s been a week.

Daughter the Second turned five.

So we decorated the house.

And then did everything for her party on Saturday.

On top of that, it’s the Expo this weekend.

We need to get everything ready for that. 

Including the review copies of Xeno Wars.

I’ve been flat out.

The Xeno Wars artwork is now with the printer.

Just got a couple of things left to do: send the newsletter and create our Zettle shop.

Then it’s off to the Expo.

It's hard work!

Our first time exhibiting.

It’s exhausting.

I remember from my Reiver Games days.

Long days.

On your feet.

Enthusiastic and interacting with people constantly.

Next Monday I have the day off.

With two young kids - both schools are shut.

Might not be the day of recuperation I’ll need!

Competition

We're running a competition at the UK Game Expo.

How many fighters can you destroy in 5 turns?

Each turn you can move and/or fire three times.

Move first or fire first. Your choice.

If your ship leaves the mat, your entry is over.

If a die leaves the mat it deals no damage.

If you collide with an asteroid or fighter that's the end of your turn. And you take damage from asteroids.

It'll be running for the first and last hour of every day.

Highest score at the end of the show wins all four deluxe boxes worth £220.

Ties will be broken by random number generator.

You're only allowed one entry per hour slot. First entries will be prioritised over repeat entrants.

It'll look like this!

Not going to the Expo? If you have the game and expansion 1 you can play along at home. You won't be able to enter the competition, but we'd love to see your scores! 

Expo

The UK Games Expo has been in the news this week for dropping its mask and vaccination requirements.

Three weeks before it starts.

We’re going though.

Our first con!

It’s our first ever convention.

It’s exciting.

And expensive.

We need to buy loads of things, on top of the cost of the stand.

Paul and I are working on those.

The Xeno Wars Gamefound campaign is slipping as a result.

At least a lot of stuff will be re-usable for our next convention.

I’ve not exhibited since 2009 I think.

Will be interesting to see how things have changed.

And how well FlickFleet will do at a convention.

We'll have loads of stock with us of FlickFleet, the Scenery and Scenario Pack, Box of Flicks 1 and Box of Flicks 2.

Plus we'll be running a competition where you can win a deluxe copy of all four of those.

That's £220 RRP!

Retail

We make small print runs.

On a laser-cutter.

In Paul’s garage.

Retail is out of reach.

We don’t have the margins to sell to distributors.

Or the large number of items ready to go.

Or shrink-wrap.

Or large, mostly empty, retail-focused boxes.

But we are carried in a local chain of comics and games shops.

And another store saw an ad and offered us a demo day.

Paul went down on Saturday.

He played a lot of FlickFleet. 

Sold a few copies. And they took some more for stock.

We have another retailer:

Geek Retreat Leicester

Review

We’re nearing review copy readiness.

It’s an exciting time.

We get ‘real-ish’ copies of the game for photography and then send them to reviewers.

Will they like it?

Hate it?

Don’t end up like this!

The playtesters have had ‘a lot of fun’ with it.

Now we need the reviewers to enjoy it too.

But that’s their call. Not ours.

We don’t do paid previews - just send a copy for an honest review.

We’re on tenterhooks.

Pressure

Now I’m back from holiday I need to finalise Xeno Wars so I can finish the rulebook, print some review copies and post them. 

Our playtesters have had some fantastic ideas that take Xeno Wars and build on the new species. 

I need to playtest those and make a final decision on which ones we want to add in. 

Playtesting time is tricky. 

I got loads in on holiday but none since. 

In an ideal world Paul and I would test it together. 

But we live 100 miles apart. 

And I work full-time. 

And now Paul has COVID again. 

The final rulebook is the blocker for almost everything that comes next. 

To be honest, we can tweak it in the next couple of months, but we want the review copies to be as good as possible. 

I’d like to run the Gamefound in early June - just after the Expo. 

That doesn’t leave long for making review copies, posting them and reviewing. 

I feel the clock ticking.

 

Photo by Sonja Langford on Unsplash

Density

I’ve spent the last week in Shropshire with the entirety of my family.

Was great to see them all - we’ve not seen much of them for a couple of years.

The kids were delighted to spend time with all their cousins.

It was great to meet my youngest nephew.

I took a bag of games of course.

We played a couple of games of Outfoxed with the younger kids.

Century Golem Edition with the older ones.

And a lot of FlickFleet: Xeno Wars. A lot.

This kitchen island saw a lot of FlickFleet action!

It was great to really thrash Xeno Wars - trying out a few of the playtesters ideas and getting in a bunch of multiplayer games.

Then when I got back my next door neighbour came round for a Star Wars Rebellion rematch.

It’s been a gaming-dense week :)

Holiday

I’m staying in a big house in the country this week with all my family.

A view that isn’t houses

19 of us!

Ranging in age from 6 weeks to almost 77 years.

Should be a great break.

I’ve brought loads of games.

Might even do some playtesting.

Normal service resumes next week.

Perspective

A month ago we sent five copies of FlickFleet: Xeno Wars for blind playtesting.

It’s a scary time.

And an exciting one.

Will they like it? Is it any good? Am I rubbish at this games design lark?

Like an adult child leaving home, it's time for it to develop its personality away from the watchful stare of its parents.

The playtesters are providing feedback now they’ve got it.

It’s fun. The aliens are fun to play.

And they have ideas to make it better still.

Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

A fresh perspective.

We’re grateful.

Isolation

With COVID sweeping through our house we’ve been housebound again.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Feels a lot like the first lockdown of 2020. 

Though thankfully much shorter.

I’ve not left the house since last Saturday. 

Nine days. Tomorrow I might finally be allowed out.

I had last week off work too, a combination of sick leave at the beginning and then having to homeschool the girls while they isolated and The Wife was sick.

The girls are back at school now.

The Wife is feeling better.

At least we all had mild cases.

And it didn’t get in the way of our family holiday in a couple of weeks.

My parents have it too this week. They seem to be weathering it well too.

I’m thankful.

COVID

Two whole years of a pandemic badly mismanaged by our government.

We’ve been careful, but not extremely so.

Especially at the beginning when there was little information, lots of fear, and I was classified as highly vulnerable because of my MS.

And we’ve dodged it, again and again. Despite two young kids in two different schools.

Until now.

On Thursday, Daughter the Second was sent home from school early with a fever.

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

A PCR test confirmed COVID the next morning.

I think it’s inevitable that we all get it, even triply vaccinated as The Wife and I are.

I felt pretty rubbish over the weekend. And got a positive result this morning.

Still managed to make some progress on the Gamefound page on the weekend though.

It’s getting there.

Spending most of today in bed again though.

Hey! Over Here!

This week I’ve been fighting with adverts.

Advertising makes me really uncomfortable.

Weaponising attention.

Photo by Ｋｕｃｈｉｈｉｇｅ Ｓａｂｏｔｅｎ on Unsplash

Then I read “advertising is the act of introducing your product to the people who would want to buy it if they knew about it”.

Advertising now makes me slightly less uncomfortable.

But needs must. We’re now paying Paul’s salary.

Every month when we’re not fulfilling a Kickstarter we’re losing money. That’s not sustainable.

We have a great product in FlickFleet.

And it’s very popular with the few people who know about it.

So how do we get it in front of more people who would love it if they knew about it?

I’ve been fighting with Facebook and briefly Twitter ads this week.

Trying to tweak things to boost their success.

All my changes make things worse.

The ads are barely covering their cost.

I need to up my game.

A lot.

Threshold

It's a momentous occasion when you first post a game.

Whether for playtesting, review or a sale.

You are putting yourself out there. 

What has been under wraps is now public.

It might be well received and you'll bask in the glow of positive feedback.

Or it might not. And you have to weather the storm.

Exciting times...

About to cross the threshold

This weekend we've sent four out of five playtest copies of FlickFleet: Xeno Wars.

I hope the feedback is positive, but if not, it's not too late to make changes.

New Home

We've run four Kickstarters for FlickFleet and its expansions.

Kickstarter recently announced a move to Blockchain that annoyed a lot of people including us while providing no sensible justification and no benefits for creators or backers.

So we're looking for a new home, starting with Xeno Wars this summer.

We've used Gamefound for all three of the pledge managers we've run.

They've started doing crowdfunding too, but are in beta.

Moving to them would streamline the process for us (and for our backers).

We've got access :)

I've started on the campaign this week.

It's not without risk though.

Kickstarter brings a lot of backers and marketing clout.

Plus it's much better known for new backers.

How much of a hit will we take for making the switch?

I don't think we'll ever know.

Visualise

I use Trello to organise all the tasks I have to do for Eurydice Games.

This year I’ve added a new column for quarterly objectives.

And put a 3 year goal at the top of that column.

I’ve used the cover feature to add a picture to that card:

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

The picture calls to me.

I love hiking up hills. Though I haven’t done it much since the kids were born.

The photo spurs me on. It calls to me. 

Every single day.

I want to climb that hill. Reach the top. See the view.

Amazing what a great photo can do.

So far this year I’ve been incredibly productive. 

Far more than recent years - more than I expected.

Related?

One Hour

I have a full-time job.

And a young family.

Time is tight.

Since Christmas we've settled into a rhythm where I have an hour a day to work on Eurydice Games.

After work we eat.

Then I do my chores.

Then it's bedtime for the kids and I usually do Daughter the Second's.

Then I have an hour to myself while The Wife does Daughter the First's.

One hour a day. Every day.

Though I often do more after the kids are asleep.

It's amazing what you can achieve if you apply yourself consistently.

I've mostly been focussed on Xeno Wars for the last month.

Playtesting. Graphic design. Preparing for prototypes.

I've now got a lot of what I need.

As long as you're using the time wisely, a little everyday soon compounds.

Genesis

Xeno Wars is a strange game design process.

We’re essentially designing new ships for an existing game, not starting from scratch.

Like the expansion and the two boxes of flicks before.

The expansion we tested in real life with friends.

The boxes of flicks were COVID-creations. And they changed a lot in flight as things were unlocked.

With this we’re trying to be a lot more organised. It has to work with FlickFleet, but also on its own.

And COVID is still a big problem here, I’m mostly testing solo.

This week has been about it taking shape.

I’ve cobbled together multiple copies of the ships, raiding my bits box for parts.

Box of Delights

Starting testing larger battles rather than just individual ships.

Looking into making a bunch of prototypes for testing elsewhere.

Getting orders together for bits and dice. Writing the rulebook.

Current challenge is our dice supplier’s minimum order changing from £50 to £750! 

Trying to workaround that now…

Design

We’re a company of two. We wear a lot of hats.

Paul is manufacturing and fulfilment. And stock management.

I’m sales and marketing. Graphic design and finance.

This week has flexed all of those skills.

A different look!

I’ve been doing a first cut of Xeno Wars dashboards for playtesting copies.

Writing the new rulebook too.

I’ve finally finished the 3D printing packs - so they are now up and we’re going to run some ads too.

And the last piece of the puzzle is end of the month bookkeeping.

I really enjoy the graphic design (though I do not have a flair for it).

It’s been a fun week.

Less fun for Paul though. He’s finally had his surgery, but the recovery is slower than he was expecting :(

Productivity

My games design streak ended on Friday after 22 days.

Achieving a 22-day streak would have been inconceivable last year or the year before.

Or probably any previous year since Reiver Games shut down.

I’ve started another now.

The productivity is spilling over.

I’ve got loads of Eurydice stuff done, not related to games design.

I’ve even been cranking through home chores on the weekends too.

We’re back in business

And our new laser-cutter arrived, so once Paul’s recovered from his surgery he can finish the Kickstarter fulfilment.

All systems go!

Pace

My game design languished during 2020.

The only other person I could playtest with was seven years old.

I hate solo playtesting.

Everything slowed to a crawl.

The pandemic robbed me of my headspace.

(Still, I was lucky that was all)

Towards the end of last year things picked up.

I was was able to host some playtesting nights.

I started making progress on a few games.

This year I’m trying to do some game design every day.

Coupled with a Roll & Write design that I can quickly iterate and share with playtesters, my pace has dramatically improved.

Cycle time is very short

I’m even solo playtesting FlickFleet: Xeno Wars to try to balance the ships and make sure they are fun.

I’m loving the productivity. The daily progress. The incremental gains.

Streak

Over Christmas I had an idea for a Roll & Write game.

I’m trying to do a little game design every day this year.

I’m on a 11-day streak so far.

The player sheet is taking shape

It’s coming along really well.

Already out with playtesters.

Getting useful feedback.

I’ve also been hard at work on 3D printing files for FlickFleet.

The game, expansion 1 and Box of Flicks 1 are all done.

Box of Flicks 2 is a big job, but I’ve started!

2022

And I still don't have a flying car or jetpack. How the 80s lied to me.

The start of another year usually brings resolutions. Or goals.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

I prefer to work on habits.

What behaviours can I make habitual this year?

Habits take less effort (once formed).

Habits compound over time.

I need to make game design progress a habit.

Every week.

Solid progress.

Let's go!

Pause

We managed to get away.

After a 40,000 mile drive, we arrived in Bristol yesterday evening.

We have a couple of days with the in-laws and a couple of days with my full clan.

I might play some games.

I might just chill.

Hope you’re all enjoying the holidays.

The Wave

Omicron is breaking on our shores.

We plan to go to Bristol for Christmas to visit our families.

But my parents are in their 70s and my dad was shielding last year due to an auto-immune disease.

I'm really uncomfortable going, but they are really keen seeing as we missed last year.

We can take precautions of course. But they're not fool-proof.

And omicron is huge and spreading rapidly.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai

Of course, it might all get taken out of our hands.

Omicron is spreading so rapidly it will inevitably overwhelm hospitals and cause severe staff-shortages across key services - see the recent Major Incident declared in London.

We will need to tighten restrictions to minimise that.

I doubt our PM has the guts to do it before Christmas, though it might well happen soon afterwards.

We're supposed to be travelling on the 26th and meeting up on the 28th and 29th.

It might be illegal by then.

At least we had Fauxmas with Paul's family last week...

Fauxmas!

A couple of years ago my family and Paul’s family got together near Christmas.

So we had a fake Christmas: Fauxmas!

With presents and food and games.

We missed it last year because of COVID.

This year we did it again.

There was much playtesting.

All hands! Repel boarders!

Things are coming together nicely :)

Six

A week or so ago we asked for some free support from a bank of over 200 experienced business owners.

I hoped we might get one or two takers.

Paul didn’t expect any.

I found out this week that six people volunteered.

Six!

We now need to review them and see which ones we’d like to work with.

This is awesome. 

Dreams

Sometimes...

I dare to dream.

Eurydice Games is going so well.

Much better than last time.

It even employs Paul (on a small part-time salary).

How far can we go?

I need to remember last time.

Jumping off the deep end.

Living two years without a salary.

Losing a bunch of my 'investment'.

I must learn from my mistakes...

Guidance

When I started Eurydice Games I tried to set up a Advisory Board.

Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on Unsplash

Friends with relevant experience.

People who would hold us accountable and give us ideas and support.

It slowly died out.

A couple of months ago I found out about The Experience Bank.

Experienced business leaders from the North-East of England who want to give back.

Free business advice.

From successful business owners.

Last week I finally got round to creating a request.

We’ll see if we get any takers…

Lasers

Our laser cutter caught fire two weeks ago.

Our supplier had two in stock and could install in early December.

It took us a few days to consider some funding options. 

Look at a few alternatives.

By Friday we were ready to place an order.

But in those few days the lead time had gone from early December to mid-January - they’d sold their last stock.

I spent the weekend looking at more alternatives.

They had a bigger, more expensive model in stock - it was too big.

We considered other suppliers.

They didn’t have it in stock either.

We considered other machines.

Then we settled on a like-for-like replacement.

And mid-January.

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

At least Paul will be able to get up to speed quickly with it.

Setbacks

The week before last week everything was rosy.

Fulfilment was back on track.

I was enjoying game design and making progress.

This last week has taken a toll.

I found a discrepancy in the books and spent my evenings cross-checking three different spreadsheets to try to track it down.

No games design progress.

And then laser-cutter caught fire and was destroyed. 

An acrylic fire destroyed the internals

Paul, his family and his house are all fine, but fulfilment is stalled while we source a replacement and set it up.

Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.

Enthused

Paul slaves like Vulcan/Hephaestus over the laser-cutter.

Churning out Kickstarter rewards.

For the first time we have paid him!

Meanwhile, 100 miles to the north I am deep in InDesign.

Updating prototypes.

Tweaking them.

Trying new things.

Progress is being made.

The last Kickstarter deluxe rewards go out today. 

Then there’s another 76 standards to follow. 

I’m testing, updating and iterating three designs.

Coalescence is coming along

After the long, dark tea-time of the Pandemic it finally feels like I’m flying again.

Firing on all cylinders.

This posts has been one long mixed metaphor.