All Systems Go!

Our fourth Kickstarter launches tomorrow. Another mini one like last time.

In some ways this is the most prepared we’ve ever been.

Pre-launch ads. Well over 100 project followers before we begin. Facebook group and launch events. Shared with channels ahead of time. A landing page on our website.

Ready to go!

I’m confident we’ll fund this time. Last time we weren’t confident. Even with a £500 target.

In other ways we’re unprepared.

Our Kickstarter project was initially rejected. Paul and I haven’t met in person for months.

Tomorrow we find out if we’re right to be confident...

First Time!

In the Lego Batman sense.

We submitted our latest Kickstarter for review a couple of weeks ago.

Nice and early so we would have a pre-launch page to share.

And to see if we got more sign-ups to that than our mailing list on the landing page.

Kickstarter rejected it.

Nothing new they said.

It’s a whole box full of brand new stuff.

We can appeal. Exactly once.

It was half-done anyway.

So we’ve made a load of changes.

Hopefully it’ll pass this time - we’re hoping to go live a week tomorrow...

Community

The designer of our new logo asked Paul and I for words that described the company to us.

Community was one of the ones we chose. 

So the hands in our new logo represent our community - cheering us on, supporting us and hopefully excited for what we’re working on.

This week has really brought home to me how important that community is to us.

Paul and I are working on the next Kickstarter, featuring a load of new ships and scenery items. Many have been proposed by fans of the game.

Matt Yeager, designer of the gunboats in our last campaign, has started a meta-game tracking multiple players' games blending the results into a map that shows The Uprising’s attempt to claim a sector.

The battle for Phoenix Sector has begun!

And we’ve formed a FlickFleet Facebook group at the request of some fans. 

It’s pretty small and quiet at the moment, but hopefully it’ll grow as more people get into the game.

Designing

We’re almost two months into our third COVID-19 lockdown.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Vaccinations are going well.

Kids go back to school in a week.

It’s been tough. But lots of people have had it worse.

I’ve got a family in the house with me. Weekly online Games Nights. Zoom calls with my extended family.

Could be a lot worse.

My mental health has seemed ok. 

My mood is usually good, I’m not drinking too much or sleeping worse than usual.

But I’ve not had the headspace for designing.

Not helped by the lack of playtesting opportunities.

I’m finally back at it though. Making progress on a design. Enthused again.

Something new.

Feels good.

Iterated it twice this weekend!

Learning

I've mentioned before that my graphic design skills are weak.

They are.

Our first Kickstarter looked terrible.

The second looked bad.

The third looked poor.

I'm working on number four now. 

Coming next month.

It's an improvement. 

Not earth-shattering, but better.

Baby steps.

Small steps forward compound over time.

Or so I hope...

Meaning

I’ve spent most of this week trawling the web, updating all instances of our logo with the new one:

Much more professional!

After back and forth with the designer, we settled on “Fast, fun Craft Games” as what we do. 

It sums us up perfectly: Craft Games, like Craft Beer is indie, small runs, made by hand.

The logo captures the fun nature of our games and the support of our community.

It can be white or dark.

And the community hands can be swapped out for other things, allowing us to tweak it for particular themes, holidays or other reasons.

While keeping something recognisable.

It also leans in to the way most people pronounce Eurydice (Eury-Dice).

When it was suggested here as a name long ago I liked that it incorporated Dice and something a bit like Euro. 

Both strong gaming words.

Paul and I are really happy with it.

First Time

Marketing is not my forte.

I’m still learning a lot.

Doing things for the first time.

Badly.

But I learn.

And slowly, I hope to get better.

We’re running ads ahead of our next Kickstarter for the first time.

Pointing to our first ever dedicated landing page.

Needs work

It’s not very good.

So I’ll improve it.

Expectations are low for this Kickstarter again.

So we can use it as a learning opportunity.

And hopefully get better.

For the next one...

Brand

We're looking to get our website overhauled.

It needs some love. I've kludged it together using raw HTML (and a little Javascript).

It's weak.

We found a designer we liked. 

Can't afford him yet, but he wanted to rebrand us first.

New logo. New colour scheme. New look.

We need it. 

Homemade. And it shows.

I kludged our logo together too. With help from my dad.

The colour scheme is essentially the same as Reiver Games. 

He presented his ideas to us this week. 

Paul and I have been thinking about them, tweaking a couple of things.

I've also mocked up a quick re-brand of the website.

Looks much better already  - though it still needs a chunk of work.

Trello

Towards the end of last year I lost my way.

Went off the boil a bit.

Slowed down.

Missed things.

I used to use Trello and Evernote to organise myself. Then I switched to Notion. Then I kind of gave up on that.

I need to get organised

I’ve gone back to Trello.

I’m tracking things I need to do.

To move Eurydice forwards. To better things.

I’m making good progress again.

Brexit

If you follow me on twitter you'll know I loathe everything about Brexit.

A monumental act of self-harm

From the nationalist lies that sold it to the voters to the terrible effect it's had on my European friends in the UK.

It'll make us culturally and financially poorer as a country.

It limits my daughters' rights to experience other countries.

And now it's biting Eurydice Games.

We buy our wooden pieces from a supplier in Germany. 

They are no longer shipping to the UK.

Will they in future? I hope so. I don't know of an equivalent in the UK.

It's also harder for us to ship to European customers. They may end up getting charged VAT or import fees.

Everything about it sucks.

I only hope that we get to rejoin before too much damage is done.

I fear I'm hopelessly optimistic.

Overheads

I worry about overheads.

There's something hanging over me.

Those costs you pay every month regardless of sales.

They sank my first company, Reiver Games, as the bank loan repayments and warehousing costs were bigger than sales most months.

So I worry about them.

Ours have increased.

We're lucky that we don't pay salary or rent. 

So ours are very low.

But still.

If we're not actively fulfilling a Kickstarter, our overheads are now often larger than profits, and sometimes even sales. 

There are two types, those that affect profits only (like depreciation and homeworking allowances) and those that affect profits and cash (like bank account fees and software subscriptions).

The latter are the worst.

We need to keep them down.

Or increase sales.

Happy New Year!

We sincerely wish you all a far better 2021 than 2020, and hope you get to return to something like normal fairly soon.

I'm taking a couple of weeks off to relax with my family, normal service will return next week!

Competition

Last week I mentioned the possibility of a new mini-Kickstarter like the one we ran during the summer.

We've had a load of cool ideas created by fans of the game and we'd like to include some of those.

But we're conscious of the fact we don't want to rip people off.

So we have an idea.

A competition of sorts.

If we do the mini-Kickstarter we'll include some of our ideas and some fan ideas.

If your fan idea is included (either as part of the main rewards, an unlocked stretch goal or offered afterwards in the pledge manager), you win:

• A designer credit
• A £65 royalty paid via PayPal
• A free copy of your idea, professionally printed and laser-cut by us.

For each one of your ideas we include. (Ideas should be about the size of 1 or 2 add-ons from the previous Kickstarter).

Matt's gunboat concept (picture by Matt Yeager)

For the record, Matt Yeager who contributed the Gunboats idea to the summer's Kickstarter also got the reward retrospectively.

And the reason we picked £65 is because had we paid Matt a 5% royalty on sales of the Gunboats (fairly standard in the business), he would have got £66.50 or thereabouts.

Payments will be made when the Pledge Manager closes. We reserve the right to tweak the ideas when we playtest them.

Entries close at midnight UK time on 31st January 2021. Submit your ideas via email to jack at eurydicegames dot co dot uk.

More?

Paul and I have great plans for our next FlickFleet Kickstarter.

A stand-alone expansion that can be played on its own with two players, or together with the base game for up to four players.

Alien species with new weapons and abilities.

Investing some of our cash in a nicer video, advertising and graphic design.

But it’s not ready yet. And we can’t meet to test our ideas. Until COVID-19 starts to subside.

We’ve got a bunch of ideas for more human ships though. And mini-expansions with some new rules.

Revenge of the mini-Kickstarter?

We’re considering sneaking in another mini-Kickstarter, like the summer’s, with that content.

I wonder if there’s any interest.

I’ll ask in our next newsletter...

Solo

I love games. Playing them. Designing them. Playtesting them. Doing their graphic design.

But I hate playing them on my own. I very rarely play game apps against the AI. I don’t solo games in my collection. And I hate playtesting games pretending to be multiple players.

For me the fun comes from testing yourself against other humans within the framework of the rules, and the social aspect of a shared experience.

So COVID-19 enforced social distancing has been really tough on my game design productivity.

All by myself

The publisher of my signed game wants a solo mode added to it. Seeing as I can’t test the multiplayer improvements, it seems only fair that I work on the solo mode.

This is a first for me. Something I have no experience of as a player either.

Surprisingly, I’ve been quite enjoying it. Trying to make it feel like the multiplayer game. Get the same experience, despite the lack of human/human interactions.

It’s getting there... 

Dividend

My first board publishing company started strong, but ended up a financial disaster. 

I lost my initial ‘investment’ and 1/3 of the Life Insurance money I put in when I tried to go pro.

I started another. Some people never learn.

This one is going much better.

Thanks to Kickstarter and the popularity of FlickFleet, Eurydice is doing much better than Reiver Games ever did.

After the last Kickstarter we had enough cash in the company that I could withdraw my initial investment.

And now Paul and I are taking a small dividend.

Which game's money are we paying ourselves in?

We’re profitable because we don’t pay ourselves salaries for the many hours we work in our evenings and weekends.

We’ve earned a modest payout.

This one is doing much better.

Maybe I have learned something...

 

Done

Paul shipped the final rewards for our third Kickstarter on Friday.

One month early.

Paul and his family have their living room back.

All gone now.

Some of it shipped late due to COVID-19 related acrylic shortages.

But it's done now.

Now we can focus on what comes next.

We've a few games in the pipeline.

None of them ready yet.

They need playtesting.

But I can't meet anyone. And I hate solo-ing games.

This is the hard bit. I've been keeping busy until now with the books. And the accountants. And Kickstarter. And the website. And the marketing.

Now I need to focus. 

And do the thing I hate.

I can't wait to be able to playtest in the flesh again.

Independent

If I had to describe Eurydice Games in a word it would be Independent. Not in the Indie sense. Though we're that too.

Independent in the sense we do everything ourselves.

Self reliant. To a fault.

Not because I'm a control freak (though I probably am). But because it's free. In money, if not in time. And we started with very little money.

It opens doors. 

We design the games ourselves. No royalties.

Paul makes the games by hand in his garage. It means we can do small runs: 200-400 copies. Which costs a lot less than the 1,000 minimum order of your standard Chinese factory.

And ships them himself. So no freight and fulfilment charges.

I do the website. And the graphic design. And the marketing. And the social media. And the bookkeeping. So no contractor fees.

But things are getting missed. 

Due to lack of time. We have jobs. And families. 

And now we have some money.

Independent doesn't scale.

Time to lose control.

Letting Go

I'm a tolerable graphic designer. Or passable maybe. Adequate.

I really enjoy doing it, but I don't have a flair for it.

Until now, to keep costs down, I've done it all myself.

The website.

C-

The game boxes. The rules. The cards.

But it's homemade. And it looks it.

Thanks to the success of our last kickstarter we've finally got some cash in the bank.

We're thinking of investing it in some professional graphic design.

Make the website and the games look much better.

They really need it.

I'll miss it though.

Website

We need to up our game to be more successful.

One part of that is more website sales.

Our website is largely based on my previous game company’s one. It’s pretty dated.

A bit 00s!

I’ve created it by hand using HTML and a little bit of JavaScript.

Like the last one it had PayPal buttons for payment. Again pretty dated.

As part of a larger effort to create a better website, I’ve integrated card-based payment using Stripe as the (default) option. And done some re-design.

It’s still using a button per product though - no shopping cart. But it looks much nicer.

And the processing fees are cheaper.

We had our first Stripe sale last week. It works!

It’s a first step.

Next we need to completely overhaul our website so it doesn't look so homemade. And dated.