The last few weeks have been a whirlwind.
Pledge Manager to get live. Pledges to record in the accounts.
Playtesting and finalising rules for new bits.
Starting to work out what we have to deliver and ordering what we can now.
And on top of all of that, my day job went sideways and I needed to find a new one.
So lots of interviews and additional stress.
Thankfully I’ve now got an offer so that’s one less thing to worry about.
Going to take a couple of weeks off in between roles to relax (and finish the P&P pack and the rules and dashboard layout).
And breathe...
We’re a small company. Just Paul and me.
So we wear a lot of hats.
Hats that would be worn by trained professionals in a bigger company.
One of my hats says ‘Accountant’ on it. But I’m not an accountant.
Still I do all the bookkeeping.
When I ran Reiver Games I did cash accounting.
I hated it and often left it to the last minute. Months later I would be going through bank statements trying to work out where I’d gone wrong.
For Eurydice I do double entry. It’s more work. But so much better. There’s some error correction built in. You can easily see where everything is.
I quite enjoy it now.
Our books are usually up to date every day. I can check account balances at any point to make sure I’ve not made mistakes. Everything tallies.
The only time that isn’t true is now. During a Kickstarter we only get one payment (from KS), so it’s easy to record. During a big pledge manager we get over a hundred. And lots of those arrive the same day.
The books are slowly catching up. But they aren’t there yet. So I can’t check that they’re correct. Check I’ve not made any mistakes.
It’s weighing on me.
Paul and I work in shifts.
I do the Kickstarter page.
Then run the Kickstarter.
Then the pledge manager.
Then the graphic design and Print and Play files.
Then catch up on all the accounts and fill in the fulfilment spreadsheet.
Then the real work begins - Paul has hundreds of games and expansions to laser-cut, bag, box and post.
We’re still in the ‘Jack is very busy’ phase.
And now I need to find a new day job, pronto.
It’s been a distraction. Things have slipped.
Only by a few days, but I need to get back on track.
Hoping to have the Pledge Manager go live this week...
It’s mostly done.
Crafting a Kickstarter page is about design.
Make it look great.
Get the words right.
Hone everything.
Will it grab people’s attention?
Launch!
Then wait and watch it work. Or not. Or only just.
We’re now setting up the Pledge Manager.
It’s very different. A chore.
Setting up a web shop really.
Populating your store with wares.
And we have a lot of wares.
It takes an age, but I’m hoping to finish before the end of the week...
All is quiet.
We sit in the eye of the storm.
Kickstarter is a crazy time, comments to respond to. Ad reactions. Messages. Changes to the campaign.
It’s hard work. Even without the worry of funding or not, it’s stressful.
Evenings away from the family trying to keep up.
In a couple of weeks the Pledge Manager should be live on Gamefound.
It’ll be crazy again - loads of bookkeeping to do. Constantly evolving reward totals. Chasing the people who don’t complete it.
For now it’s all quiet. Just plugging away at the Gamefound page. Getting things ready.
A chance to recharge.
Our fourth Kickstarter finishes in just over 30 hours.
It’s been amazing.
Highest total by a country mile.
Highest backer count too.
We’ve unlocked six of the original eight Stretch Goals.
The seventh is very close.
At one point my (as it turns out wildly inaccurate) predictions spreadsheet had us nearing the point where we would have to register for VAT.
Kickstarters are a rollercoaster.
Less stressful than the first - where we very nearly failed.
But still, we’re small enough that we feel the joy of every new backer and the disappointment of every cancellation.
It’s nearly over.
A chance to relax and breathe.
The Pledge Manager will be right behind it though.
Busy, busy.
The Kickstarter is going really well.
On course to be our best ever again.
Things are shifting though.
Our plans are changing. Adapting. Responding to backer demand.
We hadn’t intended to reprint Expansion 1 or Box of Flicks 1.
But people want them.
So we’re changing our minds.
It’s keeping us busy.
But we made the decision for the right reasons.
And people seem to like that.
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
Feels good.
Iterated it twice this weekend!
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...
I’ve spent most of this week trawling the web, updating all instances of our logo with the new one:
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.
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...
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.
If you follow me on twitter you'll know I loathe everything about Brexit.
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.
I worry about overheads.
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.
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!
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