2023!

I hope all of you that celebrate it had a fantastic Christmas.

2023 is on the horizon.

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

As a lad who grew up in the seventies it sounds very futuristic.

Looking forward to my flying car.

In all seriousness I'm really looking forward to 2023.

I have so many game ideas buzzing in my head now.

After some very slow years.

COVID and the job I wasn't enjoying sucked all the creative headspace out of me.

I've found my mojo again.

Hopefully I can get some of these ideas completed.

Fingers crossed!

Four

I'm actively working on four games.

Rocky 'Roid is with playtesters awaiting feedback.

Siren Song I've tried a couple of times solo. I'm making notes and I'm almost ready to update the prototype.

Border Reivers has a page of notes.

And I'm doing the Scenario Booklet for FlickFleet.

I'm loving this burst of creativity.

Really enjoying the designing and prototyping of games.

Paul gave me a 10x10 game tracker he'd made me for Christmas.

I'm using it to track prototype plays.

Plenty of space at the bottom!

Too much of my time over the last few years has been swallowed by running the business.

And trying to stay sane during COVID.

Creativity

Following some advice I got via Daniel Pink I’ve started a chain.

Just trying to keep a streak going of things that are important to me.

Game design. Exercise. Physio for my leg that is weakened by my MS. Meditation.

I've managed nine days so far.

And it’s been amazing.

I’ve made a new version of Rocky ‘Roid and sent it out to playtesters.

Written a load of notes for a second edition of Border Reivers.

Come up with a new idea for a game about sirens and Ancient Greek sailors.

And made notes.

And a quick hand-drawn prototype.

And played it at Paul’s this weekend.

And come up with ideas for a new version.

I haven’t been this creative in years.

Something about it is working for me!

Finished

National Game Design Month is over. 

The first half was great - loads of progress and fast iterations. 

After Paul’s mini-convention I stalled. 

There was urgent Eurydice work to be done. 

Plus the feedback I received at the convention has left me struggling to find a next step. 

I have ideas. Thoughts. Notes. 

Nothing concrete to implement though. 

On the plus side, I’ve made loads of progress on it this month. 

First since January. 

Now I need to unblock the market. 

TGWAG was disappointing this year. 

In previous years I’ve had many players who were quite engaged. 

Only two this year. 

Mal won it. 

I’m working on a prize for him now…

TGWAG: Final Week

I'm still looking for playtesters and feedback on my roll & write design.

It's come on a lot this month! 

As part of National Games Design Month I've been running The Game Within A Game (TGWAG).

In previous years we've had several entrants and some competition for the prize.

This year it's only been two.

There's still time to be in with a chance to win the prize!

In the meantime, I need to evolve the scoring.

I'd appreciate any feedback and ideas on it.

Name	Rank	PIPs
Mal	Recycling Pipework Technician's Mate	3
Kylef	Recycling Pipework Technician's Mate	2

Stalled

I made good progress on the roll and write (Rocky ’Roid?) up until last weekend.

Can I unblock and get one last iteration out?

Over the weekend I played three games.

Two with other designers. One with a roll and write fan.

I got a lot of feedback.

I made rapid changes, improving things as I went.

Afterwards, I saw some opportunities to improve things further.

Even started updating the player sheet.

But I’ve stalled.

I know what I need to do: simplify the scoring.

But keep the interaction.

And some variability between games.

Plus there’s Gamefound fulfilment stuff to do.

Which is urgent.

I need to unblock.

Get moving again.

Only four days left in NaGa DeMon…

Gaming

Paul organised a mini-convention this weekend.

In deepest, darkest Yorkshire.

Him and 20-odd of his friends including me.

I knew a couple of them beforehand, but they were all lovely.

I played a lot of games.

Many for the first time.

But even with the prospect of 48 hours of gaming (and optionally some sleep!), I found myself gravitating to shorter games.

I don’t play long games any more as ‘I don’t have the time’.

I think I need to change that.

I just prefer shorter games now.

I also playtested the roll and write with a couple of other designers and a roll and write fan.

Evolving again!

Got some useful feedback.

We completely changed endgame scoring. Twice.

And it’s better for it.

New version coming soon…

Theme II

The game boxes have arrived at Paul’s.

1,425 of them.

His house is rammed.

The focus now must be shipping rewards and clearing some space!

Since Wednesday’s playtest I’ve done nothing with the Roll & Write (Ursa Miner?)

But Mal’s name suggestion has given me ideas.

A slightly different theme is taking shape in my brain.

It’s percolating.

Meanwhile I’ve been going back to my roots.

Writing a little app to convert the Gamefound fulfilment spreadsheet into our fulfilment spreadsheet.

I used to do it by hand.

Silly really.

This will take some time, but save a lot.

Even more in the long run.

Now the boxes have arrived, Paul needs it now though.

Roll & Write will have to wait!

The TGWAG scores at the end of week 2 are:

Name	Rank	PIPs
Mal	Recycling Pipework Technician's Mate	3
Kylef	Recycling Pipework Technician's Mate	2

Theme

Mal mentioned during last night's playtest that I've not mentioned the Roll & Write's theme on the blog.

We played three 3-player games

There's a reason for that.

The lack of a name is probably related to it.

The game works mechanically.

There's a lot of room for improvement, but in essence it works.

There's decisions to make.

A race of sorts, to collect resources before time runs out.

A few little decisions every turn: which dice? which direction? which distance? which resource to collect?

And one big one: do I have enough resources yet to profit more than my competitors?

Then scoring.

And more small decisions. 

Which trade to make? Shall I pass and the risk of an opponent blocking a future move? Or take the guaranteed lesser pay-out now?

The current theme is weak.

Interstellar prospectors. Collecting bounty for the Galactic Overlords.

It might change. 

I've not really used the theme to drive the mechanisms yet.

Because I'm not wedded to it.

Any ideas?

Test

The Wife is away.

I'm busier than usual.

Doing all the housework and parenting.

But also less busy.

I've no-one to hang out with once the kids are asleep.

So I've been making progress again.

New maps!

We now have five different map ideas. All drafted and included in the download.

I've still only tested the first one.

Hopefully getting some more testing in on Wednesday...

Variety

I want the roll and write to have some variety of set-up.

The players share the dice each turn. So could always choose the same options.

So I want to encourage variety between players.

Plus try to make the game less samey, so repeated plays play out differently.

Each players gets different starting resources.

And you can choose one Overlord per player from a set of six. 

So there’s some variability with fewer the six players there.

But I want more.

So each player individually modifies their maps before you begin.

But I want more.

Two different maps now!

So multiple maps, with different special rules.

I came up with a bunch of map ideas.

Now I need to draft them and include in the download.

I’ve done two so far.

The Wife is away for a few days this week. I’ll work on this in the evenings, once I’ve got the girls to sleep…

And in other news, we've got our first taker for TGWAG!

Current leaderboard (it's a bit empty - why not join in?):

Name	Rank	PIPs
Kylef	Recycling Technician's Mate	2

Play

I've played it for the first time.

Well, not the first time. But the first time with friends.

My previous plays were with myself. As fake other players.

I hate that.

But we played a 3-player game last night.

It worked.

There were some clunky bits though. And rules we never used at all.

Streamline.

I've made changes.

Hopefully they'll improve things.

But they might not.

I need to test it again.

Or some help from others to test the new version.

I've got some other ideas to try too.

But one thing at a time.

Version 0.3 is available for download.

Evolution

It's only the second of the month and I already have an update!

There's a whole new version available here.

I've changed a few things.

Simplified set-up a lot.

Added a bit more variation between players to encourage players to take different paths.

Tomorrow I have a Games Night at my house.

We very rarely play my prototypes at Games Night.

I usually hold a separate playtesting night.

I might ask my chums to indulge me tomorrow - see if we can try out the Roll & Write and the new version of Coalescence.

National Game Design Month off to a great start.

Only slight disappointment is that we don't have any TGWAG players this year.

It's been several years since I last did it, but we had several players back in those days.

Maybe I'll just end up playing by myself.

It still might work to keep me making progress...

TGWAG: The Beginning

The Game Within a Game.

All you have to do is help me out with the design of my Roll & Write during the month of November.

You can read the rules. Playtest the game. Ask questions. Give advice. Leave comments (here on the blog please). Come up with a name.

I will take all that feedback and iterate the game as quickly as I can.

And I will give out Pointless Internet Points.

For any help provided.

Players will be ranked by their points.

At the end there'll be a (sur)prize for the highest PIP total.

But we need to start at the beginning.

Here's where we start: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pS7Uz04T1lvYy456W7O2juhTQfa6p8KR/view?usp=share_link

This zip file includes the rules and the player sheets as they are at the start of the month.

The player sheet

I've already got some ideas from previous playtester feedback.

Make the set-up far simpler. Maybe fixed Overlord demands, with different 'games' with different demands. And a different map for each 'game'.

Let me know your thoughts and I'll take it from here.

The PIP ranks for this game are:

Rank	PIPs
Overlord	46-50
Vizier	41-45
Prospector Captain	36-40
Surveyor 1st Class	31-35
Assistant Surveyor	26-30
Scanner Operator	21-25
Sensor Technician	16-20
Sensor Cleaner	11-15
Recycling Pipework Technician	6-10
Recycling Pipework Technician's Mate	1-5

TGWAG

Years ago, before I started Eurydice Games I took part in NaGa DeMon a few times.

That’s National Game Design Month.

In November.

Zombology was born that way.

In the last couple of years I’ve really struggled with game design.

COVID hasn’t helped.

But a full-time job, young family and running a company in my spare time doesn’t leave much time.

I’m going to do it again this November.

Focus.

I'll be running a little competition.

The Game Within a Game - TGWAG.

Giving out pointless internet points.

To people who help me.

By playtesting. Or proof-reading. Or providing ideas.

I’ll keep a weekly leaderboard.

There’ll be a prize for the winner.

It kicks off tomorrow.

I started a Roll & Write in January

Follow along on the blog to join in…

Deliveries

This week we're expecting stuff.

A lot of stuff.

We've already got 3/5 print runs (Xeno Wars, the freebies, and FlickFleet).

And the main acrylic order.

And the first wooden bits order.

We assemble the games at home - proper indie!

This week we're expecting the playmats.

And the rest of the acrylic.

And the fourth print run - both Boxes of Flicks.

And the all the cardboard boxes.

Which leaves just the packaging, Scenario booklets, the Big Boxes and the FlickFleet wooden bits.

Almost done.

We'll be able to ship a bunch of simpler orders once this week's orders arrive.

Maturity

Daughter the Second is five.

She can read to herself at bedtime. Do maths. Even speak a little German.

She’s maturing rapidly.

We got our logo re-done a couple of years ago

Eurydice Games is five too.

It’s a very immature business.

We’ve got as far as we have due to being very tight.

I do the books. In Google Sheets. It’s free. 

I also do the marketing, advertising, business planning, website. All badly. But for free. Or near enough.

I do lots of work. Lots of unnecessary work. Lots of bad work. Because I can kludge it for free.

It works. Kinda.

We’ve survived five years. Grown rapidly.

It’s now time to start thinking about our maturity. 

Spending a little money to do a better job. Or an easier job. Or pay a professional to do it.

I’m spending a lot of time on this at the moment.

Investigating an accounting package.

Approaching professionals to redo our website. Properly.

Speaking to professionals about advertising.

Hopefully it’ll free up some of my time for game design.

Plates

Lots of spinning plates at the moment.

Paul's trying to make room for all the deliveries. And cutting FlickFleets and Expansion 1s.

I'm trying to finish last year's books.

And work out the new costs for all the things we've ordered.

And get the fulfilment spreadsheet ready for Paul.

And place the last few orders.

We're meeting on Tuesday so Paul can take the Xeno Wars printing and wooden bits down to York.

These shouldn't be in Newcastle!

It's all coming together.

It's a very busy time!

Loss

Our fifth financial year finished on Friday.

Most businesses don’t get to five. Almost 60% fail.

Reiver Games failed.

Eurydice is still going. And going strong.

Each of our five years has been a growth year.

Sales have increased by 49 times in five years.

And by almost four times in the last four.

We’d been profitable every year too.

Just.

Until this year.

We made a small loss.

Less than the write off cost of the laser-cutter.

But still.

I'm proud that after the failure of Reiver Games I've learned how to run a business better. 

Paul and I are doing well.

And next year is looking good too.

Fingers crossed…

Spend

Our bank account lives a boom and bust lifestyle.

After a crowdfunding campaign it's stratospheric.

For us.

Then we spend on materials and components.

Photo by Igal Ness on Unsplash

Then again on shipping.

Then Paul's salary, conventions and advertising chip away at it.

Till it's paltry.

Then we crowdfund again to stay afloat.

We're in the spending phase now.

The last of the wooden bits arrive this week.

I've just spent £8,000 on the acrylic. Most of it.

And £2,500 on playmats.

Next up are the big boxes and the printing.

Then it'll be shipping again.

The balance is heading south...

Arrivals

I’ve picked a box manufacturer.

Almost 5,000 dice have arrived at Paul’s house:

Lots of dice!

Three enormous boxes of wooden bits have arrived at mine (should have been Paul’s!) with two more on the way:

Did someone order some discs and cubes?

The next print run is taking shape.

Our FlickFleet print runs are usually 400 copies.

We’ve done three 400 copy FlickFleet runs and two 400 copy Expansion 1 runs.

The Boxes of Flicks were an aberration, smaller, more expensive runs.

Xeno Wars will be an 800 copy run. We’ve already sold over 400!

Paul’s house is going to be very full for a couple of months.

Relationship

In March I got new quotes for everything we'd need for the Xeno Wars print run. Including boxes.

Once the Gamefound campaign was complete I started getting those quotes refreshed to reflect price increases due to war in Ukraine and other global factors.

The box manufacturer had gone bust.

They'd made 2,150 boxes for us over three years. We had a relationship.

Not any more.

I frantically started hunting for a new manufacturer.

Several companies I contacted couldn't do it.

Some of those put us in contact with others.

Others just refused to answer emails and phone calls. 

I get that they might not want (or be able to) do what we need, but that's not a good way to do business.

It's been slow going.

Last week I reached out to a few more companies.

Much better this time. They all got back to me, all quoted for the work.

One stood out though.

He wanted to speak on the phone.

Discuss the project. He'd looked at our website.

Had some ideas to do things differently. Better. Maybe even cheaper than what I'd asked for. With further savings in future.

We spoke several times. Clearing things up. Asking and answering questions.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

His quote came in cheapest of the five I'd got.

The company is 170 years old.

And, it turns out, I've used them before.

Guess which one I'm going with.

Clock

I’m back now.

Cracking on.

I want to shut the Pledge Manager but we still have 74 outstanding pledges.

I need to shut it so I know what to order from our suppliers.

Prices are likely to rise because of the energy crisis.

I’d like to get my orders in beforehand if I can.

It’s a race against time…

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Return

I’m driving home from Bristol today.

The Gower was lovely

Back at work tomorrow.

And back to Xeno Wars.

The pledge manager officially closes today but we still have 95 people who haven’t completed it.

Once that’s done we can place the orders.

We also need to finally choose a new box maker and place an order.

Lots to do…

Holiday

I’m away for the week.

In (old!) south Wales.

We’re taking some family time.

When I’m back I’ll be closing the pledge manager and starting to order everything.

Xeno Wars will begin to take shape.

Until then I’m relaxing.

‘Exciting’

… is one word for it.

Frustrating is another.

Worrying also works.

I’ve placed the order for all the wooden bits we need.

There’s a long lead time, so best to get the order in early.

Paid via Wise. It usually takes 3 hours and has low international fees.

It took eight days. For ‘verification’. Then at the end of all that they refunded me.

I need to fix the problem and try again.

I also contacted the box-maker to check the quote I got a couple of months ago is still valid.

They’ve gone out of business!

I need to find a new box-maker.

‘Exciting’.

Or frustrating.

Or worrying.

Production

I've spent the week working on the Pledge Manager.

It goes live at 2pm UK time today.

Paul is making the rewards that we already have the components for.

We're starting to place the orders for the materials that will take longest to arrive.

It's coming together.

Still lots to do.

But moving in the right direction. 

Shut Up

… and Sit Down covered FlickFleet in last week’s podcast.

Tom repeatedly described it as cute. And silly.

We got a bunch of orders as a result.

Many of which arrived while I was camping last weekend. 

It’s amazing the effect of a big name mentioning your game.

Actual influencers.

Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash

I’ve tried to email Shut Up & Sit Down a few times over the last few years.

No luck.

Then Tom wandered past our stand at the Expo.

Was intrigued.

Took a copy.

I wonder how many sales we’ll get as a result?

Currently 16.

Plus a noticeable jump in Gamefound page followers.

Comparisons

We’ve just finished our first Gamefound campaign, after four increasingly successful Kickstarters. I’m going to do a bit of a deep dive on the differences (bear in mind my Kickstarter experience is now over a year old - things might have changed in the meantime).

Why did we change? Kickstarter was working well for us, we had raised over £75,000 through four campaigns. Why would we risk changing? Blockchain is the answer to that. If you live in Europe you’ll have probably experienced a record breaking heatwave in the last week. It was over 2 degrees C hotter than the previous record in the UK and over 4 degrees hotter than the previous record in my city. The world is on fire and it’s our fault. We need to make radical changes to prevent tipping points in the climate.

Blockchain is hugely energy intensive. BitCoin is the worse example, but even the Proof of Stake chains require a lot of energy. Kickstarter announced a move to blockchain last year without providing any real reason at all. When pushed by numerous incensed creators and backers they doubled down ‘Blockchain!’.

Contrast that with Gamefound whose equivalent message was all how how they would be helping creators and backers. Rather that pouring fuel on the planetary fire. We’d used them three times already for pledge managers, so it was a natural choice. But was it a good one?

TL;DR: It was our best campaign ever, but I’m pretty sure we’re would have raised even more on Kickstarter with the same campaign. But I don’t regret it at all.

Gamefound has a lot of advantages. You can have a preview page that’s a landing page with real content that you can make available before the project is reviewed. A dedicated account manager with good response times on queries. Add-ons and stretch goals are first class citizens. They handle EU VAT for you. And the pledge manager is in the same place. We were also offered a free banner ad on the site.

But there are also plenty of downsides (though this is very early days and I expect lots of these will get addressed quite quickly). The worse was the lack of notifications on comments - I find myself having to frequently check the page comments and all the updates to see if I’ve missed responding to any comments. The ads between updates and comments confused a lot of people, so we got responses to update questions on the main page comments. Our backers complained the site was hard to use and the ads were too intrusive. Some backers had pledges blocked by their card issuers (if you’re in the US a Polish company looks more dodgy that an US one). There’s no app and a much smaller user base so we got a lot less pledges on the last day than last time. In fact we probably lost a bunch of backers because they’ve never heard of Gamefound (but know Kickstarter). Kickstarter claim to provide 40-45% of the backers on our previous campaigns. I’d always assumed that was some creative accounting and most of it came from the ads we ran, but maybe not so much. We got almost nothing directly attributed to Gamefound.

There was also a few features of the Kickstarter dashboard I missed (the stream of pledge/adjustments/cancellations including backer name, the graph showing various pledge backer totals in a single place).

Campaign performance by day, darker lines are more recent

We had 40% more people on our mailing list, nearly four times as many followers at launch, three times the marketing budget and a bigger draw project - it added multiplayer rules which people have been clamouring for. And we raised 8% more than last time. It’s not quite a fair comparison as Gamefound doesn’t include shipping in the pledges, but even assuming similar shipping to last time that’s still only 24%. I’m pretty sure we’d have done better than that on Kickstarter.

But I don’t regret it. We need rapid systemic change to minimise the effects of climate change. Blockchain is an ecological disaster and companies should be avoiding it like the plague, not starting to embrace it. Our decision costs us money, but it’s one I’ll happily repeat - we’re going to have to collectively make far bigger sacrifices in the coming years.

Culmination

Our first Gamefound campaign finishes in just under five hours.

Less than 5 hours left!

It’s been ahead of our last one since the beginning.

Our best ever campaign.

Again. The last was was too. And the one before that. They all have.

How much better will it end up? At one point it was looking like we might get £45,000!

Then the prediction dropped to £35,000.

It’s been pretty static since then.

We’ll see where we finish.

It’s been a rollercoaster.

It always is.

I need a rest.

Doldrums

We’re mid-campaign.

It’s slowed down as it always does.

We need to keep the momentum up.

We’re running some ads.

Bizarrely they are generating more website sales than Gamefound backers.

A FlickFleet playmat!

We’ve just unlocked the playmat, which people have been keen for.

That should help.

Next up is the big box.

Hopefully that will help too.

We’re at 63% of our previous best campaign with just over half the campaign left to go.

And shipping will be collected in the Pledge Manager.

It should be our best ever campaign.

We’re still in the doldrums though!

And it’s really slowed down the last few days.

Launch

It’s launch day.

Just over five hours to go.

A time of great excitement. And great nerves.

In eight hours I’ll have a pretty good idea of how it’s going.

We’ve got four Kickstarters’ worth of data to compare this against.

For now though: just possibilities. It could go well.

Or badly. Extremely well, or mediocre.

I’ll just have to wait and see.

In hindsight, choosing to launch the campaign when Paul is on holiday and my parents are visiting may have been … sub-optimal.

Lots to do.

Anxiety

A week today our next campaign goes live.

Our first Gamefound campaign.

Can we replicate the success of previous campaigns?

Will the switch to Gamefound help or hinder us?

Have people had enough of FlickFleet?

How will the cost of living crisis affect things?

In a week’s time I will have a rough idea of the answers to those questions.

For now they are worries I have no way of answering.

What little data I have at this point is promising.

But it’s far from concrete.

Just hints.

So I worry.

For another week.

It’s an anxious time…