Crunch

We're getting close to our next Gamefound campaign launch.

Which I pushed back last week.

And we're less that two weeks from Tyneside Games Expo.

Which Paul is attending as Eurydice Games.

And I'm one of the organisers.

I'm extremely busy.

But things are coming together.

And we've signed a game by another designer.

I'm making a little progress on the next prototype of that every day.

MIT

I have a job (thankfully only 4 days a week now!).

And a family.

And now two side hustles.

I'm a busy man.

I've a todo list longer than most best selling novels.

It makes it difficult to see the wood from the trees sometimes.

So I've added another step to my daily habits.

What's my Most Important Thing to do tomorrow.

One thing.

That I need to complete or make progress on.

A priority.

Some much needed focus.

As a result, I've made loads of progress on our next Gamefound campaign this week.

It's not visible yet, but it's taking shape behind the scenes.

Biggest concern at the moment is the new EU law.

Which is going to make things harder (impossible?) to handle EU orders.

I'm still investigating that...

Wannabe

In 2006 I started self-publishing board games with Border Reivers.

In 2008 I became a hobby publisher, hand-crafting a 300 copy run of It's Alive! by Yehuda Berlinger.

In 2009 I became a proper publisher, getting a professional second run of It's Alive! done, followed by Carpe Astra (with Ted Cheatham) and Sumeria (by Dirk Liekens).

It went badly.

I lost a ton of money and wound up Reiver Games in 2011.

Eurydice Games was always intended to be different.

The name (suggested by Derek Hohls) was a clue - don't look back, do things differently.

We've spent the last 8 (or nine if you include Zombology!) years self-publishing small runs of FlickFleet and the roll and writes.

It's been different.

No professional runs.

Lots of Gamefound/Kickstarter campaigns.

All games we've designed ourselves.

There's been a few games I've wanted to publish on others' behalf though.

Sadly, none of them have got anywhere.

So we're still a SELF-publisher. 

Or a wannabe publisher.

That might be about to change.

Fingers crossed!

Fans

I've spent the last week or so working on our next quarterly newsletter.

This one is focused around all the cool stuff fans of FlickFleet have done.

From scenarios to ships.

Guides to ...

...websites.

Translations to holistic rulebooks.

So much cool stuff.

Done by fans of the game.

We're so grateful for all their contributions.

As usual there's a recommendation for something cool I've come across in their too.

If you're interested, scroll to the bottom of this page and subscribe here in the next few hours to get it!

Ads

We've spent a lot of money on Meta ads over the years.

Slowly upping the ad spent on each FlickFleet campaign.

Even spending a little on the roll and writes.

It's brought in pledges, I'm sure of it.

Last year we tried something different.

Tried to run the company more traditionally.

Using (more) ads year-round to bring in enough sales to cover overheads.

It worked.

Sort of.

The overheads were covered.

Cashflow was mostly stable.

But the ads didn't perform well.

The ad spend was so high we made a massive loss.

This year is much better because we've recognised the sales from last year's campaign.

And all the costs hit last year.

And we're spending a lot less on ads.

The small amount we are running is performing pretty well.

... according to Meta.

In my experience, that doesn't scale well.

Our last crowdfunding campaign for Gal4Xeon was our best roll and write by a factor of more than 2.

And we spent nothing on ads.

Not a penny.

We're not quite covering our overheads.

Except for events and good weeks of web sales.

But we're not burning cash.

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

I'm considering not advertising the next FlickFleet campaign.

I'll need to do something else to bring in followers and backers though.

I've got a few months to think on that...

Crescendo

Paul is back from France.

The Wife is back from her week-long work trip.

So things are returning to normal.

But it's UK Games Expo week.

So not yet.

And it's half-term, so the kids are off school.

We've got three days to get everything together, then we're off.

Paul has cut all the stock we're taking.

But still has to box it all up.

I've ordered all the printing we need from the printers.

Business cards.

Gal4Xeon tasters.

Posters.

And the dashboards and rules for the next FlickFleet print run.

Which can't wait until the next Gamefound campaign - we're running very low.

I've got to collect them on Wednesday.

And then Paul and I will meet up the night before we go to exchange materials again.

Then home again, and then off the next morning.

I'm excited to see how this year goes.

UK retail sales are down because of the cost of living crisis, exacerbated by the war in Iran.

But we've got a fantastic stand near the front of Hall 2 (2-622 if you're coming!).

So traffic should be good at least.

Fingers crossed for a good show...

Progress

The Wife is in The Netherlands for seven days.

So I'm solo parenting.

Paul's still in France.

So I'm fulfilling web orders.

Oh, and I might have broken a toe yesterday.

But I'm getting loads done regardless.

Gal4Xeon has been fulfilled.

It's up on the website now for anyone who missed the campaign.

Xeno Flicks 2 is in very early preview.

We're re-ordering FlickFleet before then, as we're likely to run out soon after the Expo.

I've been ordering rules, dashboards and boxes.

And posters and business cards for the Expo.

There's loads to do.

But I feel like I'm on a roll at the moment :)

Launch

It's launch week.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Just over 24 hours until the Gal4Xeon Gamefound campaign goes live.

At this point the signs are encouraging.

More followers than any of our previous roll and write campaigns.

Three good reviews.

Some great pull quotes.

More add-ons and a larger bundle, so probably a higher average pledge.

Fingers crossed.

It's been a rough few months for Eurydice off the back of shipping the last FlickFleet campaign.

We could do with a boost to help us fix our cashflow challenges.

Not much left to do now but wait and see...

Coming Soon!

I’m back from my holiday.

The girls are still on holiday though, so my Monday this week is parenting.

Not second and third jobs!

But it’s a busy week.

Gal4Xeon launches a week tomorrow.

It’s got nearly 450 followers!

Exodus only had 157 at launch.

Hopefully that’s a good sign.

While I was off, Paul finished fulfilling Box of Xeno Flicks 1.

That campaign was hard.

Done now, except for one pledge with a payment issue.

I’m hoping to get it up on the website this week for those of you who missed the campaign.

Finally, our costs have gone up a lot over the last couple of years.

I’m going to put some of our prices up in a week or so.

Now’s your chance to beat that!

Maximise

I have limited time.

Around a day job and a family.

So I need to maximise it - get the biggest bang for my (time) buck.

We have two main ranges, FlickFleet and the roll and writes.

Our FlickFleet campaigns have raised tens of thousands of pounds.

That pretty much all goes on buying a year's worth of stock, and shipping.

And with half of the audience in America, we've been badly hurt by the De Minimus change and increased shipping costs/tariffs.

The roll and write campaigns are tiny by comparison.

£750-£1,200.

But once you take off the Gamefound collected EU VAT and their fees (about 11% for the roll and writes), the rest is cash in the bank.

Which we're short on.

Again.

I'm focusing on Gal4Xeon this quarter.

Then it'll be the next FlickFleet campaign.

Which is going to be much harder with the new US situation.

So how to I get the most bang for my time bucks for Gal4Xeon?

What's the most effective use of my time to bring Gal4Xeon as many people's attention as possible?

Postmark Games' first roll and write had over 12,000 backers.

We've managed at most 300.

How do we reach more roll and write fans?

Or sci-fi gaming fans?

Or print and play fans?

This week, I've been working on the campaign video.

And reaching out to reviewers.

Is that the best use of my time?

We've already got over 250 followers.

We're gaining 2-3 a day.

With over two months till launch.

I'm hoping half of them will back the campaign.

But it's all guesswork at this point!

Quieter

We’ve just got back from our third To Boldly Game at the National Space Centre.

   

All set up ready to begin! 

It felt a bit quieter this year. 

And there were more exhibitors. 

Which meant more friends to see! 

And more competition. 

Plus there seemed to be more young kids, too young for FlickFleet. 

We did less well as a result. 

Sales were about 90% of last year’s. 

But we still made a profit. 

And it was great to see some gaming friends. 

And I had the Gal4Xeon taster sheets to give away. 

We must have given away thirty-ish I think. 

I hope that leads to a bump in followers over the next week or so…

Grafting

Paul makes all the FlickFleet games himself.

On a laser-cutter in his garage.

But that’s not all of it.

He sorts and packs the dashboards.

He counts and bags all the wooden bits.

Then the right ships in with them.

Then boxes everything.

Then parcels, addresses and ships all the orders.

It’s an enormous amount of work.

Especially when we have a crowdfunding campaign to fulfil.

Hundreds of orders.

All more or less at once.

My wife had friends round for her and the girls this weekend.

So I went to York.

And lent a hand.

For 24 hours only.

But we bagged hundreds of ships.

100 copies of FlickFleet.

And most of 100 copies of the new expansion.

And we managed to get a couple of games of Battle of Hoth in too :)

In other news, the Exodus campaign finishes tomorrow!

Last chance to back.

Retail-ish

We're back from Tabletop Scotland.

Where we had a good weekend.

Sales started very slow.

But ended strong, so a good weekend overall.

And we picked up another retail stockist for FlickFleet.

Mighty Minis in Whitburn, West Lothian, Scotland. 

Our first Scottish retailer.

We recently picked up one in Northern Ireland too: Roast & Roll, in Banbridge. 

And another in England, The Rogue Trader Warehouse in County Durham.

We make the games ourselves.

In Paul's garage.

We have neither the volume nor the margins to get into distribution.

Just a few direct sales to shops in the UK.

The new ones add to the few we've been working in previous years.

Travelling Man in Newcastle, York, Leeds and Manchester.

Roll It! in Scarborough where I did a demo day last year.

Bridge Command in London, a starship simulator.

Plus Farplace Games and Gloucester Geek Society who help us cover conventions we can't reach.

Small scale, but growing!

Resurrection

After the disappointment of yet another awesome game designed by a friend that they don't want us to publish I took one of my older designs to Newcastle Playtest last week.

Normally I take a bag with six or seven games, last week I took one.

And to be honest, I wasn't really looking to play it.

I'd not played it in about three years.

It was there as a fallback if we needed games to play.

As it turns out, we did.

So I got it out.

Tried to remind myself of the rules.

We had five players.

I had to tweak things as we went.

But there was some potential there.

And the great crowd of designers and playtesters gave me feedback.

Useful feedback.

And ideas.

My head has been fizzing with ideas all week.

I've been frantically crafting a new version since Tuesday.

I've got a slot at the Playtest Zone at the North East Tabletop Expo on Friday afternoon.

I was going to play Jotunsaga or Siren Song.

Now I think I'll play the new version of The Uprising: Saga instead.

Need to finish the prototype first!

Family

My parents are visiting for a week.

They live 300 miles away, and so I see them rarely.

Two or three times a year.

And dad is getting less mobile.

So it’s harder for them to travel.

It’s going to be lovely seeing them for a whole week.

Not just a brief video call.

But I run Eurydice Games in my spare time.

Around a full-time job.

And a youngish family.

So visitors pretty much pause game company work.

The print and play rewards are almost done though. Half a page left of the rulebook, then proofing and it’s ready to go.

It’ll be a month late :(

I have at least done some playtest of my mate Joe’s solo dungeon crawl (it’s very good!).

Loads of fun!

Mum, The Wife and Daughter the second joined in too!

Conventions

I'm back from the UK Games Expo.

I'm knackered.

But it was so good.

We had our box manufacturer, W. MacCarthy & Sons, hand-deliver some Xeno Wars boxes to the Expo, from London!

We sold more games than ever before!

We demoed FlickFleet to loads of new people and could see how much fun they were having.

I had a few really useful business meetings.

We had a crowd of spectators for most of the time.

We had people go out of their way to come to our stand, just to tell us how much they love FlickFleet.

And someone even came up to us during dinner, to tell us how much he loved it!

I've done conventions in four jobs now.

Games ones with Reiver Games and Eurydice Games.

Scientific ones in the day job.

And during my PhD.

I really enjoy them.

Games ones in particular feel like I'm among my people.

And I love meeting so many people I know.

Production

It’s going to be a very busy month. 

I’ve got to do the graphic design for the Xeno Flicks rules and dashboards. 

I've made a start!

Work out all the quantities of things we need. 

Then get the manufacturing orders started. 

Boxes are being made as we speak.

Xeno Wars reprint has gone to the printer. 

Ideally, we’d like to have some Xeno Wars stock at the Expo. 

Need to place several orders for that though. 

Also need to finish Expo preparations. 

Progress is being made at least.

Pledge Manager

Now I’m back from my holiday it’s time to focus.

It’s a busy time.

The print and play rewards are due by the end of May.

Which is also the UK Games Expo.

And I need to begin ordering materials for the physical copies.

First up was the boxes.

The print run has been ordered and the files sent over.

I also need to finish off the pledge manager.

We’re adding planets!

It’s almost there.

Should go live in a day or two I hope.

Diversify

I’m back from my holiday.

Rested.

And raring to go.

I have two things to focus on.

The pledge manager for Box of Xeno Flicks 1.

And global diversity.

55% of our sales go to the US.

Trump’s tariffs don’t affect us yet.

But he’s unpredictable and anything could happen.

So we need to diversify.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Away from the US.

And our reliance on FlickFleet.

We have three other products. All print at home roll and write games.

Which are tariff-free.

And easy to sell to anywhere.

I’m advertising those in our top fifteen countries.

The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a chunk of Europe.

Added bonus: there’s no cost of goods sold or shipping to pay for.

So the ads don’t have to cover those costs.

But I also need to focus on the pledge manager.

Coming within a week or two I hope…

Crescendo?

Our seventh crowdfunding campaign finishes tomorrow.

It started slower than the last few.

But we didn’t start advertising until a few days in.

It’s been doing better than the rest during the quiet period.

We’ve been ahead of Box of Pirate Flicks on the equivalent day for the last couple of days.

We might have a strong finish!

Could be our second or third best campaign, with luck!

Fingers crossed!

Just over 24 hours left if you're interested...