Deadlines

I’ve got two pressing deadlines the moment.

The UK Games Expo.

We’ll be in Hall 2, stand 2-494

And Print and Play rewards for Box of Xeno Flicks 1.

The Expo starts on the 29th May for us - driving down to Birmingham and setting up.

The print and play rewards are due on the 31st.

The Expo deadline cannot move.

I really want to hit the other one too.

Lots to do still on both though.

I see some late evenings on the horizon…

Meanwhile Paul is down the laser-cutting mines. 

Cranking out copies of FlickFleet and the expansions.

To cover web sales. And the Expo. And the start of fulfilment.

He’s finishing last year’s print runs.

We’re running low!

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

Feelings

This week has been one of emotional highs and lows.

I’m in the middle of almost three weeks between day jobs so I’ve had lots of ‘free’ time.

I’ve spent that time with my family, doing household jobs, and a lot of Eurydice stuff.

Monday and Friday last week I met up with Paul (and also Alex on Friday) and we playtested new FlickFleet ideas, Coalescence, The Uprising Saga and Alex’s game: Aliens Ate My Planet.

It felt great to feel like a game designer again.

On Thursday I got to watch Daughter the Second (now four!) during her swimming lesson (I usually work during them) and it was awesome to see her so confident in the water.

I also spent a lot of time very stressed about today’s  Print and Play Kickstarter deadline.

I’ve been working late almost every night plus, where I can, during the days.

It was a way bigger job than expected and today I’m off on holiday for a few days and my parents are visiting next week. I missed the deadline and due to the next couple of weeks’ activities I’ve missed it by a lot.

Stressful.

Highs and lows!

Solid Progress at Last

Since returning from our holiday a few weeks ago I’ve been struggling to make decent progress on FlickFleet. We’ve taken some impromptu holiday, had friends to visit and weathered a long baby cold which led to sleepless nights and hence curtailed evenings.

This week I had a work trip to Manchester that was supposed to include a couple of nights in a hotel (it ended up being only one as a storm blocked all trains out of Newcastle on Wednesday evening).

With six hours of train travel and an evening in a hotel I managed make a huge amount of progress. I’ve now finished the Kickstarter page first draft and we’ve a rough cut of the video too. I’ve written a press release and am about halfway through updating the website with changes reflecting the move to a limited company. I’ve also finally completed the bank account application for the limited company too.

Kickstarter preview is ready!

The next step is to get some eyes on the Kickstarter page and get some feedback and finish off the website changes and make those live.

Finally, next weekend is Tabletop Gaming Live at Alexandra Palace in London. Paul and I will be there on Sunday (with FlickFleet and Zombology) and I’ll be repeating my hand-crafting seminar from 2-4pm. I’m hoping that with a bit longer I can answer more questions and make more of the game without having to rush the final bit. If you’re going, please come along and say hi!

Moving Goalposts

I’m back from my two week blogging hiatus! During that time I’ve had a week long holiday, an impromptu camping weekend and a visit from my FlickFleet co-designer, Paul and his family.

Progress on the FlickFleet Kickstarter has picked up in the last week, but in total has been slower than I’d like, hindered by some terrible nights’ sleep while The Toddler had bad cough and fever.

But now that the holidays are over and The Toddler is on the mend, things are looking up. This weekend, during Paul’s visit, we discussed the kickstarter in some depth and then spent Saturday night with my mate Wilka taking some photos of the game and its components and recording the footage for the kickstarter video (with a new shorter script crafted minutes before Wilka arrived) and a videoed play-through of the game.

All the FlickFleet components

The kickstarter page is taking shape finally, it’s mostly there now, pending a few images of the game, a few more reviews and some images for the stretch and social goals. I’ll be soliciting feedback on it shortly.

We had hoped to bring it to Kickstarter last week, but we’ve clearly missed that. I’ve pushed it back to the 24th, but we’re not going to be ready for that either - so we’re now aiming for mid-October. Hopefully we’ll hit that one! But as everyone says, it’s better to wait until you’re ready than rush out a half-finished campaign to hit an arbitrary deadline you’ve given yourself.

Still disappointing though :-(