Purchase

Last Thursday at Games Night I asked my buddies if they would playtest a prototype.

It’s my second roll and write.

Currently known as The Planets My Destination.

A nod to Alfred Bester.

It’s about colonising the solar system.

It was a big ask.

Several months ago 2 out of 3 of them played an earlier version.

It was a disaster.

20 minute game. That lasted 1:40. And was way too complex. 

Complicated really. Not complex. Unnecessarily complicated.

But they humoured me.

We played again.

25 mins this time.

Much better.

And the new 3rd person?

He asked where he could buy it the next day.

It’s getting close I think…

Daily

I have a set of actions I do every day.

I’ve kept it up for 155 days.

An unbroken chain.

Would have been 279, but I think I forgot one of the actions a couple of times on holiday back in April.

It’s really helped me.

I’ve been way more productive.

But I didn’t do enough on the Gamefound page during August.

Progress has been too slow

A two week holiday, Tabletop Scotland and my daughter’s birthday all got in the way.

But those are just excuses.

I need to do better.

So I’ve added it to my daily chain.

I’ve made progress every day this week.

It’s taking shape now :)

Gear

It’s time to change gear.

The Box of Pirate Flicks campaign has been languishing in neutral.

Our holiday, then Daughter the First’s birthday, then Tabletop Scotland took priority.

I need to crack on now.

I’ve started adding to the page, but there’s lots still to be done.

The page is still pretty Spartan.

Time to crack on.

The ads are running now at least.

Some progress!

Three

Conventions this year.

AireCon in March.

The UK Games Expo for the second time in June.

And now Tabletop Scotland.

Ready to demo!

I came here with low expectations.

It’s small. Much smaller even than AireCon.

But a friend of Paul’s offered to put us up, so it’s fairly cheap too.

I’ve been really looking forward to it.

Another road trip with Paul.

Another weekend of demoing FlickFleet and chatting about prototypes.

It was way better than I expected.

Still feels like we’re gathering momentum.

Lots of fans of FlickFleet stopped by.

Lots of new FlickFleet fans by the end of it :)

FIVE

This month Eurydice Games Ltd turned five.

Six if you count the first year when I ran it by myself.

Almost as old as Daughter the Second.

I remember doing the initial graphic design for FlickFleet with her as a sleeping baby in one arm.

It's been fun watching it grow.

Get bigger.

Learn new things.

Same for Daughter the Second.

I’m excited to see what it grows up to be.

Much like Daughter the Second.

Road trip!

This week though, it is preparation for Tabletop Scotland.

It’s in Perth (Scotland, not Australia obviously!), this weekend.

It’s another weekend away with Paul.

Another road trip.

I’m really looking forward it it.

Back

I'm back from my holiday.

Refreshed.

Rejuvenated.

Raring to go.

I kept up my games design streak while I was away.

Making progress on my new roll and write.

Working on Wizard a bit.

Coming up with a newer roll and write.

New roll and write sheet scribbled on the back of another roll and write sheet!

Now I'm back, I need to crack on with the Gamefound page for FlickFleet: A Box of Pirate Flicks.

Exciting times...

Trains

We’re on our way home now.

Via Paris.

But we still have 15 hours on trains.

I’m putting the time to good use.

Designing games.

Cicadas

For the first time since our honeymoon 20 years ago, I’m on holiday for two weeks.

We travelled to the south of Spain by train.

Stopping in a couple of places.

We’re now in the mountains.

I can hear nothing but cicadas.

It’s very peaceful here.

I will crack on with the Gamefound page when I return, but for now, I rest.

Feedback

I have three games that I ought to be playtesting more widely.

Jotunsaga, about Vikings hunting trolls.

Colony, the new roll and write that’s only a few weeks old.

And Coalescence, which has been years in the making.

The next step is to get people playtesting without me there explaining the rules.

To do this I need to send physical (or at least digital!) copies of the games to people.

Troll is still sharpie on blank cards. Needs some work before it’s ready to send out.

Coalescence is a real pain to manufacturer. 

Needs a 5-layer board and 3D-printed planets.

So Colony was first out the door.

I already had everything I needed!

I’m off on holiday this week. Need to work on the others when I get back.

Sci-Fi

I’ve six games that I’m working on the at moment.

I started a new one a couple of weeks ago.

Another roll and write.

It’s on its fifth iteration already.

Three of the six are sci-fi themed.

There’s coalescence about making a solar system.

The Uprising Saga about the birth of The Uprising from FlickFleet.

And the new one: Colony about colonising the solar system.

I’ve also got three that aren’t:

Siren Song about capturing Greek sailors off triremes.

Wizard about duelling wizards in an arena.

Jotunsaga about Vikings hunting trolls.

I definitely tend to lean towards the sci-fi theme though.

I’ve more ideas in that direction too that I’m not actively working on too.

Influence

We’ve had a great few weeks of website sales.

Good enough to keep us afloat.

Several of those weeks were record breaking for us.

The combination of great reviews and follow-ups from the UK Games Expo.

This week Dani Standring played FlickFleet with her husband.

This did the rounds!

And shared it on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

The next 24 hours were a good week for us. Second best ever.

The week ended up our best ever.

My goal at the moment is covering our monthly overheads by website sales.

We did July’s in 3.5 days!

Visitors

This week I fulfilled our Rocky ‘Roid campaign. It’s available from our website now.

Now available!

And spent a lot of time working on the website.

My goal at the moment is still financial stability.

The company needs to make enough cash every month to cover our overheads.

It’s never reliably done that.

We’ve survived by running crowdfunding campaigns.

And living off those.

For the last two months we’ve managed it though.

Website sales alone have been enough.

And I haven’t started running any ads yet.

It’s all been off the back of some great reviews.

The review traffic is drying up now though.

Need to get more visitors to the website.

So I’ve been doing some SEO work.

And starting to think about the ads.

Extras

With the Gamefound campaign for Xeno Wars (almost) complete, I can move to the next item on my list.

The website.

One of the advantages of getting it redone was a proper shop.

With shipping calculations.

So we could easily add more products.

A couple of weeks ago I added Xeno Wars and the Xeno Wars P&P files.

This week it’s been extras.

The scenario booklet.

Extra dice.

Extra asteroids.

Pretty!

Next up is extra nebulae. And extra wreckage.

We’ve a couple of playmats left too. Might put them up.

Then move along to the next item on my list.

It’s a long list!

Success

Rocky ‘Roid was over 500% funded.

The ads didn’t do very well though, probably broke even at best.

Still, FlickFleet is going great.

Website sales for the last five weeks are over 13 times our normal sales.

13. Times.

That’s crazy.

A run of great reviews.

More people finding out about FlickFleet.

The Expo. 

A bit of buzz.

It’s been great. 

At the beginning of the year we had 4 weeks without a sale. 

This week we had eight consecutive days of sales.

It’s our best ever week for sales outside of a convention or crowdfunding fulfilment.

Feels like we’re building momentum.

Reviews

We live a boom and bust cycle.

A big influx of cash when we do a crowdfunding campaign.

Which we spend on materials. And then shipping.

Then our overheads slowly eat away at the remaining cash until we do another campaign.

Sometimes we need to loan the company money.

Then we do another campaign. And we’re flush again.

Our overheads have gone up.

A lot.

Paul’s small salary. Various things to free up my time.

Website sales are usually minimal.

We need to get to the point where they cover our overheads.

Then we survive between campaigns.

We have a new website. I want to run ads pointing at it. 

I’ve been putting it off until Paul finished the Xeno Wars rewards. We had no stock.

Now we do.

But the website has been doing better.

Because of great reviews.

Happy with that!

By Hunter and Friends. And Tabletop Gaming Magazine. And Board Game Quest.

The sales we’ve got from each of the reviews are enough to cover the week‘s overheads.

And the cost of the review copy and shipping is probably less than the amount we’d have to spend on ads to get the same sales.

Good value for money :)

P.S. Rocky ‘Roid finishes tomorrow!

Friendship

I’ve known Paul for 17 years.

He brought two friends to my first ever public playtesting session.

All three of them ordered Border Reivers.

Reiver Games was born.

Paul invited me to his bi-weekly games night and we became friends.

When I moved away we stayed in touch and though I saw him infrequently, he was one of my best friends and playtesters.

We designed FlickFleet together in 2017.

He joined Eurydice Games in 2018.

Despite living 100 miles apart he’s my best friend.

We chat regularly on Slack, occasionally on FaceTime and meet up every few months.

We’ve just spent the last four days in each other’s pockets.

Breakfast and dinner together. On the stand all day together. Playtesting together in the evenings.

Road trip buddies

We evening shared a room and drove down from York together.

It’s been great.

It’s lovely to have a proper catch up.

Plan what’s next for Eurydice Games.

We don’t see enough of each other.

Finished

And yet not quite.

We shipped all the FlickFleet: Xeno Wars rewards. Including the ones due in July.

The EU ones are now with ShipQuest. We’re waiting to hear when then will be shipped.

Some of the US ones were returned because they thought they contained prohibited items :(

They don’t like the big boxes for some reason.

Need to work out how to accurately describe them that doesn’t fall foul of the rules.

But it’s nearly done.

I’ve had a slower week - since my parents were visiting.

Paul is still flat out, making stuff for the UK Games Expo this weekend (We'll be on stand 2-564 in Hall 2 if you're going - stop by and say hi!).

Then he can finally slow down.

Just over 24 hours till launch!

And Rocky ‘Roid launches tomorrow lunchtime!

Got a fun few weeks ahead!

Red

It’s a good news/bad news week.

When we do a crowdfunding campaign I feel the weight of the pledges.

People have lent us money. Lots of money. In some cases, huge amounts of money.

We owe them. We’ve promised them something in return. I don’t like to break my word.

Until the pledges are all fulfilled I feel those loans. Weighing on me.

More so when we’re late. We’ve broken our word. Let people down.

This week I shipped the last of the non-EU deluxe rewards. Almost four months late.

Paul shipped the EU rewards to ShipQuest. Some almost four months late. Some over two months early.

On their way!

Then he parcelled up the non-EU standard rewards and either posted them or booked shipping for them for today.

Two months early.

The loan is repaid. 

A weight is lifted.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I miscalculated. Shipping is more than we’d planned.

We’ve had to lend Eurydice some money again to tide us over until the Expo in a couple of weeks.

I’d love to get to the point where we’re not utterly dependant on crowdfunding cash injections.

Regular website sales covering our monthly overheads would be great.

Need to work on that.

After the Expo, and Rocky ‘Roid though.

Confluence

Lots going on this week.

I met Paul last Wednesday and he came up Saturday with the last of the non-EU deluxe rewards.

I’ve got to ship them this week.

Before my daughter’s birthday party on Saturday and then my parents visit for a week on Sunday.

We played a couple of prototypes 

that are improving too

We’ve also got an advisory board meeting Wednesday evening.

And the Rocky ‘Roid Gamefound campaign is only a couple of weeks away.

And the Expo is only 3 weeks away too.

Lots to do.

And not much time to do it.

Best crack on.

378%

The other day I saw a LinkedIn post about daily habits.

If you make 1% progress every day for a year you’ll make 377% progress!

There’s a rounding error. It’s actually 378%.

You’d think it was 365%, but the joys of compounding give you a little more.

At two years the compounding is even more pronounced. Instead of 730% you get 1,428%!

I’m only 150 days, less than half a year, into my daily games design habit - but I’m already feeling it.

I have multiple games on the go.

Making decent progress on them.

Playtesting loads

Some days it’s tiny progress. It can be a struggle to fit it in around FlickFleet shipping, Rocky ‘Roid prep and family commitments.

Others it’s huge.

Want to become good at something?

Do it every day.

Delays

We’ve had some (more) problems with the laser-cutter.

It’s cost Paul time while he worked around them.

He phoned the manufacturer. They’ve discontinued this model.

I’m not surprised. 

It was the ‘newer version’ of the one that caught fire.

Newer isn’t always better

The old one was pretty good up until the fire.

This one has been nothing but trouble.

I spent last week helping Paul with the shipping again.

Then met Paul again on Friday night to collect more stuff to ship this week.

Rocky ‘Roid is slipping as a result.

Still, we’re getting there. 

The end of the Xeno Wars campaign is in sight…