Enthused

Paul slaves like Vulcan/Hephaestus over the laser-cutter.

Churning out Kickstarter rewards.

For the first time we have paid him!

Meanwhile, 100 miles to the north I am deep in InDesign.

Updating prototypes.

Tweaking them.

Trying new things.

Progress is being made.

The last Kickstarter deluxe rewards go out today. 

Then there’s another 76 standards to follow. 

I’m testing, updating and iterating three designs.

Coalescence is coming along

After the long, dark tea-time of the Pandemic it finally feels like I’m flying again.

Firing on all cylinders.

This posts has been one long mixed metaphor.

Busy / Not

Last week after a huge amount of assembling for the last deluxe rewards, Paul shipped another 75 parcels.

Some of Friday’s shipments.

There’s about 30 left after that, which will go out shortly.

That’s the deluxes done, one month late.

I spent the week prototyping and catching up on the bookkeeping.

Now I’m away for a long weekend.

On my return it’ll be back to playtesting and iterating through the loop.

Cadence

As I mentioned last week, I’ve hardly done any playtesting since the pandemic began.

A little with Daughter the First at the beginning.

A couple of times with Paul when we were able to meet up.

To get a game ready in a sensible amount of time you need a decent cadence through this cycle:

Make stuff!

Before the pandemic I had monthly playtesting meetups and ad-hoc playtesting at lunchtime at work.

So at least once a month through the cycle.

During the last eighteen months it's sometimes been 6-9 months. 

And other things have just languished at the ideas stage.

That's too slow.

We're on the clock now.

Last week I tested three new designs with a couple of mates.

They need work.

I've got some decent ideas.

I'm making those changes now.

We're going to reconvene in 2-3 weeks.

I'm speeding up...

Mojo

I’ve struggled during the pandemic.

With games design.

I hate playing games solo.

And solo playtesting.

My games aren’t a good fit for Tabletop Simulator.

I lost my mojo.

My game design almost ground to a halt. Barely ticking over.

We’re starting to see the other side.

I’m vaccinated, careful, regularly masked and regularly test myself.

So I’m starting to do things again.

And with it, my mojo is returning.

I’ve made progress on three different designs in the last couple of weeks.

The pencils are to make changes!

To the playtesting table!

Three!

Eurydice Games Ltd. was incorporated three years ago.

I ran it on my own for a year before that.

It’s going well.

Need to fill in those outstanding orders!

It would have been better if it wasn’t for Brexit derailing the Kickstarter fulfilment.

But the orders we’ve still got to fulfill are enough to make next year better still.

Many of you will know this ain’t my first rodeo.

Reiver Games was my first publishing company.

That started well too.

Then went rapidly downhill.

Doing better than green!

We’re doing better this time.

Thanks Paul!

Manifestation

A heat haze forms. Yet it is not that warm on this late September afternoon in Germany.

The air begins to bubble. Then boil.

An eldritch scream. The air is rent asunder. A Lost One manifests in this reality.

Normality returns.

Photo by Brandable Box @brandablebox Unsplash

It appears an unassuming box. It’s cardboard exterior looks ordinary. Pedestrian even.

Within, it seethes. Phenomenal cosmic power. Waiting to wreak destruction on an interplanetary scale.

It moves. Slowly at first. Then gathering pace. It takes off. Speeding through the sky as it approaches the nexus.

The nexus: North Yorkshire, UK. Calm. Peaceful. 

The box approaches. Soon it will burst. Spewing conflict and interstellar war across the globe.

The box has arrived at our supplier in Germany and is on its way back to us again.

Kickstarter fulfilment is near.

Frustration

The box that’s stopping us fulfilling the Kickstarter has spent two weeks in a depot in Germany.

Why?

I guess returns aren’t a priority.

The supplier has chased it with DHL.

Still no movement.

This is all so galling.

Before Brexit this would have just been delivered.

In a couple of days.

Job done.

It all went wrong when we didn’t receive a letter telling us there were customs due.

So we didn’t know it was waiting for us.

Now we’re waiting for it.

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

At least Paul’s now finished cutting the deluxe rewards.

So things will move quickly when it gets here.

For now, the wait is on.

When will it get here?

Soon I hope.

Development

I’m still chasing the package we’re trying to get redelivered. 

It’s currently in a depot in Germany.

I’m also still automating things.

There’s a joy in watching a task that would have taken you hours get completed in seconds.

There’s a few more things I’d like it to do:

• import a Kickstarter spreadsheet, 
• import and match up a Gamefound spreadsheet,
• build a fulfilment spreadsheet from those,
• import the latest fulfilment spreadsheet,
• update the accounts.

Some of those are more urgent than others.

Once this is done it should free up a lot of my limited time.

Time I can spend on game design. Website improvements. Preparing for our next Kickstarter.

I’m looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, Paul is still running the laser-cutter into the ground. Cutting the deluxe rewards. 

That’s a big fleet!

Bagging what he can with the wooden bits we now have. 

But almost nothing can be shipped until that third parcel comes back…

Family

Didn’t get a huge amount done this week.

Some progress on automating things.

A lot of fighting to find out where the last two packages we need for fulfilment are.

We’ve got one of them now, the other has gone back to Germany!

We’ll hopefully get it back soon.

We also had my sister-in-law and her husband visiting for the weekend.

Was great to see them.

And play some games.

New cards!

Even did a little playtesting :)

Cross-Check

The invoices are done. 

They took about two minutes to generate almost 250.

They would have taken me about five minutes each to do manually. 

So 12 hours saved. Or 6-12 evenings. Or two to six weeks.

The program took a few days to write, but will continue to pay dividends for years to come I hope.

I also used it as an opportunity to check things. Got the program to double check everything added up right.

Found a couple of transcription errors.

Things that backers wouldn’t have got. Then had to be corrected. At our expense. 

Would have been a crap customer experience too.

Very glad I wrote the program.

Repetition

I’m trained as a Software Engineer. 

It was my day job until 2015 and then part of my day job 2019-2020.

It means I have the skills (though rusty!) to write computer programs. To automate tasks I spend months on.

There’s a saying that if you repeat a task you should automate it.

Every time we go to Kickstarter I spent months massaging data from one spreadsheet to another. 

Kickstarter backers and Gamefound orders together. Into the format Paul prefers for fulfilment.

Then from there into invoices.

I’m automating the invoice creation at the moment.

Should have done this years ago.

Would have saved a boat-load of time.

Time I could have spent on game design, graphic design or something else worthwhile.

I’m an idiot.

Four

I started Eurydice Games four years ago.

To self-publish hand-made games.

Specifically not to go to Kickstarter.

Or mess up like I did last time. To learn from my mistakes.

Things have changed!

Paul joined and we formed a limited company a year later.

We’ve been to Kickstarter four times, each more successful than the last.

This year is already our most successful ever, and we’ve a lot of games we hope to ship in the next six weeks.

Things are changing further.

Paul is going to be employed by Eurydice Games from September.

And earn a salary.

I never managed that with Reiver Games.

I really hope we can continue to be successful enough to support Paul.

Here’s hoping year 5 is a good one!

Return

Today we’re driving back to the North.

I’ve a bunch of housekeeping tasks to do on my return.

And then the invoices. Still thinking if I can somehow automate that process to save time in the long run.

Next up after that is Xeno Wars. And Coalescence.

And we need a better web shop setup. Our current one is pants.

We’re starting to pay Paul from next month. We need the website to support sales between Kickstarters - not to hinder them.

We also need to get the next Kickstarters lined up ready to go.

Absent

I’m away.

Relaxing.

Seeing some family for the first time in 18 months.

Seeing my 9 month old niece for the first time.

See you in a bit!

Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about time.

How I spend my time after a Kickstarter.

Working out material quantities, ordering and chasing orders.

Then months of spreadsheets.

Combining the Kickstarter export with the Gamefound export.

Cross-reference with the accounts.

Double-checking everything.

Then writing the invoices. Using that collated information.

There’s got to be a better way.

My time would be better spent designing games and doing graphic design.

I’m thinking about databases.

Maybe I can spend a bunch of time now setting something up which will save me a lot of time in the future?

Relief

And breathe.

It’s been a stressful couple of weeks.

There’s only two outstanding orders for the Kickstarter fulfilment: boxes and wooden bits.

The boxes are pootling on, we’ve received proofs approved them and the full order arrives on Wednesday.

The wooden bits were all that was left.

They were due this week, so a couple of weeks ago I sent them and email checking it was all ok.

“We’re having difficulty getting time on the machines”, I was told - it would be late.

“How late?”, I enquired.

A different question was answered.

We’ve got 200-odd rewards to ship by the end of September. Paul’s planning a two-week holiday. There’s loads to cut, bag and box.

Are we delayed a week (no problem), a month (tight) or a quarter (deadlines missed) I wondered?

It took two weeks to get an answer to the questions.

I worried.

Our unusual business model means we’re insulated from the shipping chaos that’s stressing out every other publisher. It means we’re often able to hit our deadlines.

Nearly 400 people have entrusted us with tens of thousands of pounds of their hard earned cash.

I didn’t want to break that trust.

Fail them.

I found out on Wednesday they are delayed a couple of weeks.

Not a problem.

And relax.

Breathe.

A weight lifted.

Personal

This has been a week of two halves.

Like a football match.

During the weekday evenings I was populating the fulfilment spreadsheet.

It’s slow work.

Especially for the deluxe backers because I email them to see if they want their boxes personalised.

It’s worth it.

Some of their choices are very entertaining.

On the weekend I put that to one side.

Paul and his family visited for the weekend.

First time since Feb 2020.

We hung out. Played games. Playtested Coalescence and schemed about Xeno Wars.

It was great.

Oh, and there was some football on too.

Opportunities

It’s been an interesting week.

Thanks to the amazing success of our last Kickstarter, we might be able to employ Paul now that his day job contract is coming to an end.

Money will be tight though.

We came up with an idea to help with that.

A mini-pledge manager.

Can we generate enough extra pledges to pay Paul and fund the next Kickstarter?

Can we get the next Kickstarter ready in time - before we run out of money?

We’ve also been offered some potential free business support.

Experienced entrepreneurs giving us free advice.

We just need to make an interesting pitch.

And see if we get any interest from people we like.

Words

This week is a week of words.

We do a Kickstarter update at the end of each month.

And it’s quarterly email newsletter time.

Those last two ought to be different.

And I’m on to filling out the fulfilment spreadsheet, so lots of emails to deluxe backers asking if they’d like their copies personalised. 244 orders left to add to the spreadsheet.

Time to break out the pen and ink. 

Change Gear

I've spent the last month or more doing graphic design and placing orders.

The Box of Flicks 2 rules. And then dashboards.

Both much bigger jobs than I had expected.

A new box.

I've even re-done the Box of Flicks 1 rules (just added a components section and some ship rules that were in the Expansion, but not included in Box of Flicks 1).

It's been time consuming.

I'm placing the final order for materials today. Then everything is in flight.

There's only four orders outstanding, and I'm expecting two of those to arrive within a week.

The next thing for me is completing the fulfilment spreadsheet so Paul can ship stuff and then catching up on the bookkeeping.

Paul has been doing the cutting files and getting his tools together for fulfilment.

We've also had to order a replacement tube for the laser-cutter, which an engineer is fitting as part of a service this week.

Then Paul can start cutting in earnest (he can't do any fulfilment until the boxes and wooden bits arrive next month). 

Busy, busy...