Influence Our Games – Sign Up to Playtest!

We’ve been testing a new game – completely unrelated to the Assembly series. We think this may be our next game as development is progressing well. The inspiration came from an obscure traditional competitive card game that Janice’s nan taught her when she was 10 years old. Janice added a few extra rules so she could play it better with her nan. In essence, this was Janice’s first ever game design!

We’re now working on converting it to be fully cooperative with the aim to have fully cooperative, solo and competitive game modes all in a single box. In fact the current cooperative version barely resembles the original game but uses a few of the more unique game mechanisms such as the fanned discard pile.

The latest iteration uses 5 ‘suits’ with 6-8 cards per suit (number still being refined!).

The theme isn’t set yet but we’re working on a cops, robbers & fences theme, where the:

  • Deck is comprised of goods ready to be stolen
  • Cards in your hand are the goods you have stolen and have in your backpack.
  • Discard pile (bottom in photo) represents your stash of stolen goods at a hideout.
  • Two fanned sets of cards (middle in photo) are the goods you have sold to fences which you need to use fund your escape.

However certain actions will raise suspicions (track at top of photo) leading to the ‘cops’ getting closer to finding you. You have to earn enough money to escape before you get caught.

We know this is quite a departure from our normal games but at the same time we think this game still feels fresh and new. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this theme – we’re still considering other themes too (such as running a cattery).

We are hoping in the relatively near future we’ll be ready for some initial cooperativeplaytesting, if you’re interested please let us know.

We’re planning on doing PnP first and then later possibly digital (Tabletopia and/or Tabletop Simulator). You can register your interest here by clicking the button below. If you’re more interested in solo and/or competitive game modes, please still register and just tell us this and we’ll only contact you when these rulesets are available.


The Sensor Ghosts app is progressing nicely. Almost all the fundamental game controls are now in place and placeholder graphics have been implemented (need to be optimised for mobile still). 

We are now looking for small number of alpha testers and a larger number of beta testers. Alpha testers will have previous experience of bug reporting and need knowledge of the Sensor Ghosts rules as we haven’t implemented the tutorial yet. The beta testers will be broader range and prior experience and knowledge isn’t required 🙂

To register your interst in becoming an alpha/beta tester, click the button below.

Fail Fast & Create Great Games

Failing fast is often talked about in business but can be readily demonstrated as being highly important in tabletop board game design.

Getting ideas out of your head and onto paper is probably the first piece of advice I would give to anyone new to game design. What may seem like a fantastic idea in your head, whether it be simply an idea or a fully worked-out game, can turn out to be clunky, boring and simply not work when you get put it on paper. Prototyping fast and ultimately failing fast is therefore critical to successful game design.

I’m currently working on my next game: a card game that is loosely based on an obscure traditional competitive card game. This isn’t the first time I’ve started trying to design around this concept. It’s a game that my nan introduced me to when I was a kid and I have very fond childhood memories of playing it with her. Upon finding out it was actually a rather obscure game yet one I absolutely loved I wanted to bring it to more people. It was actually my very first attempt at a game design way back in 2015, before Assembly. I was sure it was going to work but simply put, it was awful – you were better off just playing the original than my slightly modified version using a deck of 52 playing cards.

Fast forward 5 years and I’m trying again, but this time I’m starting from the point that I want it to be fully cooperative. This requires significant changes to the game and moves away from just needing a deck of 52 cards. I thought I had it. I thought it was sorted but the more I played it, the more dissatisfied I became. I realised it just wasn’t right. Had I not prototyped it up and played it I would never have known this and instead gone on designing a game in my head that didn’t work.

I decided that I needed some external input so I sat down with my hubby, Stu and we brainstormed. My gut was telling me the problem was the win conditions. That they weren’t interesting enough but I was reluctant to ditch them as they were key to how the game played out, even if they did feel quite mechanical. 

After around half an hour of brainstorming, between us we managed to come up with what we thought was an excellent solution – we’d add a feeling of someone catching up to you using the existing cards which require some extra decision making. There would be ways to both positively and negatively influence this using the existing components. We’d also split out tracking to make it easier to handle during game play. We thought we were sorted but then I tried it and immediately I could see it didn’t work, there was just too much admin which was too easy to forget. It was too fiddly, so I removed it; it seemed like the perfect solution but if even I couldn’t remember to implement the rules, how was the average gamer going to remember?

A week or two passed and back to the drawing board we went again. Another brain storming session, this time longer, well over an hour just chatting through ideas. My gut was telling me the win conditions were the problem. That they weren’t exciting enough. But I needed them there to make sure the game wasn’t too easy and to encourage players to exhibit certain behaviours so they didn’t ‘break’ the game. But perhaps there was another solution? 

I resisted for a while and then it hit me. The idea Stu had for a ‘chase feeling’ could work but I needed to ditch all my current win conditions. We could influence how players interact with the cards through a different mechanism. Rather than specify what was required, we could instead reward behaviour that we wanted and penalise behaviour that we didn’t. This would incentivise players to play how the game was designed but would allow them to break the rules I had originally laid out without breaking the gameplay. The beauty of this is that it gives players more control over their actions as well as obvious consequences. It moved the power from game designer to player. It made playing it more fun. 

That’s not to say the game is complete. I still need to do a ton more testing and refining plus I still feel there’s a layer or two missing to make it the sort of game I’d want to publish, but I think we are moving in the right direction and we now have a much better game than we did a few weeks ago. But I’d say I’m at a stage that I’m happy to show it to others which is progress! Now I just need to start organising some playtesting!

However, had I not tried these new ideas immediately this could be a different story entirely. I would have gone on thinking the problem was solved when instead all we had done was make the gameplay worse. This is why failing fast is so important in game design. It’s not just about the ideas, it’s about how players interact with the components. How much they have to remember, the impact of luck and how this feels during game play. How fiddly it is. Without experiencing this for yourself, how do you know if it works or not?

But there’s something more important than getting your idea to the table and seeing if it works, it’s about recognising that it doesn’t work or it’s not quite right. Being willing to chuck away hours of playtesting to do something different & better. You have to be willing to change what you’re doing, which is probably the hardest thing of all.

Have you had an idea that you thought was excellent in your head but turned out not be as good as you expected?

What did you do?

How long did it take you to get it to paper?

If you’re interested in playtesting our latest game, you can apply here.

UK Games Expo Sale!

To celebrate the UK Game Expo (UKGE) we are having a sale on our webstore. From Friday 21st August until midday Wednesday 26th August many of our bundles will be discounted by up to 20%!

So if you want to update your Wren Games collection or you are just joining us on this journey, now’s the time to grab some of our games 🙂

Little Things Add Up – Part 4: Cost of Sales

Marketing costs

This section will be the most variable for any creator and will be dependent on what your marketing plan contains. And I do recommend you have a marketing plan, preferably on paper but at least in your head on what you plan to do after you have fulfilled your Kickstarter – how are you going to sell your remaining games?

Webhosting: You might currently be using free hosting, but if you want to add a shop to your website and/or remove ads then you may need to start paying for your hosting (£3-£25 per month). Fortunately, this is relatively cheap now, but you may choose to pay for a theme to help you get your website off the ground more quickly, especially if you are doing it yourself. If you’re unable to create your own website, then you may also need to budget for someone else to create and potentially maintain it for you.

Domain Name: In addition to your webhosting, there’s also the domain name which should also provide you with a business email address. This can be pretty cheap for your first year or two but after that the price goes up somewhat (£10-£20 per domain, per year) – be aware of that if you are in it for the long haul, especially if you are buying multiple domain names (i.e. one per game, .co.uk/.com etc…)

PO Box: If you have an email list for your digital marketing you are required to provide a valid address. You can use your home address but you may feel more comfortable providing a PO Box so your subscribers can’t look up your home address on Google maps (£12-£30 per month). CE regulations also require that you print you address on your game box, however, as I understand these regulations, you cannot use a PO Box in this instance. 

Ads: If you plan to order more games than you have backers on Kickstarter then you’ll need a way to sell them. You might think online, which is great but you’ll still need a way to drive people to your website and just shouting on social media will only get you so far – you might want to invest in some further ads, particularly if you are doing an official ‘retail launch’.

Shows: These are another way to sell your stock of games but comes with a whole host of costs. These include not only the stand itself but also the leaflets and banners to fill it, demo games to play (which will get worn quickly!) and your travel, accommodation and subsistence to attend. For larger shows you may also need some help either in the form of volunteers (you really still need to give them something even if it is just food, some games and a T-shirt) or paid helpers.

Reviews: Another way to raise awareness of your game is to get some reviews of your finished product. You probably got a lot of previews of your game before your Kickstarter (and probably are sending each previewer a copy of your game as a way of saying thank-you), but now you should get some proper reviews done too. These will generally cost you copies of your game plus shipping, which may cost more than the manufacture cost of the game! If you want rules videos or play-throughs then you are likely to have to pay for these, especially for the larger channels (£100-£800). However, you should never have to pay for a review.

Product Photography: For your marketing, ads and online store listings you are likely going to need some good product photography to draw buyers in. You may be a budding photographer and able to do this yourself, but you may need to get someone else to do it for you which may not be an insignificant cost. Often local universities have an ‘agency’ for their students so it might be quite cost effective to get a student to take these photos for you.

Demo Games: If you are selling direct to retailers then you may need to have several copies of the game for demo for the retailer to be able to better sell your game. These are in addition to the review copies and the ones you use for demos at shows. You may charge a reduced price for these games or you may provide the demo copies free of charge, possibly when a minimum number of copies have been purchased. It’s up to you.

Software & Subscriptions: The art and graphic design doesn’t stop when you’ve shipped your game. How are you going to make the ads, leaflets and banners? Maybe you have the publishing bug and have started work on a new game. Either way, you are likely going to have to maintain your Adobe subscription and/or purchase software to assist you with your marketing efforts.

Selling costs

So, your Kickstarter is complete and you are now focused on selling the remainder of your product and perhaps even covering some of the costs you incurred pre-Kickstarter. Unfortunately, the saying ‘you have to spend money to make money’ rings very true. There are several costs associated with selling.

Amazon Fees: Amazon not only has fees on each product that you sell, but also a monthly fee that you must pay as a business in order to sell on their platform. On top of this, given the number of products on Amazon, you are likely going to have to pay for ads (at least in your first month) to get your game off the ground and to give yourself a higher sales ranking, but potentially this will also be an ongoing cost. If using Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) you also need to account for the cost of sending your stock to Amazon. Ultimately, you may end up with no more profit selling via Amazon than selling directly to retailers. 

Other Selling Fees: If a platform doesn’t have a monthly, annual or upfront selling fee, most will have at least a per item selling fee (5%-15%) plus payment processing fees. And be aware the per item fee and payment processing fee, in general, applies both to the selling price of your product and any associated postage, eroding the total amount you get.

Payment Processing Fees: If you plan to continue to sell your game after the end of your Kickstarter, particularly if you plan to sell at conventions and/or online direct to consumers then you will likely incur payment processing fees. Depending on the provider this may be a monthly fee and/or a per transaction fee. If the latter, just make sure your pricing can cope with this. Additionally, if you want to be able to accept card payments at conventions then you’ll likely need to buy a point-of-sale device (c. £15-£50).

Shipping: If you’re selling to retailers, distribution, through a third-party fulfilment or consignment service (e.g. FBA, GamesQuest, CoolStuffInc), you need to ensure you budget for shipping your stock to them. In these cases, you are likely to be shipping cases at a time that will probably be heavy and quite expensive to ship. Make sure you have budgeted this into your costings and ultimately your sale price.

Storage: So, you’ve got all your games ready for selling but where are you going to store them? Yes, it’s great to build a fort made from games but realistically have you got space to store them in your home? Or maybe if you’re lucky your parents’ house? Are you even allowed to? Best check your home insurance just in case. Most people realistically won’t have space to store the games so you’ll have to pay to store them somewhere else. If you’re using Fulfilment by Amazon, they will also be charging you storage fees so make sure you’ve budgeted for these.

Stock Transfer: You may have had all your stock shipped to your fulfilment centres but you will need to decide where to store your excess stock in the long term. If you choose to move it, there will be costs associated with this (transport, insurance, incoming fees, etc.).

Hopefully having read this and all the previous blog posts you now realise that when you choose to self-publish you are actually starting up a board game publishing business and this has many additional costs associated with it. It’s not as simple as costs associated with manufacture, shipping and fulfilment there are many, many more costs that you will encounter.

If you’ve set up a business before, most of these costs won’t come as a surprise to you, but if it’s your first time, make sure you have a plan on how you are going to cover these costs so they don’t catch you out in the future.

Disclaimer: This is blog should not be considered financial and/or legal/regulatory advice. Make sure you consult your own independent experts before using any of these assumptions, particularly if you are selling in multiple countries around the world.

Little Things Add Up – Part 3: Ongoing Business Costs

There are a number of ongoing costs associated with running a business. Some of these costs are mandatory, although their applicability depends on the choices you have made in your product design and company creation. If you don’t do/pay for something you are meant to, there are generally fines for non-compliance. 

Other costs will be optional and will depend upon how many hours you yourself want to put in or whether you want the simplicity of someone else doing it for you.

The commonality between most of the costs in this section is that they are related to the finance part of the business. They do not necessarily need to form part of your Kickstarter goal, but you should be aware that they exist and plan on how you will cover them.

Import Duties, Taxes & Bonds: You may have put EU/US/Canada/Australia friendly on your Kickstarter page but make sure you know what this really means. If you have promised this and your base costs increase such that they go over the minimum allowable amount to be VAT/GST free then you may need to look at alternative solutions, particularly if sending a pallet in country isn’t a feasible option. For example, Canada has one of the lowest thresholds for importing goods at just CAD$20, equating to just c. £11. 

Sales Tax & VAT: Depending on where in the world you are, your finances and your business model, you may choose to voluntarily register or have to register for VAT and/or your sales may be liable for sales taxes. This means that a percentage of your selling price (19-25%) will be payable to the relevant government in tax. This is in addition to tax on your profits. Make sure you budget for this in your pricing model, in particular your unit price whereby a 1:5 (or 1:6 with VAT) cost to consumer price is recommended as a guide. You should also realise that retailers and distributors expect the standard discount on the ex-VAT price (e.g. a retailer will expect to pay £10 for a game with a selling price of £24, assuming a 50% discount based on the ex-VAT price of £20).

Tax on Profits: If you make profit as a result of your Kickstarter, you will have to pay tax on them so ensure that you have sufficient funds to cover this tax bill (c. 15-40%). Your company accounts are done at the end of your financial year which is when your year-end profit is calculated. If, for example, you have not yet paid your manufacturer before the end of your financial year, all the money you hold in your bank account will be considered ‘profit’, thus eroding your total amount of money available. This means you must carefully plan your expenditure to make sure you don’t get caught out.

Employer Taxes: If you are paying yourself a salary from your earnings you will need to account for any employment taxes such as NI in the UK. Check out what are relevant in your own country so you don’t get caught out.

Pension: In the UK, if your business consists of more than 1 salaried person you will be legally obliged to automatically enrol at least 1 of the employees in a pension scheme. They can just then opt out (costing you nothing but time) but it’s once again another consideration when starting up a business. However, if you plan this to be your full-time job at some point, perhaps setting up a pension isn’t a bad idea?

Bank Account Fees: If you register as a limited company, it his highly advisable (if not required) that you have a separate business bank account for all your business transactions. However, unlike personal banking, business banking isn’t free. Depending on the bank you may be charged per transaction (c. £0.10-£1 per payment) and a monthly or annual fee (c. £5-£15 per month). Unless you plan to close your business bank account as soon as you have fulfilled your Kickstarter, you need to budget this as an ongoing cost. And if you haven’t got quite enough money, don’t forget to consider overdraft fees which can quickly accumulate.

Book-Keeping Software: Although you can do everything you need to with Excel, online software does make booking keeping and tax returns much easier and much less time consuming. It will allow you to easily send invoices and import transactions from point of sales units, Stripe and PayPal. It’s up to you if you use these, but if you grow big enough you’ll probably want to invest in one of these at some point (£8-£30 per month). If you’re a UK VAT registered company, from 1st April 2019 you must use one of these approved software systems to submit your VAT return. 

Accountant: An accountant isn’t a requirement for a business across the full year but you may find them useful. It depends if you are happy to do the day-to-day financial processes such as book keeping, quarterly tax returns yourself. You may find it useful to have a second pair of eyes to look them over after you have completed them or even for someone else to do it entirely. Either way, be aware you need to swot up on your accounting knowledge and/or have the money to hire an accountant to do it for you. However, if you opted to become a Limited company you’ll likely need to have an accountant check and file your end-of-year accounts. These accounts need to be filed with the IRS/HMRC and there will be fines for getting them wrong and/or being late so this isn’t really an optional cost. And you never know, they might even be able to find a way to save you some money!

Insurance: This is a complete minefield. There are tons of different things to think about and could be a blog post all on its own but given the broad nature of options and differing business setups, here is some of the things you may wish to research and consider when considering insurance (costing £200 – £2,500+):

  • Public liability, for attending and/or exhibiting at shows, visiting clients and suppliers, etc. Different shows have different requirements, so make sure you have adequate cover for all the shows you plan to attend, probably in the region of £2m-5m of coverage.
  • Product liability, in case someone sues you – also read up on right of recourse to see if this is enforceable, if not your insurance may be worthless. Also check where in the world you are covered and your excess in each area.
  • Stock Cover, in case of fire, theft, loss, etc.
  • Assets cover, for non-stock items, e.g. laptops – just like personal contents insurance.
  • In-transit, in case your container falls off the ship, the truck crashes, etc.
  • Shipping, for parcels to backers.
  • Car, make sure you are insured for business use if you plan to use it at all for things related to your business.
  • Employer liability, if you are employing other people (this may also affect volunteers – check your local employment law).
  • Offsite, e.g. cash, stock and assets at shows.

Depending At each stage in the process, make sure you know who is responsible in terms of insurance and what cover they have. For example, most shipping companies come with some base level of cover but this is unlikely to fully cover your stock so you may wish to top this up with your own insurance. Also, know who is liable for loading and unloading your product during its final journey – does the insurance you have cover this? You don’t need to insure against everything listed above, but I advise that you know how much risk you are taking and ensure you are willing to accept this. That way, if anything should happen, it happens with your eyes open.

Little Things Add Up – Part 2: Manufacture & Delivery

We now move onto the costs post Kickstarter that may not be immediately obvious when costing your Kickstarter and when running your new business venture. They are grouped into types of costs with each section ordered from approximately highest impact costs to lowest impact costs. Obviously, this is all relative and will depend on the specifics of your campaign so make sure you add a good dose of common sense to this advice to make it relevant to your campaign. 

But first, just a quick note on sole trader versus registered company. Some of the costs in the following sections are only, or more applicable, to registered companies and you will need to decide whether you choose to register or not. There are pros and cons for each and everyone’s situation is different. You can find a good summary of the pros and cons on Simply Business

We decided to register Wren Games as a limited company for the nominal annual fee of £12. The main reason for this decision is a limited company means that Wren Games becomes a distinctly different entity to our personal finances. We have a house, 2 young children and careers other than games to think about. Having this separation gives us at least a little protection if something went catastrophically wrong (and we were not personally responsible for this issue). So, although it brings in extra costs, it also brings us peace of mind. 

Manufacturing Costs

Although most of the manufacturing and fulfilment costs were included in the first blog post there are a few extra ones that you may or may not have considered and this section is about the ones that aren’t as obvious.

Samples: Depending on which factory you go with the costs of samples and proof may be in addition to your unit cost. Although you may have already budgeted this into your costs, what if it wasn’t right first time and you need to do a second, or third round of samples? What if you need them urgently and have to pay for express shipping? Again, you don’t need to include costs for 3 versions at express shipping but it might be worth having enough in your budget for a second iteration, especially if you have a complex product.

Advanced Copies: You may want some advanced copies to demo at an upcoming show or to get in the reviews queue of larger reviewers ready for the release of your game. You may choose to air freight production copies from your manufacturer or you may opt to get some made up by your manufacturer early or a more local one. Either way, sending stuff fast and making small batches is expensive.

Barcodes: If you plan to sell your games through Amazon and retailers you are going toned a valid barcode. There are many options here – you can go for an official one with an annual fee or you can try the ‘second hand’ barcode market. If you go the cheaper route, be prepared that if it doesn’t work that you have the money to reprint a load of labels so you can place a new barcode over the old on. 

Manufacture Price Changes: Although you will have (hopefully) got a quote before your Kickstarter, quotes generally only have a validity of 30 days, plus your requirements inevitably change. Be aware of paper price fluctuations and anything else that may impact the price of your quote. Once your Kickstarter has finished you’ll need to get a re-quote for your finalised requirements based on current market prices, this could go up or down. If it goes up, be prepared to negotiate – ask for a breakdown. Understand why the quote has gone up and if there’s anything you can do about it, but best of all, have a pot of risk money to account for any price fluctuations when planning your Kickstarter.

Exchange Rate Fluctuation: Exchanges rates are fluid and unless you are buying all of your components in the same currency as your bank account you will have to factor in exchange rates. I suggest you take a worst-case scenario by looking at the lowest it has been in the past 12 months and base your calculations on this. But then also note, you are unlikely to get the exact exchange rate through your bank, they generally offer a worse one so find out roughly how different the two are and then factor this in as well. Depending on the size of your order this cost could be quite significant or you could be money in! For example, let’s say you planned your campaign during a high period where it was £1 = $1.42 but when you come to pay your manufacturer the value has fallen to £1 = $1.25. So that’s an additional £170 per £1,000 of cost.

Bank Charges: Depending on your bank and who you are manufacturing with you may incur a charge for each transfer you make. This is generally the case if you are transferring to a different currency and/or if you have a business bank account. These fees can be significant, particularly if you are making several payments so make sure you know what they are and how many payments you are likely to be making. As an idea, this could be anything from £10-50 per transaction.

Re-Work: Although we expect everything to go right first time, mistakes do happen, particularly if this is your first time through the process. Be aware how much a reprint might cost and where you draw the line for something to be ok and something needing to be reprinted. If you have tooling and/or moulds, consider the cost to alter these if your minis don’t quite work. Changes cost money.

Reprints: Although you’d hope everything is perfect first time, unfortunately mistakes happen and sometimes that requires reprinting some or all of the cards is required. Good proof reading by someone other than yourself will help minimise this risk but it won’t eliminate it. Make sure you have a plan and know at what point a reprint is necessary.

Overs: In an ideal world, your manufacturer will make exactly the number of copies you order but this isn’t an ideal world and you are likely to be unhappy if they delivered less than you ordered so they make allowances for this. Overs is the number of additional copies they make, deliver and charge you for and tends be somewhere in the region of 5-10% of your order quantity.

Quality Replacements: In an ideal world, every single copy of your game will be perfect but it’s not an ideal world and there will be some quality issues with your games and your backers/customers will request replacements. Make sure you have some games/components set-aside for you to be able to provide replacements, and of course have the money for the shipping of them.

Replacement Copies: Not every copy you manufacture will make it to an end customer. You will have losses and damage throughout the process whether it be dropped as they are being load/unloaded, run-over by a forklift truck or simply lost in the post. It’s therefore wise to plan for this by buying additional copies to mitigate this risk. Other topics within these blog posts will cover the areas that this is likely to happen to help you budget how many extra to buy.

Safety Testing: All products must be safe however the degree to which this must be proved depends on the age target for your game. If it’s 14+ (13+ in US) then it’s considered not a toy and simply needs to abide by general safety regulations. However, if you put an age of less than 14 (and plan to sell in Europe), then you need to CE mark your product which requires that you comply to EN71. This is likely to require additional testing if you cannot provide adequate evidence in your technical file to prove abidance to these regulations. Interestingly you must not CE mark your product if it does not fit into one of the CE required categories.

Fulfilment Costs

Pick Costs: Fulfilment centres do not give you a free pass when picking your shipments. They tend to have a limit on how many items they will put in a box before they start charging you a pick fee. This may be 1 or 2 items or it may be as many as 4, but think about all those stretch goals and add-ons – are you adding extra pick items? If so, have you budgeted the extra 20p/26c pick cost per item? If not, those stretch goals and add-ons might be costing you more than you thought.

Labelling Fees: Unless you plan to adequately barcode and mark-up everything yourself you may encounter fees for your fulfilment centre to do this for you. To ensure every item is picked correctly, it needs a unique SKU which is ideally a barcode for ease of picking. If you don’t do this, your fulfilment centre probably will and they may charge you for the extra work that they incur doing it.

Lost/damaged shipments: Inevitably, a number of your shipments will get lost or damaged. A good general estimate is 1-3% of shipments. You have a choice here, pay for compensation which can work out very costly, or take the risk and replace all lost and damaged items (just make sure you have enough spare to fulfil all of your orders or can quickly get some more!). Note that replacements you buy are likely to be at a premium in low volume. And what about when the request for a replacement comes a month or two after you’ve finished fulfilling? You’re unlikely to get as good a rate as your fulfilment centre for shipping, so if you’re doing it yourself make sure you’ve budgeted for this higher cost.

Storage: Your fulfilment provider may provide free storage for games that they are fulfilling on your behalf, but if you have ordered additional stock and have had this shipped to them then they may charge you storage fees for this additional stock. Or perhaps they charge storage fees regardless. Make sure you know what their policy is. Wastage: In an ideal world every game you make will be accounted for in some way however games do disappear. Whether this be due to being run over by a forklift truck, dropped during fulfilment causing damage, poor inventory management meaning they just go missing or due to an unscrupulous employee at your storage facility, games will go missing so make sure you have enough spare (c. 1%).

Little Things Add Up – Part 1: Campaign Costs

This blog was originally posted to Cardboard Vault but is no longer available so is now being posted here to ensure it remains available.

There’s a reason why you want to plan in some financial risk when costing a Kickstarter: There will always be unforeseen costs in addition to the obvious costs. This series of blog posts will briefly cover the obvious costs but more importantly what other costs are you likely to encounter when starting up your new board game publishing business venture.

Note: This blog is written from a perspective of a UK creator – things may be different in other countries. 

Pre-Kickstarter costs

There are a host of costs you’ll encounter pre-Kickstarter, most of which you probably won’t have kept track of but if you plan to do this properly, keep track of them as you can offset them against your profits. The most common costs you will incur are discussed below. 

Prototyping: You need to prototype to make a game (obviously!) and most of these costs will be hidden as, for most of us, game design is a hobby and who isn’t willing to spend a bit of money on their hobby?

Marketing: This cost is a little more obvious when it hits the wallet. In order to succeed you need an audience which required marketing. Yes, you can do lots of free things like being actively engaged on social media however you also need to consider: 

  • Review Copies/Prototypes: At a minimum, you need to get copies of your game into the hands of reviewers and previewers so you’re going to have the cost associated with making these. You can reduce this cost by doing a lot yourself but printing isn’t cheap. 
  • Preview Fees: It may also be wise to note that more of the previewers with larger channels are starting to charge for Kickstarter related videos ($100-$800) as there are just so many of them and videos take time to plan, shoot and edit. At the very least you should budget to send them a free copy of your game at one of the higher pledge levels.
  • Conventions: You may also want to consider attending conventions to help build your audience. If you would not normally be going to these and/or you are going to additional expos/cons, hiring demo tables and/or a stand then you’ve got some extra costs there. 
  • Ads: Another possibility you may consider is using Facebook ads or similar to help build brand awareness and your mailing list prior to the launch of your campaign.

In terms of which of these you include is entirely up to you but I’d recommend you write these costs off and not include them in your Kickstarter goal. If your Kickstarter doesn’t fund, you get nothing, if it funds you may be able to recoup some of these costs but if you can’t then you are in no worse a position than if it didn’t fund at all. As a first-time creator you want your goal to be as low as possible but I do think it should be entirely realistic as hiding costs makes things look unrealistic to backers in terms of what a project actually costs, but this is more of a personal opinion – I like to be as transparent as possible.

Kickstarter Costs

You’ve probably already accounted for all the obvious costs to get your game manufactured (assuming all other aspects such as art, but just in case here they are in brief. 

Manufacture: This is the actual costs of making your goods. It is made up of the material costs, assembly costs, and tooling but other things you may need to account for are:

  • Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ): Most manufacturers have a minimum quantity of order to make your business worthwhile. This tends to range anywhere between 500 and 1500 for most manufacturers but could be as high as 2000 or even 10,000 copies!
  • Tooling: For your box design, for punchboards, for minis, etc.
  • Stretch Goals: These generally cost money so make sure you know how much before you launch your campaign!
  • Stock: You may decide you want to order more than you need to fulfil to your Kickstarter backers with the aim of selling them at conventions, online and with retailers. This isn’t something that you should generally include as part of your Kickstarter cost but if you plan to do this, make sure you have the money upfront to cover this cost.

Shipping: This is the process of getting your games from your manufacturer to your fulfilment centre and/or storage facility and consists of many parts. Exactly what is included will depend on how you are shipping (rail, truck, sea) and where you are shipping from/to. Some of the costs you may encounter include:

  • Freight forwarder fees, e.g. service charge, collation of goods onto a single pallet, documentation generation, etc.;
  • Transportation to the port;
  • Origin port and destination ports fees;
  • Shipping cost, noting that if you are shipping to multiple destinations you may be hit with minimum fees meaning your costs won’t necessarily half if you split your pallets.
  • Insurance in case your container falls into the sea – if anything, normally only a bare minimum is automatically covered;
  • Import charges and taxes: e.g. duty, VAT, bonds;
  • Trucking to final destination;
  • Unloading from the truck to the warehouse including incoming warehouse fees.

Fulfilment: This is the process of shipping your rewards to backers. You may opt for a single fulfilment centre or multiple scattered around the world, or you may be brave enough to self-fulfil your Kickstarter, but don’t forget to account for: 

  • Project setup charge;
  • Stretch goals making packages heavier;
  • The weight of packing materials;
  • Price increases between campaign and actual fulfilment date;
  • Price increase due to changing supplier;
  • Insurance to cover stock whilst at the fulfilment centre (check what level they cover by default and if you are happy with this)

And if you plan to self-fulfil, don’t forget to include the cost of the boxes and packing materials in your shipping estimate. And if you’ve friends helping you, the cost of pizza for you all!

Fees: These are the obvious Kickstarter fee, payment processing fees and pledge manage fee (if used).

Sensor Ghosts Released to Retail

This month, Wren Games launched its second but stand-alone game in the Assembly series to retail.

Sensor Ghosts is a challenging cooperative or solo moving maze puzzle set in space with an AI determined to kill you.

Sensor Ghosts is a game where you’ll need to play it again and again to uncover the strategies that work, but luckily each game, success or failure will leave you wanting more. Sensor Ghosts is quick to setup and play giving you plenty of opportunity to fit games in to refine your strategies.

Here’s what Gav Hudson of Zatu said about Sensor Ghosts in his recent review:

Wren Games have done it again and done it even better. Packed into a small box is an accessible but deep and challenging game experience. I was surprised and enamoured by Assembly and I adore this even more. It builds on the sleek, unique design and adds a fluidity and dynamism that ramps up the excitement.Sensor Ghosts might be difficult, but it goes out of its way to welcome you in. And what a game to be welcomed in to. I haven’t owned it a week and have played the hell out of it solo and co-op. There is something addictive about it. It might not be as flashy as many other games, but it has rocketed itself into contention for my game of the year.”

Why Design Thematically?

TLDR:

  • There has been a polarised view between some reviewers as to whether story enhances abstract games or not (based on reviews of Assembly).
  • We wanted theme through the use of story telling to be engaging and part of the experience of playing Assembly.
  • We followed this through in Sensor Ghosts which gave us design constraints creating new design challenges.
  • Stories aids memory, therefore linking stories to rules will hopefully assist with the remembering of rules.
  • What do you think? Does story add, detract or have no effect on games for you?

Theme and story is very important to Stu and I. In our opinion, it makesa game and so it was something that was very important for us to get right in all of our games. It is also something that often gets mentioned by reviewers when discussing Assembly, albeit with a somewhat polarised view, for example:

The first thing that reeled me in was a combination of the theme and how it was expressed in the rules. There was a witty humor laced throughout those rules and it made me want to try this game.– Cardboard Clash

The premise strikes me as a little convolutedfor what amounts to an essentially abstract puzzle game, but, beneath the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, the core game is stimulating, satisfying and very replayable.”  – Boards Eye View

Whatever your opinion, this blog post is about why it is important to us to design thematically and the unexpected positive influence it had on our design process.

Note: If you’re not familiar with Assembly or Sensor Ghosts, I highly recommend you watch this 3 minute video giving an overview before reading this blog to give you more context.

Assembly

You are on an orbital platform that assembles spaceships. All was going well until a deadly virus struck and wiped out the entire staff, except you. The computer has quarantined the station, is venting the atmosphere and has now also brought in re-enforcements. She’ll do anything to stop you from leaving, including changing the rules. To survive you must escape.

When we set out designing Assembly, the original premise was based on my experience as a project manager where I managed projects developing new hi-tech products. 

As you can imagine, what we call in the trade, “scope creep” was a common issue that we had to combat. For those of you not yet inducted into the realms of project management, scope creep is when the requirements change during the project, generally with the requirements increasing beyond what was originally planned. 

Scope creep has a direct impact on both schedule (more things take longer to do) and cost (more time = more money). In order to try and prevent the delayed project delivery and higher costs, what often happens is something is added in and something else is taken out.

In Assembly this is simulated by the ‘Scramble’ each time you go through the deck, i.e. you pick up all the Blueprint cards that have not been locked (i.e. anything that has not yet been finished), they are shuffled and then laid out again representing the changing project requirements.

As interesting as this is to me, we felt that probably to most people this is a very dry subject and was unlikely to make many people want to buy Assembly. Our options were to either:

  1. Just make it an abstract puzzle with rules, pretty art and no significant theme.
  2. Tie everything within the game to a strong theme to provide a thematic abstract game.

As you probably already know we went with option 2 but why? This is where we need to talk more about our inspiration.

Inspiration

There are two key games that really inspired us during the design process of Assembly. They are Sylvionby Shadi Torbey and Dungeon Petzby Vlaada Chvátil. 

Sylvion has beautiful thematic art, is designed for 1-2 players, has multiple game modes and comes in a small box. This is everything we loved in a game in one package. The overall experience and longevity of gameplay with the multiple mini expansions really inspired us to make Assembly what it is (e.g. Malfunctions, multiple roles, Glitches). However, although Sylvion had theme it did not have much story. 

On the other hand, Dungeon Petz, a game with very quirky art that needs very little story has stories for everything. We loved discovering about each of the ‘petz’ in the games with Fluffy being a firm favourite and it really took our gaming experience when playing from good to great. In fact it is one of only a handful of competitive games in our collection.


Fluffy from Dungeon Petz: We don’t need to know anything about her but it enhances the overall gaming experience if we feel we know her.

So, this brings us to why bother with the effort of story when a game doesn’t need it? Or further, why bother creating lotsof story in a game when you can just get away with a little intro to set the scene?

For us this has two-fold implications, firstly Stu and I enjoy a game much more when there is story. We have in fact got rid of games with perfectly reasonable gameplay as there simply was a complete lack of story (I’m looking at you Start Trek: Expeditions!). We love flavour text on cards, it gives us a reason for doing our actions rather than just going through the motions. It gives us purposewhich ultimately increases our enjoyment of the games we play.

This may not give everyone enjoyment, but it’s quite easy to not read something, it’s much harder to make up something. For us, theme andstory are a must.

Sensor Ghosts

You have escaped both the virus ridden space station and the clutches of the station’s computer. You must now make your way back to Earth through the asteroid belt but something seems to be messing with your sensors. The computer has somehow got on board and is now trying to thwart your escape and to make matters worse, Earth is refusing to let you land: the only way to persuade themis if you collect a virus sample en-route which can assist with the creation of a vaccine.

Moving on to Sensor Ghosts, we went into designing this game with the mentality of ‘designing within the story confines’ from the start. 

Several Assembly backers asked if there would be a sequel and after a little pondering we thought this would be a great idea. Sensor Ghosts therefore started within a very strict thematic confine: it must follow the Assembly storyline and be set afterwards as well as having all the other design principles we already discussed (i.e. multiple play options). 

This gave us the idea of the journey back to Earth and we couldn’t get rid of the ‘lovely’ computer from Assembly who you’d fought so hard to escape from. Additionally, just moving around a grid is not as exciting as it could be, so we also decided to bring through the virus that wiped everyone out in Assembly. For anyone who has won a game of Assembly, you’ll perhaps have realised that the computer isn’t crazed at all, she is in fact just doing her job and trying to protect Earth and you are in fact the crazed one. However, your survival instinct is so great you still insist on going back to Earth (who aren’t best pleased!) – why should they take the risk and let you land? And that’s why we brought the collection of the virus sample over into Sensor Ghosts.

Sensor Ghosts started out as a very basic move and grid manipulation game, but it didn’t provide sufficient challenge so an unrevealed grid mechanic was added in which fitted nicely with the computer hacking your sensors. However, we all know that space is not static but is constantly moving which resulted in the ‘Re-Scan’ and the ability to flip cards multiple times, each time you do this you essentially increase your confidence that you know what is in that space sector as with space always moving and dodgy sensors you would rarely know exactly what was there unless you looked. 

And then came movement. The core of the game is about moving through a grid (which might be considered pretty dull if not managed correctly) and it also meant that one of the main things needed were movement cards. To make this more interesting, we included the mechanisms that to turn the ship, you had to burn extra fuel. This not only added an extra layer of strategy but also works with physics (yes Stu and I are physicists); if you are going forward you have inertia, therefore if you want to turn you are going to have to provide extra thrust to go in a different direction, thus why it costs 2 Fly cards (twice the amount of fuel spent) to change direction. 

But what other reasons are there for designing thematically?

Many years ago when I was undertaking my graduate training we had a talk on presentations and leadership and I was referred to a book called Squirrel Inc., a book that discusses how storying telling makes messages more compelling. It focuses on how to use this in leadership situations but for me, the key takeaway is that what people remember when listening to a talk or reading a book is how they feltwhen they did it. 


How can story telling enhance your game?

Additionally, think about how you remember things. Is it easier to remember a list of seemingly random things or a story that someone told you? For most people, if you weave something into a story they are much more likely to rememberit.  

Rules are essentially a list of things that need to be remembered and the thing Stu and I struggle with most is remembering rules (particularly as we have so many games and so little time!). I often just go with what thematically feels right as I hate having to look up multiple rules mid-game; we can play it right next time!

So, by intertwining story into our rules, we have hopefully made them not only more fun to read but also more memorable, for example:

  • You are deploying a room module onto the assembly line rather than drawing and placing a token onto a card.
  • You are searching for a virus sample so that Earth lets you land rather than picking up and delivering a token to the finish line.

Our aim is that by linking every aspect of the mechanisms to theme we are making our games easier to learn, rules easier to remember and most importantly (to us) gives you a sense of purpose when playing. 

In was our hope that incorporating story throughout the rules would also enhance the experience, taking “essentially an abstract puzzle game” to be a vivid struggle against a crazed computer. A theme that’s often seen in many sci-fi movies such as 2001, and given that Stu and I grew up on sci-fi it was an obvious choice for us.

However, this linking of theme had a good but unexpected consequence: it gave us boundaries when designing. It kept the design streamlined as we couldn’t just add a random mechanic in that made no thematic sense. 

Every time we changed or added something we asked ourselves “is this thematic?”. If the answer was no, the idea was ditched. If it was a really good idea, we would look to see if the theme could somehow be made to accommodate it but if it couldn’t then no matter how great the idea was it was parked as it would take away from the simplicity of the core of the game. 

This is how Assembly and Sensor Ghosts came to be what you see today: We took our original concepts, came up with a theme and refined within these thematic confines to produce a thematic abstract puzzle game; thematic and abstract are two words that are not normally seen in the same sentence – do you feel there is a place for thematic abstract games? Can you name any others?

Lastly, let us know which side of the fence you sit on – are you with Cardboard Clash who feels the theme adds to the gameplay or with Boards Eye View who feel it’s superfluous? Let us know!

If you’re interested in trying out Assembly and Sensor Ghosts, they are both currently live on Kickstarterso please do check out our project.

Kickstarter is now FUNDED

We’ve just got home from the UK Games Expo to find we are FUNDED!!

Who’d believe that we’d fund in half the time it took us to get Assembly funded first time round?!

Thank-you everyone for your support so far and now let’s get on to those stretch goals!

Sensor Ghosts and Assembly: Re-Sequence & Override is now FUNDED!

Kickstarter is LIVE

Today we launched our second Kickstarter campaign. We haven’t decided yet if we are brave or stupid (or possibly both!) as our campaign has 3 distinct parts:

  1. Sensor Ghosts: A brand new cooperative puzzle game. It’s the thematic sequel to Assembly but a completely independent game.
  2. Re-Sequence & Override: A new double expansion for Assembly bringing 2 new game variants that will keep you on your toes.
  3. Assembly 3-4 Players: Have you ever wished you could play Assembly with more than 1 other person? Well we’ve now worked out how you can. The ruleset to enable you to do this will be available to download from our Kickstarter page and we will have a stretch goal for a printed version!

You may ask why we are running all of this together and the simple answer is with 2 young children and other jobs, the prospect of running 2 Kickstarter campaigns in 1 year sent us running to the hills but we didn’t want to sit on what we had created either. We therefore took the bold(?) decision to do it all at once which also gives you the benefit of combined shipping.

Guest Blog: Little Things Add Up

Janice recently wrote a 4-part guest blog for Cardboard Vault detailing many of the costs that a Kickstarter creator may incur before, during and in the 12-month period after running a crowdfunding campaign.

It’s a must read for any budding Kickstarter creators out there or if you are simply interested in the behind-the-scenes of a small tabletop games publishing business.

“There’s a reason why you want to plan in some financial risk when costing a Kickstarter: There will always be unforeseen costs in addition to the obvious costs. This series of blog posts will briefly cover the obvious costs but more importantly what other costs are you likely to encounter when starting up your new board game publishing business venture.”  Keep Reading.

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