If you’ve been following us on Kickstarter, you will know that we successfully funded Assembly in July of this year after the campaign had been live for just 12 days. When we set out to crowdfund Assembly we had no idea what to expect. Actually, I lie. We expected to fail.
We had a mailing list of around 100 people, 400 Twitter followers and around 80 Facebook likes. This is not a strong position for starting a Kickstarter campaign but we felt that although our base was small, our engagement was strong. Plus there’s more to launching a campaign than follower numbers. There’s timing and for us we need to launch by the end of May else we wouldn’t get the chance to do it in the near future.
Janice was on maternity leave, her parents were around to help with childcare and Sammie, our newest arrival, was still in the ‘I like to sleep’ phase, having been born in previous October. Stu was also still on his career break as he had spent the past 2 years being a stay-at-home dad and re-training to become a Software Engineer; he was due to start his new job in August 2018. So we decided that June 2018 was the right time for us and we gave it the best shot we could. Worst case? We would have wasted (a lot) of time. Best case? We get to see our creation in reality. We banked on the fact of our strong engagement and the fact we felt that we had a good product.
So what did we do to prepare for the campaign?
In the run-up to the campaign, Janice had put nap times to good use. Whilst lying in bed with a small baby and a toddler, she started to build our profile on Social Media. A few months in she realised that she was not getting much traction on Facebook and just 1 month before the campaign switched our main focus to Twitter which ultimately became our highest social media referrer, but perhaps better, it has become a place where we have found the most supportive community. It’s a community we still pride ourself of being part of.
We also made a lot of prototype copies of Assembly. We managed to get 1 bigger name reviewer, Ricky Royal, on board but we mostly contacted small to medium reviewers. We particularly chose reviewers whose content we liked. We budgeted for 10 preview copies, made by a local printed, but they made a slight mistake on one page and had to reprint the entire job. This ultimately left us with almost 10 additional copies. For just a little more, we were able to make those 10 partial copies into complete copies and send them to a few more reviewers, which was lucky as by this point we were actually getting requests to review Assembly. Our tiny blue box was attracting some attention.
We kept an eye on reviewers websites and to our delight every single one loved Assembly. We couldn’t believe it. They were calling it innovative. We thought: Really? Are you sure? We’d had our head in Assembly on and off for the past 2 years. It didn’t feel very innovative to us any more. In fact it seemed quite simple and obvious as things do when you are so engrossed in them. The reviews trickled out in the 2 months leading up to the launch of the campaign, but still we prepared mentally to fail, although deep inside there was a little light of hope, hope that we would succeed.
Note: If you’d like to read why we changed from mini to standard cards and a slightly larger box, read this Kickstarter update.
The Campaign
I’m not sure we’ve been so nervous as the day of the campaign launch. We had planned launch in the middle of afternoon nap time so we could deal with the hope influx of backers. Sammie and Amelie were snoozing and sound asleep as planned, and Stu and I were sitting on the sofa ready to hit the go live button. And then something magic happened. We got backers. Lots of backers! We didn’t fund immediately, but with such a limited marketing budget (we initially ran £20 of Facebook ads), we didn’t expect to.
By the end of day 1 we were 28% funded, with 30% after 3 days being the magic number for a high likelihood of the campaign successfully funding. It looked like we were going to fund. We were going to fund! Hopefully….
I’m not sure we’ve been so attached to our screens, sitting there constantly refreshing the Kickstarter page watching the number (slowly) go up. It was exciting, exhilarating, nerve wracking. And that was our life for the next 4 weeks! Or was it?
5 days before the UK Games Expo we decided taking a stand would be a good idea. Literally minutes before the deadline we snagged the very last stand and then had to quickly design and get printed banners and flyers.
The next couple of days was a hive of activity designing and packing. We had a relatively modest car so packing all the kit for our stand and for 2 adults and 2 children was interesting to say the least. Needless to say our small hatchback was very full, but we got everything there safely.
And was it worth it? Yes! We met Rahdo; he’s one of our favourite reviewer and he agreed to do a run-down of Assembly! And then the Monday after the show we funded! We weren’t expecting to fund until the final 48 hours when we launched the campaign. We were over the moon. Assembly was going to be real. And then we started hitting stretch goals. We could hardly keep up with them. And then something unusual happened. We not only had 1 mid-campaign bump, we had 2! For those of you not familiar with Kickstarter funding trends, the mid-campaign is generally a consistent slump.
So how did we get a second bump in our campaign. As a result of the UK Games Expo, we got featured on PC Gamer’s website as one of the best tabletop Kickstarters to back. And not only did we get featured but we were at the top of the page!
How did it all end?
At campaign end, we were almost 300% funded of our goal, and I hasten to add we set a realistic goal with some budget for risk. We did not set it artificially low. Janice is an experienced project manager and made sure we not only accurately calculated our costs, but we had budget for the unknown costs that would surely arise.
What’s happened since the Kickstarter?
But not everything went to plan after the Kickstarter. In early July we were in a car accident. It was low speed but Janice ended up with a concussion and a lot of joint pain. This basically put her completely out of action for 2 weeks and the next month she had to limit her time on the computer due to pain.
Given Janice was finalising all the files and doing the graphic design, this was a problem. Additionally, we then had deal with the insurance fall-out and go car hunting as our car was written off, taking even more time out of our schedule. But true to being a project manager, Janice had had put slack in our schedule as well as our budget, albeit a car crash was not how we were expecting to have to use this time!
In terms of more positive news, we did our second show, exhibiting at Tabletop Gaming Live in September, meeting many of our backers (thanks for stopping by!). We had an amazing reception with everyone playing enjoying Assembly, and of course we exhibited with our kids again but this time we brought help. Thank-you Estelle!
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And then last month we went to Essen, although this time we didn’t exhibit, but we did have lots of meetings with publishers. Unlike many other indie publishers, we don’t intend to exclusively self-publish our games. We know what we’re good at and want to focus on this. Therefore designs that are outside of our core supporters we have chosen to let others run with them. At Essen we pitched a couple of games and ended up leaving behind 6 prototypes. Unfortunately that’s all we can say for now and nothing is certain in the world of publishing, but it’s a huge privilege to be asked to submit a prototype and is a very promising sign.
When will we see Assembly?
Yesterday, we received news from our manufacturer that Assembly has been fully printed and was ready for dispatch. As I type this, Assembly is being prepared for shipping and we expect to see the first proper copy within the next week or so. This means we are still on track for a December fulfilment as originally planned.
And everything else is ready too!
Will I be able to buy Assembly online or in my FLGS?
The answer to this is: it depends.
In the UK definitely yes. We have had 8 retailers pre-order copies of Assembly, plus it will be available through distribution so if you want a copy and it’s not in your FLGS, then ask them for it and they should be able to get a copy in for you. We also plan to have Assembly available through Amazon.co.uk as well as directly through us.
In Europe, although we don’t have any retailers signed up, again it will be available through distribution and so your FLGS should be able to order copies of Assembly. We also plan to have Assembly available through various European Amazon sites as well as directly through us.
In US, unfortunately we don’t have any distribution or retailers. If you want to see Assembly near you, you need to get your FLGS to ask their distributor. If they get enough requests then we may be asked to supply to them, but until then we’re too small to be of interest to American distributors. However, we do have plans for making Assembly available on Amazon.com as well as available directly from us.
Everywhere else, you’ll have to get it from one of the above listed Amazon websites or directly from us.
