Welcome to the Indie Tabletop Newsletter, hear from independent tabletop games designers about their current and upcoming projects. Take a look at the games we’ve already self-published and our upcoming Kickstarters, maybe even get yourself a free print n play game. Learn more about this newsletter here.
Designers & Their Games
Kickstarter Calendar
Looking for a specific designer?
Its a good time and we just have to see now where we can get to. If you’ve not stopped by the campaign already, we’d love to see you there.
Well come they did. We were blown away with the interest shown and the feedback received. From start to finish we were flat out, we even had to procure extra tables as at one point we had 5 demo games going on at the same time. If you were there and you took part we would like to again take the opportunity to thank you.
The team got back together and discussed next steps. The game was ready, people wanted it (people tried to buy it from us on the day, even handing money over) so why not just get it out there? And that’s what we’ve done.
Read More
We’ve sharpened a few things up, we’ve sourced manufacturing and we’ve found a distributor. Not only that, we’re going to make it locally in the UK so no long wait whilst it ships from China, no big carbon footprint that goes with that and we are supporting UK businesses too. The more of us independent manufacturers here in the UK use UK businesses then the more hope there is of us creating a stronger infrastructure for more of the same.
All this means that we are live as of September 28th. We have production and delivery lined up too so if all goes to plan we are hopeful of delivery this side of Xmas as a bonus.
If you’d like to support us then please take a look at the Kickstarter
Two Pirate Pursuit Games? Yes! We now have “Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet” and “Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon”. Both games let players test each other’s knowledge of real pirate lore: people, places, events, naval vocabulary, etc. However, each game is quite different.
Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon Our latest game is a competitive, push-your-luck, card-collecting game for 2-6 players. Players try to collect the most Pirate Lore cards before deciding to take the King’s Pardon and securing their treasure. Of course, if a famous pirate meets their doom before a King’s Pardon card comes their way, then they lose all the lore cards (their treasure) that that famous pirate had gained!
Read More
Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet This game, for 3-5 players, uses a full-sized game board with cards, dice, and ship tokens. Secretly moving about on the board, the sneaky pirate’s location is only revealed from time to time. The other players must work cooperatively to corner and capture the pirate, or at least keep them from seizing the Spanish treasure fleet! Here’s where the Pirate Lore cards come in. The more cards collected, the more benefits the pirate hunters gain and the more the pirate is hampered in their movements!
Note: The King’s Pardon includes all the Pirate Lore cards from The Spanish Treasure Fleet, and the new pirate lore included in The King’s Pardon will soon be available as a ‘boxless’ expansion for The Spanish Treasure Fleet.
Read more about our pirate games and our most recent comic featuring Captain Flim Flam and his mini crew…
To celebrate our favourite time of year, we’ve scoured the online shelves of other small UK businesses and found some tricks and treats that we will be adding free to every order placed until (and including) 27th October.
We can’t believe what devilishly cool trinkets and goodies are being made by these talented small businesses – and we might have a bit of a hard time actually parting with them. But fear not, The Murderer will make sure that he gives out all the best treats (and maybe a trick or two) this Halloween.
Roll three dice, use two to find a star on a grid (row and column) and one to determine the colour. Can you fill in all six colours? Can you get different colours in different rows? Works with coloured pencils or with patterns.
Dissent Games will have single cards or packs available online in the next few weeks.
It’s been a very exciting month of crafting and assembling, I have hundreds of dice and resin playing pieces ready to go in to games. Boxes and tokens are being constructed by hand and I’ll soon be receiving the print samples so I can sign off on those and have all the print work in place. It’s currently looking like I’ll be able to start assembling games by the end of October (fingers crossed) in which case fulfilment will definitely happen on time – by the end of November – if not a little earlier than expected!
I put together a little cat face and dog paw playing piece colour chart of the resin colours I have available for the custom copies of Playful Pets: Cats & Dogs games. I’m absolutely ecstatic that hand crafting my games at home means I’ve been able to offer custom options to gamers on my last 3 Kickstarter campaigns and hope that I’ll be able to continue to do so.
Read More
Events – I’m looking at attending some local Christmas markets in the next few months, I’m really hoping my games and gaming accessories will be well received, especially the mint tin games as they’ll make wonderful stocking fillers. It will be my first time putting my games out on a stall at any type of event so I am a little nervous but I’m looking forward to it.
Spooky Hand-Crafted Board Game Accessories – I love Halloween! Last year I made lots of Halloween themed dice bags. This largely consisted of them being green and black, orange and black and red and black. I’d like to do something similar this year. Those dice bags will be available but I also have a candy skull cross stitch with a D20 theme on the go as well as some other little spooky bits and pieces! Then I guess I’d better get working on some Christmas themed bits after that!
Yub Nub Games
Wow! September was a huge month for Top Tale! The 2,000+ units of Top Tale had finally arrived at the beginning of the month, and the rest of the month I have been frantically shipping out backer orders, Retailer orders, and donations. I think I’ve shipped out just over 300 games already! I do have a few backer orders that I’m still working out the best logistics for (so they don’t pay any extra), and I sincerely apologize to those four backers that have not yet received their games. I’ve reached out to them with the best options I have available at this point.Aside from fulfilling backer orders, I spent a good amount of time reaching out to retailers. I’ve reached out to a total of 18 retailers and so far, three have ordered cases of Top Tale, with more expecting to get back to me in the next week or so after they’ve had a chance to demo the game. So far, the retailers that are set up, or are in the process of getting set up to sell Top Tale, are: Board Gaming With Education, Kickstarted Games, and The Toy Store (in Quincy, CA; near my home town).
Read More
Another awesome development is that Top Tale: The O.G. Volume 1 will be at the Indie Game Alliance (IGA) booth at Origins this year! If you are planning on going to Origins in Ohio, please do stop by the IGA booth, which is booth 140! IGA has a couple dozen copies that they’ve brought to sell at Origins.
I’ve also set up Top Tale: The O.G. Volume 1 on Amazon! It’s currently only available on Amazon in the US, however I’m working on Amazon Canada and then plan to work on setting up Amazon for the UK and EU markets. Over the coming months I’ll be looking to get Top Tale into more and more local retailers, and I’ll also be honing my advertising skills. My goal is to have most of the units sold and making people happy by this time next year, when I also hope to have Top Tale: The O.G. Volume 2 funded with Kickstarter.
It’s been a very rewarding month, as finally I’ve fulfilled my first Kickstarter! I’ve also got over ~1,650 units that I plan to sell wholesale. Who knows, I may even be in a position to reach out to some distributors. Only time will tell, so keep your eyes peeled for the next editions of the Indie Tabletop Newsletter!
Since then we’ve been making various preparations for manufacture. First of all we’ve arranged for a sample copy of the game to be made. This has taken longer than expected due to a few agreements and design hiccups, but we are now there and we should hopefully receive a video of this soon, followed by the actual product through the post.
We have also been preparing the pledge manager, which is going to be going live on Gamefound once the final shipping costs have been determined. This will not only give the backers the chance to finalise their orders, but if you missed out and want to back it you’ll be able to do so via this right up to the shipment date.
Read More
Later on we may also utilise Gamefound to sell the remaining production copies of the game, although this won’t be until early next year.