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.
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Firstly, Library Labyrinth will be launched on Kickstarter on 8 March. We’ve been doing more artwork, including the front of the box (woooohooo!) and the prototypes should be arriving any day.
Secondly, we have a new Roll & Colour card. This one is a two player game featuring hearts. It’s perfect for Valentine’s Day! Like the others, it involves rolling dice and choosing which shapes to colour in. Also like the others, its available as a PDF or a good quality greetings card with a red envelope. The Kickstarter is going to be 11-18 Jan, and it will be fulfilled by 1 Feb…so if you want to send a Valentine’s card to someone this year, back to the KS! It’s only £1 for the PDF.
With the new year coming up and our last two campaigns nearing fulfillment we’re starting to focus on our next couple of releases. In mid-2022 we will be releasing a final set of expansions for SSO including both standard Challenge Decks and Deluxe Expansions including new crew and locations as well as stories of rampaging alien killing machines and murderous crew turning on each other.
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Later in the year we will hopefully finally be releasing our collaborative story telling game A Song of Tales, as a game best played face to face with a small group it’s been delayed by the necessity of a digitally distanced year, but it has given us the chance to polish and tweak it, so we’re sure it will be our best game yet.
It’s been a busy month at the end of an unusual year or so, but there’s a lot coming up, we look forward to sharing it all with all of you.
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Next steps for us will be to get the Gamefound Pledge Manager sent out once it’s been approved by Gamefound. It’s mostly done and just running a few tests to make sure it’s easy as possible for people.
That’s it for now so Happy New Year all and may 2022 be filled with many exciting games and friendly faces to play them with. Chris.
Despite the ever looming shadow of the worldwide pandemic, we managed to successfully get the word out about the game through social media (Instagram, Facebook and YouTube), the website, our table at the UK Games Expo and numerous dedicated advertising campaigns. All of this effort combined lead to us reaching our Kickstarter funding goal in under 3 days, without a doubt one of the best moments since first starting the project.
With our successful campaign we then moved on to utilising Gamefound for the pledge manager. Around the same time we received our first production sample of the game from China, another truly wonderful moment. After some final design decisions (including the choice of a gloss instead of matte box to make the colours pop), the manufacturing commenced. And in mid-December the shipment from our manufacturer Hero Time finally went out to all the backers of the game. Right now it’s being sent all around the world, including hundreds of additional copies heading to us here in the UK. It’s been a truly busy but amazing year!
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We have decided to go down the Amazon route for sales of the production copies of the game. Once the shipment arrives we will be looking into getting this set up. So if you missed out on the Kickstarter, you’ll then have the chance to get on board and join the UFO Wave!
Hand Crafted Gaming Accessories – I want to focus on expanding the selection of gaming accessories available on my Etsy store. I have a great many ideas and such limited time to work on them. However, so many of my games, keyrings, dice bags, Board Game Survival Kits and gaming jewellery were purchased as Christmas presents over the last two months that it has spurred me on to bring more of my ideas to life.
I wanted to do a make 100 campaign this month for a new gaming accessory idea, but instead I’ve decided to skip the crowd funding aspect, make the ones I would have as prototypes and put them on Etsy.
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If they do well, I’ll make more so fingers crossed and hopefully I’ll have some photos to share of them for February’s newsletter. Once Playful Pets has some stock standing by, I hope to split my time equally between new crafted accessories for Etsy and Malum Hortus development.
Malum Hortus – Speaking of Malum Hortus, I want to get back to regular play tests and to continue with some of the creative writing aspects of the game. I plan for the artwork to be my main focus for a while and to regularly share the art as it develops on social media. My hope is to have it ready to play at UKGE and to launch Malum Hortus in September or October 2022 as a spooky Halloween themed campaign, assuming it feels ready by then. Malum Hortus is my favourite game, I love it, it will be Atikin Games’ flagship game and I want everyone to feel as passionate about it as I do; for that reason, I believe it’s worth continuing to work on it for as long as it needs so it can be all that I want it to be.
Events – The Christmas Market last month went well and made me feel a little more confident about exhibiting at board gaming events. I’ve been accepted to exhibit at UKGE this year which I’m incredibly excited about. It’s not until the first weekend of June but it’s something I have to look forward to now!
Etsy – as I’ve said, I do plan to grow the offerings I have on there considerably this year. I’m currently still fulfilling the last pre orders of Playful Pets and once I have finished those and made some as stock all three games will be available on my Etsy store. In the meantime there are still wonderful things already up on there for you to take a look at 😉.