I figure I’m due another look at some of the various crowdfunding projects I’ve covered in the blog.
A delivery!
First of all, an arrival: Cascadia: Alpine Lakes popped up on my doorstep recently, a very nice game which I’ll cover in more detail over the coming months. As I said in my short preview article back in October last year, I was dithering about coughing up for the crowdfunding ‘upgrades’ or just waiting for retail. I eventually took the plunge, deciding that the roughly 33% premium was worth it for thicker tiles (a good thing for a game where height is a major component), linen-finish cards, and the wooden tokens (so much nicer than card for bag-drawing); the mini-expansion was merely a nice-to-have bonus in my initial thoughts. That particular item has turned out to surpass my expectations, specifically the new Lake scoring card, which adds a couple of neat twists to, well, lakes.
There were a few minor niggles with the delivered game, which left me feeling a little disappointed. First, the tiles have larger-than-expected ‘tags’ on the edges from where they were punched out, as you should be able to see in the image above; I imagine this is an unfortunate side-effect of the extra card thickness. I’ve made half-hearted attempts to deal with them using an emery board and craft knife, but don’t want to risk damaging the tiles, so haven’t taken that very far. In addition, several of the tiles have blemishes on their backs, possibly indicating insufficient quality control at the printer’s. Now, these are utterly, utterly trivial and won’t affect gameplay in the slightest, so what am I whinging about anyway? Had I bought the retail game, I know I’d be totally happy with the components in it, but the Kickstarter upgrades led me to expect more, and now I feel let down. First world problems, eh?
On the plus side, it is a great game, and I did get it early! I see so many people commenting about delivery delays on other crowdfunded projects (e.g., STORM, Legacy of Mars, DinoGenics: New Arrivals, to name but a few), though the game creator is often not responsible for these problems (and some are better—much more open—than others regarding communication with backers on the topic of shipping). This hasn’t been the case here. In fact, the game was delivered earlier than the original planned date, especially impressive given the various international trade disruptions over the past year or so.
My God’s bigger than your God!
Earlier in the year, I commented that there was an abundance of god-themed games: Almighty, the Godliest God Game, Believe in Me! (please) and For the Gods, among others.
All of these campaigns have been successful, some more than others: Almighty is the winner, raising over $400k. The campaign was well run, with frequent updates throughout, though slowing afterward, mainly written in the same humorous priestly tones as the rest of the campaign. I did note in my preview that the creators had stated, ‘Almighty will not have a traditional retail release,’ but revisiting the campaign page just now, I see there’s a preorder link (for the same price as the equivalent Kickstarter pledge, but not including the Maniacs & Monsters mini-expansion). I guess it depends on what ‘traditional retail’ means, but the good news for gamers is that it’s still available to purchase.
Believe in Me wasn’t as popular, but again, a well-managed campaign. I noted back in June that it wasn’t clear how the game would work in practice given the limited information at the time. Since then, a nice gameplay video was added, and one of the updates included a full playthrough video. My conclusion now is that the game contains several neat ideas and I can see its appeal, though it’s still probably not one for my overcrowded shelves.
Gods and Mortals lies somewhere in between, and once again, there’s little to criticise about how the campaign’s being run. It really is a pleasure to see so many campaigns running well, given the number that seem to have hordes of people posting complaints and requests for refunds in their comments section.
A few more
Almost a year ago, I covered the delightful DECKO, which completed a successful campaign with many happy backers, sufficient for creator Haakon Gaarder to return with a reprint and an expansion, DECKO: Pistachio, which doubles the number of available cards.
In July, I covered the gorgeous-looking Stag. The campaign was very successful, with over 4,000 backers pledging more than £250k. There haven’t been many updates, but the campaign did run for only a short period; the game design was sufficiently complete from the start that not much needed to be added, and shipping is still a long way away. As I said in the preview article, the campaign page was polished and does seem to have been well run, with creator J.J. Neville responding to comments promptly.
I included EcoLogic: Europe Expansions in the last catchup, and the game has indeed shipped, but backers have been posting comments about box damage due to inadequate packaging, errors on cards, mismatches in cardstock or colours between some of the expansions, and incorrect duties paid for US shipments (meaning backers have had to pay an extra $20 or so to receive the game). These are in a rather different ballpark to my overly entitled whining about Cascadia: Alpine Lakes. Sadly, designer Borys Bińkowski has been notable by his absence, with no responses at time of writing (early September) to any of these comments since July—possibly not a good look when you’re posting updates to your next campaign instead! I’ve noted in my guide to crowdfunding that I’d be disinclined to back someone’s first project, but EcoLogic: Europe might make me doubt crowdfunding veterans too! It’s always a good idea to check out creators’ other campaigns—just compare backer comments on DECKO’s campaign to those for EcoLogic: Europe.
Having said that, backers do need to keep in mind that there are no guarantees whatsoever in crowdfunding: you pay your money, and… you sits around on your hands for months, if not years, in the hope of getting something!
Ashes & Amber
In stark contrast to what I’m seeing with Ecologic: Europe is Ashes & Amber, another campaign I touched on last time, noting that ‘there were frequent updates and prompt comment responses.’ What I didn’t highlight then is that this is David Falla de Acebo’s first crowdfunding project, and it definitely ranks among the most well-run campaigns I’ve looked at.
I was chatting with David recently, and commented that he must be quite pleased with the €100k his campaign netted. I was taken aback when he replied, ‘I’m not breaking even. The number you see at the top of a Kickstarter page is very different from the amount that eventually ends up in the creator’s pocket!’ He said he’d been particularly surprised by how expensive publicity is: ‘Production is actually relatively easy to anticipate and budget. The really difficult part for a first-time creator is simply being seen. More than 40% of my campaign budget was spent on advertising alone.’ Even with that, David found that his marketing partners didn’t seem to provide as much value as he’d hoped, where, for example, they fumbled opportunities, such as failing to synchronise with the upgrade of his sought-after ceramic first player token, despite being given advance notice: ‘That was very frustrating. I had spent days planning the timing of these moments.’ Some of the current US president’s machinations caused difficulties too, leading to, for example, increased shipping costs, some of which David chose to absorb rather than pass the entirety on to backers: I suggest not ever asking him for his opinion of Donald J. Trump…
Despite all that, he’s pleased with his results: ‘With a first game and a completely unknown one-person studio, reaching around 1,500 backers and six figures is something I’m extremely happy about.’ He’s also looking forward to his next campaigns (yes, plural): ‘Three expansions for Ashes & Amber are already almost ready. I’m planning another campaign in March 2027 with two of them. I have a long-term plan for five expansions in total, but I also have two family games waiting in the backlog, and I don’t yet know which of those will come first.’
David’s aiming to show Ashes & Amber off at Spiel Essen, but says it’s going to be difficult to attract much attention ‘unless the game somehow starts getting some positive hype before the show.’ If any readers would like to help him out, he’d be very grateful for a ‘Thumbs Up’ in BoardGameGeek’s Essen preview list — even better, marking it as ‘Interested’ or ‘Must Have.’ (Incidentally, it’s worth taking a look at the whole Essen list on BGG; you’ll find a lot of great games there.) He added, ‘My main goal [at Essen] is simply to have fun, meet players, put Ashes & Amber on the table, and watch people discover and play this thing I’ve been working on for so long.’
And finally
I said last time that it felt as if some companies were abusing crowdfunding platforms: using them for games that don’t need to be crowdfunded, games which already have excellent pedigrees and would be terrifically successful if they headed direct to retail. Ah, but you could argue that making games is expensive and these game publishers don’t have massive budgets… However, as I mentioned when discussing Parks Europe, Keymaster Games switched from Kickstarter to BackerKit because, as they said, ‘Kickstarter is for funding games that don’t exist yet… and Parks Europe already exists.’ So why don’t all such games use that as the platform? Games like Earth Express and Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, say, or Stag. Well, there’s one reason…
As Myrto Gkizli told me, their game Forgotten Paths ‘is not a project in need of crowdfunding, but that’s where people are.’ That’s a very good point: aside from conventions like Spiel Essen, Gen Con or UKGE, where else can you find so many people looking for games? (And those events come round only once a year.) So, if you want to get in front of a lot of potential customers, you can’t do better than be on one of the big-name crowdfunding platforms. (A cynical little bit of me wonders if Parks Europe was always going to go the BackerKit route, but they popped up on Kickstarter solely for the publicity. Surely not.)
And finally, finally
If you’ve read my review of the game, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of Spooktacular. A crowdfunding campaign for its first expansion, Bride of Spooktacular, will be launching in October and running until Halloween, featuring 10 new monsters, some of which drastically change the way the game’s played. There might be a new board, too—more news as I get it.
About the author
Current favourite board games are Ark Nova and Spooktacular, with a side of Terraforming Mars and Dune: Imperium – Uprising. When not playing games or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside over 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). In any time left over after all that, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
