[vneur]

I built a board game in 2021 that has been just breaking the cutoff for this post, all I do is mail out a few games a week as we get orders. We do all our own fulfillment to save money. Currently trying to design a real video game. I got lucky with the board game because it targeted a really niche audience (rock climbers) and so we weren't really competing with the full board game market, which is honestly super saturated. I think launching a real video game will require taking a similar strategy, and I have some good ideas for this. If you know how to do 3D modeling and animation and have always wanted to make a game as a side project, send a message.

For anybody thinking of following on this path, I would say it's not really worth it except as a fun hobby. I didn't keep track of hours designing/testing very well but we're almost certainly way below minimum wage on the project. Although I've learned a lot about how to make games which has been really cool. You'll make a lot more money if you don't have to manufacture a real product and deal with the high costs of freight and postal shipping. If anybody is curious you can look up "5.15 climbing card game" on google and you'll find it!

[throwaway2037]

On a discussion thread like this one, I think there is no shame in providing the homepage URL. Here it is after using your Google hint: https://five15game.com/

Keep up the good work!

[BigBalli]

I'm sure the google search juice would have helped even more...

[vneur]

wasn't sure if it broke the rules to post, thanks!

[AussieWog93]

Nah mate, HN is one of the few forums where self-promotion is appreciated. Don't feel ashamed to shill!

[sshine]

Awesome project. I initially youtube'd you, and there was no mention of your card game. I then startpage'd you and found a kickstarter page with a pretty well-made video... why don't you crosspost your video to youtube? and why don't you get someone to review it?

[vneur]

good point... I'm not sure why we never made the youtube video public. Thanks for bringing it up! This is why I feel like making that first game was good practice, I won't make these mistakes for the second one.

[sshine]

When it comes to boardgames, I use two resources:

1. Does it have a good rating / breakdown in the BoardGameGeek forums?

2. Does it have a review on YouTube that showcases the main game mechanic?

Ideally, a third party review is always better. The board game community is not a harsh one (it's not like you have oceans of "this game sucks!" reviews -- there is a lot of love for the art) but a third party just seems more... relatable. They are also just trying to have fun.

[tedyoung]

I really like the idea of games for a niche audience. Does your game lend itself to being a "print & play" game? I launched a Print & Play version of my (very) niche game[0] because I didn't (yet) want to deal with the physical manufacturing and it's been a pretty good experience. Have you written about your journey on creating or manufacturing the game?

In early 2022, I'm going to manufacture a small number of the game using The Game Crafter (it's more than just cards), but the whole idea of manufacturing 500 copies and the logistics of shipping are daunting.

[0] https://jitterted.podia.com/print-and-play-version-of-jitter...

[duck]

Looks like a fun game, I'll pass that on to some climber friends. Curious - where did you get the cards printed at? Working on a card game myself, but have been putting off researching that much after getting overwhelmed with options.

[vneur]

Depends on scale. For our initial play-testing I bought a bunch of plastic card sleeves and regular playing cards, and then printed out the 3"x5" game cards on my home printer. The playing cards are to make the card sleeves stiff and this way you can really quickly swap out your cards while play testing.

For prototyping the box and the demo copies we tried a few different print shops that operate in the US. The easiest by far is the game crafter, their website lets you upload and proof your cards through a web portal and I found that to be really good for not making mistakes. Unfortunately their quality is lower because the print runs are so small and the cost is pretty high.

If you get to large scale production (>500 copies) you can start getting things printed for reasonable cost. You can work with a chinese manufacturer directly (a bit risky for a first time project) or use one of the US intermediaries. Panda games is probably the best option there, but their minimum run is 2000.

[duck]

Thanks for the information and details! Yeah, we're using blank poker cards now and just drawing on them for play testing and that has worked well. I'll check out Game Crafter as a next step as I want some nicer sets to send to friends to help play test.

[Irongirl1]

Can I ask a dumb question...why didn't you use one of the print-on-demand providers like Printify? Costs? Or something else I haven't even considered?

[iratewizard]

That's a very cool looking game. I'll have to keep it in mind for my wife closer to her birthday.