A Touch of Magic in 2019

Another year gone by, another incoming, and another time for reflection on the past and looking forward at what is soon to come. I hope 2018 brought you a wonderful time, with plenty of friends and family, and gaming of course!

The Years Behind: 2017 and 2018

Last year and the year before saw us launch our very first game on Kickstarter – an event that probably brought most of you to our website.

Lucidity: Six-sided Nightmares began as a small side project named Darkly Dreaming, while we worked on our main focus (and what we expected at the time would be our first published game), but it soon grew a life of its own and came to take over our lives. It launched on Kickstarter in June 2017, and quickly expanded well beyond our wildest imagination. In the end, it funded over 1000% and sold over 3000 copies. It got picked up by a US publishing partner in Renegade Game Studios, and a Brazilian partner in Derruba Pecas Jogos.

In May 2018, after a significant number of manufacturing stops and starts, Lucidity delivered to backers, and launched to retail. It has sold a bunch of copies (I mean… it’s no Gloomhaven but it’s been successful enough) and established the sweet 6.66 rating on BoardGameGeek. However 2018 also saw the deal with Derruba Pecas Jogos fall through, as every copy of Lucidity sent to Brazil was destroyed at port due to the import tariffs rising beyond what our partner could feasibly pay. It’s been a learning experience on both ends for us.

In other news, I also won a competition with my game Velvet, which was published in 2018 at PAX Australia by the Tabletop Game Designers Australia. (That game, coincidentally, was meant to come out in 2017, but it arrived through customs exactly two days too late to release at PAX Aus.) I am certain I will do more with this in future.

In 2018, we attended more conventions than any year previously, selling copies of Lucidity and demoing our next game, Runika, at CanCon, Supanova Sydney, GAMMA.CON, DevCon and PAX Australia. I was also able to take advantage of my wonderful partnership with Renegade Games in order to drop in at PAX Unplugged and demo Lucidity for them across the weekend. I got to meet a ton of fans and campaign backers there, as well as Renegade’s awesome volunteers (all of whom I am so glad to have met and drunk maybe a few too many margaritas with).

Tempest had a whole year’s break, as I spent the time instead on post-campaign Lucidity customer service and developing Runika for a Kickstarter in September. That Kickstarter was eventually delayed to 2019, but I think the game will be all the better for the extra time taken on it.

The Year Ahead: 2019

For us, 2019 is the year of Runika and the Six-sided Spellbooks.

I am working on last-minute experiments to the rules, which will improve the ease of access and play within the game. I have learned a lot from post-delivery reviews of Lucidity, which I hope to make use of in the final development of Runika. The game won the Tabletop Game Designers Australia prototype competition in 2018, so it’s not just me excited by it!

I am midway through writing the novelette to give context to the story behind the game. The aim is to release this as either an add-on to the main game, or include this in a “deluxe edition” if we hit enough stretch goals in the main campaign. I lean towards an add-on only because it isn’t an object traditionally included in deluxe editions. Still…

I want to give a shoutout here to Peter, Nathan, Siobhan, Ryan, Benn, Andrew, Ricardo, Keith, Josh, Karl, Dave, Alystra, Adam, Alex, Wesley, Douglas, Loriana, Paul, Bill and David, who have all contributed to the playtesting of Runika. The game has advanced leaps and bounds thanks to your thoughtful feedback. 🙂

I plan to go to Supanova Sydney, GAMMA.CON, DevCon and PAX Australia again this year, and I will have Runika with me to demo at each of them. I am also working on a number of smaller projects (Codenames “Bayou”, “Space” and “Time”) as well as that old chestnut, Tempest: Shards of the Gods. I hope to have a working prototype for that one soon!

I have also just finished designing our new shop. I will be offering remaining copies of Lucidity: Six-sided Nightmares for sale through it until stock runs out. As of now, this is the only way to get the ink-drop dice and deluxe edition that were available during the Kickstarter campaign.

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All the best for 2019!

~ Shannon