“Everything takes longer than expected.”
We are currently looking into production options for “Franchise King”. We started off by making the definitive parts list, including the box and documentation needed. Following our cottage industry outlook we determined what we had to source and what we could do ourselves. Turns out, that beyond package and parts assembling, basic document printing and design work, we prefer some of the quality points others could provide to us. So we started down the road to see what different developers could do for us and evaluate price point, quality and speed. We have done a test run on The Game Crafter, where they did everything, they had the dice, they printed the cards, the rulebook and the box, as well as “package” it all together and deliver. This was our first time using a one stop shop option, the dice were acceptable quality, the box and booklet were nice enough, but the cards did not measure up to the linen texture cards we had already gotten used to for our prototypes. The cards suffered from ink chipping on the edges as well as the edges were not smooth. The price point was very high too, at just over $20 before shipping, and bulk prices would not reduce that by enough to make them a viable solution for us. We do believe that they provide an easy to use service, they make creating a box game very accessible, and have a large array of game parts and printed products.
While we were waiting the 2 weeks for our package from The Game Crafter we submitted the game to a few publisher of similar style games. Some feedback was encouraging, other not so much, some suggested changes, some clearly did not understand the rules or the target audience, but we are thankful that they did take the time to look and reply. This process can take a few to many weeks from submission to first contact, and more weeks to get an update and next steps, and some have requested more files for evaluation, we are still enjoying learning our way through this space.
While publishers are chewing on our game we are also looking into some manufacturing options, but this is also a long process to just get a quote, but these are the folks who big publishers use to manufacture their games so waiting isn’t so bad if we can get back down to a reasonable price point for a quality product.
Stay tuned, things are just starting to get exciting.