Mystic Tiger Games is happy to announce that Manaforge, the game of creating magical items, is now live on Kickstarter!

Click here to go to the Kickstarter page: http://goo.gl/jwiVXi

Let's make Manaforge a reality! Are you ready to get crafting?

So I've been jumping around like crazy trying to make sure everything is ready to go for my Kickstarter. It seems like a lot of things are coming together at the last moment, and for a few I can only hope that they will. I know I'm worrying over what will probably be nothing, but this is such an important thing for me that I don't want anything to go wrong.

In no particular order, here is my 'checklist' of stuff I'm dealing with:

• On launch day, I will push the big green button to launch my campaign. I also need to do some web redirect shenanigans, send out my launch email notice, and post a blog entry.
• The launch will also be accompanied by another social media surge. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BoardGameGeek, Reddit, and even YouTube will all be targets.
• Still waiting for the How-To-Play video to be done. It's very close, but it still needs one last set of tweaks.
• Got my first review in. Yay! Already posted that to the KS page. Now just waiting for the other two.
• I've been asking around some of my game developer friends if they want to add quotes to the KS page. Since I could attribute the quotes to them and plug their games at the same time, I figure it's a win/win.
• I recently acquired eight new illustrations for Manaforge's cards. I will be posting those during the campaign duration, in order to keep the interest level up. Hopefully I can keep the campaign active during the slump in the middle.
• I have an interview with the guys that do The Thirsty Gamers audio podcast this weekend. Dunno why anyone would want to listen to me ramble on about Manaforge, but if that's what they're asking for, then who am I to argue? :)
• I'm also attending a local monthly game meetup this weekend. 50+ gamers under one roof, playing games from mid-afternoon until crazy-o'clock in the morning. Plenty of opportunity to show off Manaforge.

KS Page is here: http://goo.gl/jwiVXi

Almost there! We're launching in four days. Stay tuned!

So, I've been kicking my 'advertising' (if you can call it that) into high gear. I spent most of yesterday going around to various game store locations and handing out flyers announcing my Kickstarter. Today I've been concentrating on the electronic equivalent, sending out emails and prepping to blast out announcements on social media. My Kickstarter hasn't started yet, but it's just two weeks out, and I know I'm going to need to get as much attention as possible for when it starts. Every view counts. :)

I apologize to anyone that is caught up in this and doesn't want to be; in my efforts to spread the word, I'm pretty much guaranteed to annoy someone, somewhere. I'll try to keep it to a minimum, promise.

Here is a copy of the flyer I've been handing out:

I hope it gets enough attention. :)

I've been busy getting ready for my Kickstarter launch. Here are some highlights, in no particular order:

• I'm trying to stay on top of the creation of the Kickstarter page. While I've left the actual page arrangement to my graphic designer Justin, I've been crunching the numbers and gathering the data needed to fill in the blanks. The page itself looks really amazing; Justin has done a fantastic job showcasing the beautiful look of the game. Both rendered images and photographs illustrate what the final game will look like, which will hopefully emphasize to potential backers that this game is already very close to a final product. (Just needs the artwork finished.)
• The videos that will go onto the Kickstarter page are ongoing. The first video, which is a 50-second 'teaser', is basically completed; some minor tweaks might be incoming based on feedback, but as it stands now it doesn't need anything more. The second and more important video, the how-to-play video, is in progress. Both should be finished within the next week.
• I've ordered a large batch of postcard-sized flyers advertising the launch of the Kickstarter campaign. My plan is to drop these off at the various gaming stores in the area. Plenty of places to spread the word in the Orlando area. :)  I could also be convinced to mail some out...  if anyone asks nicely enough. :D
  
• I'm also going to be emailing the digital version of that postcard out on my mailing list, and posting it up on all of our social media locations. My apologies for the spam, especially if you happen to get added to my mailing list without asking, but I need to get the word out as much as possible.
• I'm targeting the first week of August for the 'pre-launch' of the Kickstarter. I will be opening the preview link up for feedback, so I encourage everyone to check it out and give ideas on how it could be improved. The postcard flyer will have both a shortened link and a QR code that point back to the Kickstarter preview.
• Looking forward to getting some review videos in. I don't expect to see any until much closer to the actual launch, but I'm anticipating having three videos from game reviewers by launch day.

Manaforge is coming very soon! Are you ready?

Mystic Tiger Games announces that Manaforge will be going up on Kickstarter on August 22nd!

We are going to need everyone's support to make this project a reality. We're aiming to have the Kickstarter up and running as early in the day as possible, and we need everyone that is interested in the game to be ready to pledge for a copy as soon as the campaign starts. Most Kickstarter campaigns are made or broken within the first 48 hours, as that period sets the tone for the rest of the campaign. Ideally, for the best chance of having a successful campaign, we need to be at least half of the way to the funding goal by the end of the second day.

Stay tuned! There will be further announcements about the campaign when more information is finalized.

The clock is ticking! Are you ready to get crafting?

Mystic Tiger Games announces that the Preview version of Manaforge will be available for play at the 2016 Dice Tower Convention, July 6 - 10.

Manaforge can be played in one of two locations:

The SUP Guild is hosting a Prototype Play event on Thursday, July 7, from 1pm to 5pm. This is the main prototype gaming event of the convention; Mystic Tiger Games will be present for this entire session. Also, there is an open prototype gaming session on Sunday, July 10, starting at 10am and running until the convention closes. Everyone is welcome at both of these events; get your chance to play the games of the future! (Including Manaforge, of course.) Both of these events are in the Boca Room VIII.

In addition, the Indie Game Alliance should have a presence at the convention this year. A copy of Manaforge will be in their game library; anyone is able to borrow the game and play at their tables, and you might even be able to coax one of the IGA Minions into teaching you the game.

Come out and give Manaforge a try! Hope to see you there!

So much to do, so little time.

Just a quick status update, since it's been relatively quiet here.

My Manaforge prototype is here! Yay! It feels really great to have an actual, professional copy of my game in my hands. Of course this isn't the final version, but it looks so much better than my homemade one as it is; just think how the production version is going to come out.

I took a bunch of pictures of the game as I was opening and unpacking everything. Check it out in my gallery on the Manaforge page.

Here are some thoughts from my whole experience, both impressions of the prototype and my experience with the ordering process:

The Good:

• The game arrived nicely plastic wrapped and everything. Definitely pro-looking; it could be a commercial product just like that.
• The box cover looks awesome! I'm hoping this will grab a lot of attention when I take the game out for demos.
• Upon opening the box, I found all of the game components had already been separated and bagged. Even the tokens had already been punched and bagged. Very nicely organized.
• The center game board is a perfect thickness and strength; it feels like a board you would find in basically any commercial game.
• I was a little skeptical about the player mats, since I had to order those as 'boards', so I was worried that they would come out as thick as the main board. But instead, the mats came printed on token-thickness chipboard, which gives them plenty of weight and strength without making them compete with the main board on thickness. Perfect.
• The illustrations on the cards are amazing. It makes me very happy that they look as good in my hand as they do on my computer screen.
• The 'first player' marker is cute. :)  I haven't really decided what I want that to be in the final product (thinking maybe an anvil or wizard's hat), so I just told them to use whatever was convenient. I ended up with a simple unpainted wooden pawn that I think does the job very well.
• The lady I communicated with at Print and Play Games was quite helpful. I gave her a description of the components I needed, and she came back with a list of what I should order from their website. She was also good about answering questions on pricing and giving hints as to where to make small cuts in the components to reduce the production cost.
• Ordering from the website was mostly painless. Once I had a list of what I needed to get, it was just a matter of adding the components to my shopping cart on their site, including choosing the sizes of the various bits and uploading the graphical assets. All I had to do was purchase everything as one order and they combined it all together into one game.

The Bad:

• The image on the outer box looks a little dark in bad lighting. I don't know if it's the image itself or some side effect of the ink they use, but it really only looks best in well-lit areas.
• The box material feels slightly light; I worry that it might be a little more flimsy than a typical commercial box.
• The selection of blank dice colors is a little underwhelming. I know they can't possibly have every dice color anyone will ever need, but I was hoping for some lighter colors.
• The colors on the dice stickers came out a little off. In particular, the 'wind' color is supposed to be a slate gray, but the stickers are more of a lavender color. I think this might be my fault; looking at the asset files I sent them, I think the dice file was in RGB color format instead of CMYK. I didn't look closely enough at the template file I downloaded from them; I think that was RGB too and I just didn't notice. Oh well, just goes to show how important color space is for printing. I'll be sure to fix that for the next prototype.
• The color on the background of the rulebook pages is yellow. It's supposed to be a parchment beige, but my rulebook looks positively jaundiced. I'm reasonably certain that one went out in CMYK, so it shouldn't be a color space issue. I'll have to see about getting the background color tweaked.
• The cards are not well centered. A few of the cards in particular, it's obvious how poorly aligned the cuts were. (Actually, I think it's not the cuts so much as the front-back printing that was misaligned. They probably did the best cut they could with the result of a badly-aligned print run.) They're not kidding when they say to be mindful of the cut and bleed areas.
• Stickering 40 dice is a lot of work. :P
• The final price of the prototype, shipping included, was slightly less than $100. Ouch; I wasn't expecting cheap but I didn't know it was going to be that much.
• The Print and Play Games website has a large banner that proudly announces a 48-hour production time for most games. Well, what is not immediately obvious is that 'most games' does not include anything with custom-sized components, and the player mats in Manaforge had to be custom sized. I placed my game order late Monday night, and I was hoping it would ship out on Thursday so I could have it for a special event over the weekend. Instead, it went out later in the day on Friday, and I didn't receive it until Monday. Not a huge delay, but enough to make a difference. :(
• Also, when the game shipped, I got a notification that the game was "complete". Nice to know, but that didn't really tell me very much. I didn't know at the time if the game had been shipped out, and I didn't receive any sort of shipping information; I had to assume that it hadn't been sent yet. It was only when I found it waiting for me when I got home on Monday that I knew what had happened. I'm sure they would've given me an update had I asked, but I shouldn't need to; the ambiguity in their status information was annoying.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Overall, it was a positive experience ordering from Print and Play, and I will be giving them business again when I go to order a larger batch of games for demoing. It's just that their process has a couple of glitches that might trip you up if you're not expecting them.

Demo time! Who wants to play a game? :D

So I placed an order for one professionally-made prototype copy of Manaforge! Yay! However, I did not use The Game Crafter like I wanted to. Instead, I ended up going with a company called Print and Play Games. Here's why...

I logged on to The Game Crafter's website to create Manaforge on there. Their website has a very slick interface where you can set up game 'projects', where you can specify the components for each project separately. It lets you browse through their website and pick out components for each game you want to make, customize those somewhat, and save them to the game. Then once your game is set up, you can print any number of copies of the game; specify game metadata such as name, designer, and description; and mark the game as 'public' and specify a MSRP, so people can order copies of your game printed on demand from the site. Pretty neat stuff!

However, while I was inputting my game components into their system, I noticed something. While TGC does have a good selection of components, their selection is somewhat fixed. If your game needs something that doesn't quite match what they have available, then you have to improvise. Specifically, Manaforge already has somewhat specific sizes for the game boards, and TGC did not have any boards available that were anywhere near the size I needed. I could've made it work, but it would've needed some graphical redesign work on the boards.

So, while I was wrestling with that, my designer Justin recommended that I check out Print and Play Games, since they had ready-made game boards of the size I needed. I had heard of the company before, but I hadn't given them much thought.

I jumped onto Print and Play's website and took a look around. Yes, they did in fact have the components I needed. Not only did they have the exact size of game board I needed for the main board, but for the player mats they had a 'custom board' option for making boards of any size, something that TGC cannot do.

I emailed the contact address listed on their site, and a representative got back to me within one day, a good turnaround time. She helped explain the ordering process, and asked me for a list of Manaforge's components. We chatted back and forth for a few days, ironing out the details and giving me what I needed to be able to reformat my graphical assets to their specifications. (Not a small task, I must say. :P )  She also game me a price estimate, which was slightly higher than TGC. (Manaforge in TGC would've cost about $80. Print and Play wanted just over $90, not counting shipping. Ouch.)

However, while I was changing my assets around, I found a couple of corners I could cut to conform to their printing process better, saving me a few dollars. Their website is good enough that you can order the game components one bit at a time and see how various minor changes affect the end price, allowing some production optimization.

Once I got everything set up, I used the interface on their website to set up a purchase cart containing all of Manaforge's components, uploading the various assets one at a time for each. It won't be as efficient for when I need to order more copies later, but overall it wasn't too bad.

And the best part is their speed. I don't recall the exact turnaround time estimate from TGC, but I want to say it would have been about two weeks from when I purchased the game until I had it in my hands, and that's not counting the additional time for shipping. Print and Play has a guaranteed two-day manufacturing time. That, plus a couple of extra dollars for priority shipping, means that I should have the game sometime around the coming weekend. Sold!

Here's hoping that everything turns out well during the production process. :)