Exodus: Proxima Centauri revised edition

Wow, it's been more than one month since our last post... time passed so quickly. We have not been on holidays. on the contrary, we spent almost 100% of our time on the re-print of Exodus: Proxima Centauri. 

The first edition sold out on our level and with most of the distributors sometime in March and since then we turned down several orders of a several hundred copies. We thought that it would be impossible or, at least, financially suicidal to print this game again, without any quality issues. But, in everyone's life comes a time when you decide to think outside the box. And that is exactly what happened to us when we decided to make a revised edition. We kept the major concepts in place, but we went on and made changes in the graphic design and the ergonomics of the game, based on gamers' feedback and our own sessions of play-testing. We started with a clear goal in mind: a revised edition with better game play, less fiddliness and more sci-fi look and with top quality components.

The front of the box

To make sure that the quality is what we expected it to be, we requested offers only from manufacturing companies with a proven record of delivering the best and we made it part of the plan to check the quality throughout the entire production process. 

With all that in mind, we started a long process of analyzing and rethinking every component in the game. As we progressed, every component which we considered final underwent a graphic design upgrade and found its place on one of the 15 punchboards in the game.

New planet hex

At the same time, we chose the manufacturing company. We chose to produce the game in Poland, so that we can stick to our promise - controlling the quality every step of the way. Together with them we looked for and found solutions to every problem we encountered on the way.

For example, inspired by other recent games, we decided to replace the thick paper player boards with 2mm cardboard. This would allow better marking of the technologies and reduce the risk of ruining the game in the middle. With the old player boards, one little lack of attention could cause big trouble, with one swift movement a player could swipe all the technology cubes from his player board and then take a long time trying to figure out what had he previously researched. With the new boards, the wooden cubes go in the player board, reducing the risk of such an event.

Upgraded player board

This was just a simple example of our work, thinking about players first and the costs later. On the NSKN website, you can see a full list of changes in the revised edition of Exodus.

As I write this blog post, the production is ongoing and we are confident that we will be able to bring the new Exodus to Spiel '13 Essen.

In a few days, we'll bring more news, a status update and a surprise for those who own the original edition of Exodus.

__________________

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NSKN @ 2 years (part 2)

I felt nostalgic today and it felt like a good time to tell the rest of the story of building NSKN. The first part ended with the 1-year anniversary of the company... well shortly after we went for the first time to the UK Games Expo, with high hopes yet knowing quite little about the event.

May 2012 - We still had only one published game, but we had ready-to-play prototypes of Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West and we had prepared one table for each, hoping to raise awareness and interest for our planned release in Essen or Nurnberg.

NSKN was among the very few publishers daring to show off prototypes during the expo, and while we were a bit afraid that they won't be well received, most people reacted quite well and some even wanted to pay us to make sure they'll get a copy of the final games. Pushed by people's interest, we decided to put the games on Indiegogo later in 2012, hoping to raise some money for the production and a spark the interest in Essen.

Jun 2012 - GobCon LAGNA and the first expansion. Right after the UK Games Expo, we took a trip to Italy to meet our friends from La Tana dei Goblin for the second time. We prepared for them an expansion of Warriors & Traders called Italia, with a cotton map and a more interactive game play. It was a small series of only 50 copies, but after the first week of preorders it was all sold out. Add this to the sun and wine from Italy and you have the perfect small gaming event!

Sep 2012 - We started our first two projects on Indiegogo, Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri. Most people thought we were crazy and we shared their opinion at first, but there was a good reason behind this decision. We knew that only one game will succeed, NSKN was too small to advertise and keep two projects alive, but with little experience in crowd-funding we did not know which of the two games had better chances. As soon as Exodus took off and reached a quarter of its goal in less than a week, we directed all our advertising efforts into supporting it. And it was worth it.

Oct 2012 -This was the craziest month in the history of NSKN. We had a place in Essen booked long time before and waiting from Exodus and Wild Fun West to arrive from China, go though customs and ship immediately to Germany for the big event. Two weeks before Spiel Essen, the ship carrying the games was delayed in Istanbul, we later found out that the games were not packed on pallets and the truck we had booked to carry the games backed out of the deal. 

I will spare you the details and get to the conclusion. The games made it on time, but just 5 days before Essen. We had to rent a van and drive all the way to Germany, with 1.5 metric tons of games and furniture for the booth. While part of the team was enjoying Essen, the rest were packing games and shipping to our Indiegogo backers.

For NSKN it was the first fair with more than one published games, so we attracted some attention, had about 30 business meeting and around 10 interviews with reviewers, so all the effort paid off in the end. Our distribution network expanded quite a lot and our games ended up in store in 31 countries.

Nov 2012 - While most publishers are late with delivering their crowd-funded games, we managed to beat the deadline. By half of November all the pledges were shipped out and about 1/3 of them had already reached their new owners. 

Every success story has its shadows. By December 2012 we started receiving complaints about the quality of the components in some of the Exodus boxes. We looked into it and asked the help of the manufacturing company to replace the defects. To this day they have refused to support us in any way. So, we sacrificed some of the game boxes and sent out replacement to every owner of a flawed games who has reached out to us. It has been a giant amount of work, but we need to make sure that everyone gets what they pay for.

Jan 2012 - We released the second expansion of Warriors & Traders, called Middle Ages, again in Italian for La Tana dei Goblin. It was our third presence in GobCon and we were already feeling like part of the community. We also showed the prototypes of Praetor and W - The Board Game and got quite a positive reaction.

Feb 2012 - We had another premiere, we had a booth in the Nurnberg Toy Fair, a quite expensive and exclusive trade fair where the big names in the industry show they latest inventions. It was out first corporate event and even though we were a bit lost in the beginning, we managed to get the most of the fair, establishing a few long term partnerships and selling out whatever was left of our stock of Exodus: Proxima Centauri.

Mar 2012 - We took out all the upcoming games and went on a play-testing spree, trying to see which of the four games (W, Praetor, Perfect Storm and Evolution) will take priority for the rest of the year. Praetor and W were the two games that stood out and made it past the finish line and even though we don't have clear deadlines yet, we are trying to make them available as soon as possible.

In 2013 we did not have a formal celebration of two year of NSKN, but we plan to do that in Essen. Being still quite an international team, we don't have that many chances to be all together in the same place, but there's always one big event that gathers all of us and that is obviously Spiel Essen.

__________________

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NSKN @ 2 years

A bit more than two years ago I was registering the name NSKN Legendary Games, embarking, together with some of my friends, on an unexpected and amazing journey. I had big plans and little knowledge, but it seemed that designing and publishing board games is the right thing to do. Two years later I can confirm that I made the right decision and, even if this proves to be a much tougher journey that I could have ever expected, it is worth every moment.

Anniversaries are not only moments of joy and celebration, but also good opportunities to remember, because "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (G. Santayana).

But the history of NSKN did not start only 2 years ago. It goes back another year or so into the past, when the idea of making board games sparked in my head.  That is the true beginning...

Jun 2010 - Warriors & Traders prototype, second version. Looking back at this it feels like ancient history, like it happened 500 years ago. Looking at the prototypes we are making today, it feels childish, but deep inside I know that had it not been for this one game, NSKN would not be what it is today.

It took another 14 versions if I remember correctly and one year of play-testing before Warriors & Traders was ready for printing, but hard work and good friends to exploit were the key to making it happen (there are so many people that I want to thank for their help and for believing in this project, but that is beyond the purpose of this post).

Apr 2011 - The last play-test of Warriors & Traders. Soon after we established NSKN, while our graphic designers were doing their magic, preparing the final version, ready to print.

The summer of 2011 was one full of planning and hoping, we were about to go to our first Spiel Essen, we had no idea how the distribution was working and until the very last moment we were afraid that the games might be late (it had happened to the biggest names in the industry) and we will simply be eight people in an empty booth showing people a big... smile.

Oct 2011 - Spiel Essen - In the end, everything was fine, NSKN came to Essen with Warriors & Traders, a game well received by both the public and the distribution companies.

Spiel '11 was an event I will never forget. I still get goosebumps when I go think about the amount of people we talked to, that we ran out of games several time and we had to drive back and forth from Germany to Belgium to bring more. It was indeed a magical time, one to remember every time something went so wrong that I wanted to quit and never look back.

By the end of 2011 we had already sold a significant quantity of Warriors & Traders, covering most of Europe and North America and reaching game stores as far as Thailand and Japan. What we were still missing was the direct connection with the gamin community, but we were about to take care of that aspect too.

While still busy and focused on selling Warriors & Traders, I was secretly working on another big game, Exodus: Proxima Centauri, though back then it carried a completely different name.

Jan 2012 - GobCon - This was our first contact with gamers in a local convention and it was a blast and not only because it was in Italy - the country of amazing food and wine - but because of the people I met and the friends I've made. This was also the starting point of the first expansion in the history of NSKN, Warriors & Traders: Italia, developed especially for the organizers of GobCon.

Feb 2012 - The prototype of Exodus: Proxima Centauri was ready. I had worked on it for half a year, I had learned physics and read books in the process, but all my effort was rewarded with good feedback after the first session.

And how many designers out there can honestly say that for their first test of a sci-fi game they had good feedback from an all-girl team? :)

Apr 2012 - NSKN was celebrating 1 year. We had cake, and Champagne, we recalled the good moments of the year that had passed and we made plans for the future.

By then, Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West were both tested, working quite well and it was just a matter of time and fixing the details before NSKN was ready to publish two new games.

And that is the first part of our little saga... The second part is coming soon.

__________________

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Essen - A look behind the scene

Far from me the thought of lecturing anyone, Essen 2011 was an experience so overwhelming that I feel the need to share it with anyone and everyone.

Essen 2011 was the first time NSKN Legendary Games was present at a gaming convention, and I am not only talking about Spiel. We were coming as an absolute surprise, the first Romanian publisher ever to attend the biggest gaming convention in the world. This was also the moment we chose to release our 'first-born', Warriors & Traders.

Signing-up and preparing

Having little to no experience in preparing my company's attendance to fairs, I signed up for Spiel '11 Essen in the very last day possible! It was one of the big lessons learned in the publishing industry, never leave things for the last moment. Thanks to LudoFact, the company that produced Warriors & Traders, I realized that Essen would be the perfect place to launch the game. So, on the 15th of May, at 16:00 I send the application papers and this is how the adventure began.

With a plan in mind, the actual preparation for Essen started for NSKN at the end of September, when the games were shipped from LudoFact's production plant in Germany to our warehouses in Romania and Belgium.

The most important thing I did not account for was the amount of people. It's common to hear that 150,000 people have something in common, but this number of people usually represents the attendance at a great sport event or the populations of a medium sized town or a small country (4 times the population of Liechtenstein). So, it is hard to imagine how this many people would look like and fit in the exhibition center and it is even harder to prepare for such an audience.

The original assumption was that as a completely unknown company, we would not attract much attention. So, having a small booth, 6 people at the stand and about 50 game boxes should be enough for the whole fair. Oh, and we'd also have some time to go and advertise the game with distribution companies and retailers.


Day -2: the first contact

On Monday of the Spiel '11 week, 3 days before it all started, we - the NSKN team - went to see the exhibition halls and to figure out what to bring and when.

On some level, I always knew that the booth would only contain the white walls and nothing more, but that does not mean we were prepared for it. It was too late to ask the organizers for tables and shelves for rent.

We unloaded everything prepared for that day and we started planning. We had 3 days left to fix the situation and make our booth look exceptional. Or, at least, decent! 


To avoid the feeling that we're leaving everything for the last day, we put our first poster on the wall and we headed to the place that held the answers to all our problems, IKEA. While driving, we made a whole list of things to buy. Four hours later, we came back, unloaded again and headed back to Brussels, our temporary headquarters, too tired even to take pictures.

Day -1: last minute preparations

I forgot to mention this before, but besides the standard booth we also signed up for the inventor's table. This is where designers bring their unreleased creations to get a first hand feedback from the public. Of course, we had to prepare a prototype worthy of the showing to the outside world. 

Day 0: setting up the stand

That's when I started counting down the hours. One last trip from Brussels to Essen, loaded once again with game boxes, we drove early in the morning allowing plenty of time to set up the stand and have everything ready for the grand opening.

We started paying the price to our lack of experience. NSKN was not present at the press conference on Wednesday, missing a lot of exposure with reviewers or distributors; we did not use the exhibitor's parking and so on. We did not even have a power plug in our stand!

The main task of the day was building the IKEA furniture, with the aid of an electric screwdriver. Learning from our mistakes, we enjoyed a full day of physical labor, while 90% of all other stands stood ready, full of games. By 7 PM, everything looked ready, the shelves were up, the carpets 'glued' to the floor, the gaming table ready for demo sessions and the games waiting for the customers.

In the evening we made the final 'battle' plan. Having 6 people at the stand for Thursday and Friday and 8 for the weekend, I assumed that at least one of us can do some advertising and sales all the time. Again, time will have proved me wrong.

Day 1 (Thursday) - the initial shock

8:00 AM: The whole team arrived at the stand, bringing the rest of the game boxes to a grand total of 48. This is what we expected to sell over the 4 days of the fair. From 8 to 8:30 we made last moment arrangements inside the booth and had a chance to walk around halls 4 and 6 and decide what to buy later on.

8:55 AM: We met the first potential customers. In spite our lack of German language skills, people were listening to our explanations and were amazingly interested... "Really, a pure strategy game with battle?"

9:20 AM: We sold the first copy of Warriors & Traders. We could not believe what was going on around us, it was pouring down with people, all interested to hear all the details and some of them actually buying the game. 

10:40 AM: My first corporate meeting as a board game designer and publisher was also the most unusual one, a company from Ukraine was interested in translating and publishing the game in the local language. It was hard to believe my eyes and ears, but I spent more than 45 minutes talking about this opportunity.

11:45 AM: The first meeting with a distribution company ended up very promising and two week later we were shipping a full pallet with 120 games towards the United Kingdom. The interest in Warriors & Traders was far higher that I expected and the flow of people to our stand exceeded our most optimistic expectations.

12:00 PM: 7 games sold.

12:30 PM: None of us had a chance to have lunch or even visit the toilets.

1:00 PM: A group of 5 friends came back to our booth for the first session of Warriors & Traders. They spent two and a half hours playing a full game. In the mean time, everyone else was talking, laughing, explaining, busy but enjoying every minute of every hour. And it was still Thursday at noon.

3:30 PM: The first gaming session ended, the second one was about to begin. People were convinced and wanted to have their own copy of the game signed by the designer. Our total sold for the day increased to 19.

4:30 PM: No customers at the stand for 5 consecutive minutes. We had time to take a breath, grab something to eat very quickly and rest our feet, except for Vlad who was in the middle of the second session of the day. All my colleagues were complaining that their throats are hurting from so much talking. 

5:00 PM: A new 'wave' of people came by. We assumed that those who got out of work or school later did not want to miss the first day of Spiel '11. We welcomed them.

6:00 PM: The gates of Messe Essen were officially closed for day 1, however all 6 of us were still talking to customers. Our total number of sold games raised to an amazing 32 pieces. Truly unbelievable!

7:15 PM: Our last customer of day 1 left. We went for a quick clean up of the booth, than we sat down amazed trying to seize the moment. We counted the total amount sold and this was 35 game boxes. This left us with a big smile and a giant problem - almost no games left for Friday.

Did I mention that our only vehicle was a normal 5-seater car, with limited amount of space, especially when it came to carrying game boxes? This was a big puzzle - how do you get more games at the fair, using only that car and be rested for the next day, assuming that the games are stored 250km away?

8:00 PM: Driving to Brussels, sometimes breaking the speed limit, wishing to have had rented a van. Essen -> Brussels = 250 km + a few less hours of sleep. Having games for the next day - priceless!

2:10 AM: It was technically the next day. I was back with 55 more games. Friday was covered, being tired did not matter anymore.

Day 2 (Friday) - the easy day

You may wonder what was so easy about Friday...

7:50 AM: Arriving in front of the exhibitions hall, we had 60 games to unload and set up in the stand. The biggest challenge wasn't the cold, but the fact that the dedicated parking space was full and we had to carry the games from quite far away.

8:50 AM: There are 8 people in front of our booth, asking all kinds of questions about Warriors & Traders. Our second day started earlier.

10:00 AM: The first gaming session of the day starts earlier than planned. A few very passionate gamers insisted to 'squeeze' a one hour play test before the one at 11:00, already planned since the day before. But we always put the needs of the customer first, so Vlad had to give up his brunch and start explaining all over again. He did not mind. 

11:30 AM: Sales were going great, almost twice as good as Thursday. Half of us already lost their voice and we are seriously thinking about getting pills for our throats.

12:00 PM: We gave a copy of Warriors & Traders to the BGG guys to put us on the hot list from Spiel '11 and to play it at BGG.Con.

12:45 PM: Getting in and out of business meetings, it looked like I have a few seconds to catch my breath. I was, of course, wrong. There was a guy from Alliance already waiting for me for a while. I knew of Alliance, it was just hard to believe they were interested in us. Half way between confusion and happiness, I went through the first of the three meetings with the largest game distributor in the United States (and possibly in the world). All went well!

2:30 PM: Feeling like a star! I had never had this image of myself being important, but for 5 consecutive minutes I actually did. Customers were asking to have their games signed by the designer and there were 6 (six) of them - I am not kidding - just waiting in a sort of queue for me to sign their copy of Warriors & Traders. I have to say that all the corporate meetings felt good, but that was astonishing, seeing all these guys and girls really interested and wanting their game signed made me feel like all the effort and craziness was really worth it. I thanked them then, I want to thank them again - they made me and all my team feel wonderful.

3:45 PM: A moment to rest, there were only a few guys in our stand, so we quickly took advantage of that and, one by one, managed to grab something to eat. We called that lunch.

5:00 PM: The people who played in the second session of the day came back to buy the game. We had to refuse any discount for the press, we were once again running low on stock.

6:07 PM: I gave an interview. My first interview related to Warriors & Traders. 

7:15 PM: The last customers were passing by out stand while we made a new plan to bring in more games for Saturday and Sunday. 

8:30 PM: I just left on another trip to Brussels to bring back another 60 games. I put the idea of rest in a closed box and decided that sleep is for the weak. I drove again for almost 6 hours, completing my task without incidents. I thought the day was over...

2:25 AM: We had a review of the day and decided what we could improve for Saturday. I cannot even remember that discussion, I just know that it was very effective.

You might be wondering by now what was so easy about Friday... it was just that great feeling that what you do matters and that it was worth all the effort in the world just to be able to experience such a unique environment.


Day 3 (Saturday) - new definition for crowded

7:50 AM: We arrived at the exhibition center and unloaded all the games we brought before. Our booth looked once again fully supplied with game boxes waiting for people to look at, buy or just admire.

8:20 AM: The game table was ready to go for the 9 AM session. we had to pile up the games to have some space left to move around our booth.

9:30 AM: I could count more than 25 people in front of our stand. Some were just looking around and moving on, most of them were listening to my colleagues and I describing Warriors & Traders. The first session of the day had already started, people seems very enthusiastic. The day was looking good.

10:45 AM: Someone had just come to buy the game, without any explanations or questions asked. We asked why and we got the answer - we were on the first place in the BGG top of new releases. It was as cool as it was unexpected. From that moment on, we put a hand written placard asking people to keep voting for us.

11:30 AM: Our stand was around 80 meters (250 feet) away from the bathrooms. I assumed this will be a five minutes round trip and, boy, I was wrong! It took me 15 minutes and a great deal of pushing and pulling to get there only to acknowledge a 100+ men and women queue for the ... men's toilet. I gave up and decided to return later. I spent another 15 minutes on the way back, reconsidering my definition of crowded.

12:00 PM: I had just completed my fifth business meeting of the day. We had more and more interested people coming over and we were also stirring up the interested of retailers who wanted to buy our game by the case. Unfortunately, we had to turn most of them down, fearing that we'd be sold out too soon and end up disappointing our customers.

2:07 PM: From our team of 8 people, only 7 were still able to speak. The first 'casualty' went to find some quick remedy to help him get back fast in the game. 

4:00 PM: I threw away the original schedule put together before the fair. It was written in there how many companies we had to approach each day o the fair and it was not realistic. We did not approach anyone and yet we had already had more than 50 business meetings, most of the successful, about two and a half times more than what we had planned. And Spiel '11 was not over.

5:15 PM: Spending most of the time standing and talking, focused 110% on board games fans, we learned to take advantage of any little free moment and take a picture or two to have then some memories to share. One of these photos shows some very dedicated players continuing one game even after one of them technically won. 

5:15 PM: More than 60 games sold in one day, a new record!

6:00 PM: We honored some promises made to retailers in the previous days and delivered their games. One box of 6 pieces was weighting more than 13 kilos (29 pounds), nevertheless everyone seemed happy.

6:25 PM: Taking into account the significant decrease in people coming to our stand, we decided that was the right moment to ... have lunch. We took turns, whoever did not have anyone to talk to, explain the game or make a sell had 5 to 10 minuted to grab a bite. I was the seventh one to go out of 8 people. By that time I did not even feel hungry anymore, actually I was feeling nothing but adrenaline. It had been another amazing day. I had met all kinds of people, from a 14 year old kid impressed by the graphic design but without enough money to buy his own copy to the CEO of one of big names in the industry. They all had two things in common, the passion for board games and the modesty. 

7:00 PM: There were still people around. I did not really understand why, realizing a lot later that the exhibition hall were open until later. I had reached another milestone, more that 25 games signed in one day!

8:35 PM: Spiel '11 was closing down for another day, but this one was special for me, I did not have to go back to Brussels to bring more games. At the particular moment, there was nothing that could have made me happier.

9:00 PM: It was time to celebrate. The fair was not over, but since Sunday evening was planned for cleaning up and driving back home, we needed our moment of joy, feeling happy of what we accomplished. We did not manage to have a coherent discussion over dinner, but we had fun.

Day 4 (Sunday) - what's going on outside our booth?

9:00 AM: People are playing! That's not a joke, there were people who came in early and wanted to play the game because their friends said it was worth it.

11:00 AM: The last day of the fair is also the most prolific for small retailers who are coming to buy the latest and hottest in the gaming world. Warriors & Traders drew some attention, maybe not even half as much as the grand releases, but enough to pose a dilemma: should we sell to the retailers or should we wait until the end of the day a dn focus on regular customers? We made a compromise, selling to those retailers who came from a country where we had no contact for distribution or retail, ensuring the a wider coverage. 

12:30 PM: Sunday seems to be less crowded than all the other days. It is the first moment when I find half an hour free to go look around and possibly buy some game for myself.

1:45 PM: A phone call from a few meters away...a colleague of mine is asking if I am available, some guy wants to buy all the rest of our games! Sadly, we had to turn him down, there were only so many games we could sell to retailers.

4:30 PM: We have five games left and three of them are promised to some gentlemen from the press who are late to pick them up. Do we sell them or not?

6:00 PM: We had three games left, excluding the two exposed ones. The last hours were rather slow compared to the rest of the exhibition and we did not have enough energy to make the best presentation to potential customers. Plus, there wasn't much to sell. All of us got at least 45 minutes of walking around and crossing items off their shopping lists.

6:45 PM: Our shelves were dismantled, having no more games to support. Our last gaming session ended and I was ready to run to the officials' desk to ask for a 15 minutes parking permit to load all that was left from our stand. We had one game left - someone did not honored the promise to come at 6:30 PM and make the final purchase.

7:03 PM: Our last customer, Guido, bought the very last game. And I gave that to him in writing!

7:30 PM: I was the proud owner of two 15 minutes Parkschein, rushing back to exhibition hall number 4 to load and make Spiel '11 just a memory.

11:25 PM: Having had no more unforeseen events, we arrived back in Brussels and took a fist look at our Essen loot. You can see some of it in the picture below, the rest of it being still in the car.

I do not want to end this post without writing down some conclusions, although so many things happened that it is hard to choose... so I will just stick to one of them. It is a special experience for a small publisher to be in Essen... as a publisher. Even with low expectations the hopes are high and it can be overwhelming. The one thing that makes this whole experience so special is the feeling of belonging. You are all the time surrounded by friendly faces and whatever you don't know and do wrong is understood and forgiven.