New puzzle game - Doctor Esker's Triad

As I've been stuck at home over the last few weeks, I dived into a puzzle game project. It's called Doctor Esker's Triad (co-branded with my puzzle card games). It's 48 puzzles in 16 unique puzzle types, all coded in JavaScript/HTML5. It's 100% free, made for people who might like to spend an afternoon or two with some puzzles during our current social distancing efforts.

It's available here: Doctor Esker's Triad

Feel free to try it out, and please share if you enjoy it or know somebody who would.

97 Klotho

I finished up a recent game design with some testing over the holidays. I got it worked up for The Game Crafter's Roll-And-Write contest. Not sure I'll do well there - I think people were looking for simpler games - but I really enjoy it. My son said it was his favorite of the ones I've made.

97 Klotho website

Interview at People Behind the Meeples

I got interviewed!

Pretty neat. Thanks to George for providing the neat series of interviews with designers.

https://gjjgames.blogspot.com/2020/02/people-behind-meeples-episode-211-dave.html

Doctor Esker's Notebook Project - by the numbers

I did a workup of the finances and sales I've had for the Doctor Esker's Notebook project. I figure this might be of interest to other indie game designers and publishers. The project started in May 2018, with the first printing (1080 copies) ordered in August 2018, arriving misprinted in October, and then fixed and ready to sell by February 2019. The sequel and the second printing of the original game (2160 copies each) were ordered in July 2019 and arrived in late September 2019.

Let me know if you have questions in the comments.

Bigger version of the image is here.

Esker in Hungary!

I noticed I had a review of Doctor Esker's Notebook in a Hungarian blog - very cool! Sounds like they liked it, if Google Translate can be trusted. It's neat that it ended up halfway around the world.

https://szabadulos.blog.hu/2018/11/26/otthon_jatszhato_2_resz_angol_nyelvu_szabadulos_jatekok

Some people suck

Guy buys original puzzle game, returns it three weeks later, presumably after playing and enjoying. Then he buys the sequel, returns it three weeks later.

Total cost to me, $6, plus potentially unsellable stock and bad reputation on Amazon.

Total cost to him: $0.

Don't think I'm not watching, or that you're not a terrible person.

Finances update

I haven't done a financial update in a while. Here's how it looks. Graph #1 is my total revenues stacked on top of my total expenses.

   

 Graph #2 is my net profitability, now about $4,900 in the red but rising fairly steadily.

 

Both graphs show my initial costs for 1080 games, the gradual rise to net profitability, and then the larger costs of my second print run (2160 each of original and sequel for 4320 total games), and my sales since then.

In terms of inventory, I've still got about 4575 games, which at the net revenue I typically make per game is about $39,000 in total potential revenue if I'm able to sell them all. Set against that revenue will be any future advertising, promotions, taxes, free copies, spoilage, and other such expenses.

So, I have a good shot at net profitability, but probably not until next year, and only then if my sales stay steady or increase.

Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook is now officially available

Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook is now officially available for purchase on my site! Yay. Here's the purchase page. I added a special discount (10%) if you're new to Esker and want to buy both games at once.

Son of Esker is here!

Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook, plus the second printing of the original Doctor Esker's Notebook, are here stateside! It will take me a little time to get them processed, to get some shipped to Amazon, and to get my website updated, but they're here! Yay!

If you see this and want one, and you're in the U.S. you can send $14.99 via Paypal to dave@planktongames.com, and just mention that you'd like Son of Esker rather than the original. If you're not in the U.S., contact me about shipping. I can only cover free shipping to US addresses.

Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook is nearly on the way to the U.S.!

I've received word that the sequel to Doctor Esker's Notebook is about to ship. It should get here in about a week plus some time to clear customs. I'm really excited to take this next step. I also ordered a second printing of the original, so I'll have plenty for the upcoming holiday season.

SAHMReviews takes on Dr. Esker's Notebook

Here's a new review (mostly spoiler free) for Doctor Esker's Notebook by Scott at SAHMReviews.com.

They're running a giveaway also, linked from the review page, so sign up for a chance to win a free copy of the game!

Doctor Esker goes to school!

The Hungry Gamer posted a picture of Doctor Esker's Notebook being used in a school setting. That's so cool! So happy to see this.




Here's a link to his original post on Facebook.
Here's a link to his YouTube channel - he's got some really cool reviews there.
Here's a link to his reviews on BoardGameGeek.com.

Doctor Esker's Notebook review at Everything Board Games

A great review of Doctor Esker's Notebook over at Everything Board Games!

EverythingBoardGames.com review

Off a cliff (not really)

Well, my profitability graph went off a cliff. Why? Because I paid for two new things last week. Thing One was a second printing of Doctor Esker's Notebook, which is exciting. I've now sold half of my first print run, and I'm on schedule to run out sometime in October at current sales rates, so I needed some more. I ordered another 2160 games, or double the number from my current print run.

Thing Two was the sequel to Doctor Esker's Notebook, called Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook, which is a whole new deck of puzzles to play. The game mechanism is similar to the first game, but the deck and the puzzles are completely different. You don't need to have played the first to play the second - you can do them in either order. I ordered 2160 of these as well.

So, my graph above, which was flirting with profitability for this year, is now way back in the red. But that's a good thing! I stand to make another $4000 or so from my remaining games from the first print run. I spent about $7500 on the second print run and the sequel print run. That will give me the potential for another $40,000 in revenue from those two printings, or a total profit off all print runs of about $34,000 after I deduct expenses for development, marketing, and supplies. That's nice. Obviously, I'll have taxes to deduct from that also, and I'll have to pay both ends of the social security and Medicare taxes like you do as a sole proprietor. I don't really want to estimate what the hourly rate of compensation for me is, because I've put so much time into this, but I think it'll beat working at McDonalds.

New Review of Doctor Esker's Notebook by Board Game Gumbo

The folks at Board Game Gumbo reviewed Doctor Esker's Notebook, and they had fun with it. See here for their review:

Board Game Gumbo Dr. Esker review


(Review image from BoardGameGumbo.com)

RoomEscapeArtist review of Doctor Esker's Notebook

Here's a really thorough review of Doctor Esker's Notebook. They say it's "a brilliant puzzle game with a clever answer mechanism." Pretty neat!

RoomEscapeArtist review of Doctor Esker's Notebook

Four Tribes Review

I've been enjoying a game I bought recently. It's from fellow indie designer Jason Glover at Grey Gnome Games over the last couple of days. It's called Four Tribes, and it's available from The Game Crafter here.

The game is a light two-player card game with some additional components. It's got a fun mechanic, plays quickly, and involves some nice strategy, along with some luck. The art is really great, as it is for all of Glover's games - he's a great artist in addition to doing the designing. I'm still figuring out the best strategy, and I'm not always seeing why some options are possible (e.g. why I would put any cards on the opponent's side of the river other than the special cards I have to place there). I like the winter village set because I think the higher number of buildings makes the strategy more interesting. Some games have been decided pretty much by luck, but most of them have involved some cool strategic decisions and management of cards. The design is elegant and uses its pieces well, and there's more than enough randomness and variety that the game feels different each time. It fits nicely in the new medium boxes from TGC, although I wish there were a slightly larger bag for fishing around in - it seems not quite big enough to randomize or to fit my giant meaty fist into. I've ended up using an alternative hidden building choosing technique that's working better. My daughter (pictured above) would prefer that the chiefs you're recruiting didn't use the same colors as the buildings, since they're not related to each other, but that's a minor quibble. I also find the special cards, which have interesting abilities, are often just used as wild cards for their numbers, but sometimes the special powers matter and are fun to use.

Cool, unique game, and well worth the purchase for me.

Diggity from Sugar Dice

I have no idea what they're saying, but it's really neat to see people in another country enjoying (I hope) my game.

It's nice to write to creators

I got two emails today that made me feel good about this project. One was from a person asking if she could get the completion stickers I made for Doctor Esker's Notebook for people to use on their Escape Room Passports (see here for details: https://wetheenthusiasts.com/). That was neat, to see that she cared enough to memorialize the event, and that somebody actually wanted one of the stickers I made.

The other email was from a guy my age who just wanted to say that he enjoyed playing the game with his kids. Very kind thing to do - he didn't need to, but he just wanted to let me know that he liked it. This is important to remember - there's always somebody on the other side, at the creative end of whatever you're using for entertainment, and if you can let them know you got something out of it, that's always worth doing. They'll be happy all day.

Sequel is at the printer

I've got the art submitted to the printer, both for a reprint of Doctor Esker's Notebook, and for the sequel. Very exciting! Waiting on proofs.

Great review from G33K-HQ!

I got a terrific review from G33K-HQ for Doctor Esker's Notebook. Here's a link to the review:

G33K-HQ Review

Sounds like they had a great time with it. WARNING: There's a little bit of a spoiler for the first puzzle in their pictures.

Doctor Esker's Notebook project financial update

I've been doing a series of posts about the financial end of my game project, and I haven't posted an update for a while. I'm nearly to the break-even point, which is great! I'm at $-194 by my calculation, with revenues of $3,454 offsetting expenses of $3,649.

I have sold 386 games and sent out 35 as promo or reviewer copies. I have 134 in stock at Amazon, and another 525 or so at home (uh, I mean in my warehouse 😀 ). I make about $9 per game depending on the sales channel, and I am not incurring too many new expenses at this point - the major expenses were printing and development, and I don't have many ongoing costs (other than the cut Amazon and PayPal take from each sale). So, I could make up to about $4,000-$4,500 on this if I just sell out the print run and don't do anything else.

Sales have taken a little bit of a hit over summer. I'm at about two sales a day, where from February to April I was at more like three a day. I hope that's just seasonal and not a trend. Nearly all sales now are through Amazon.

Here's the info in graph form. First, expenses and revenues by category:

The picture above shows revenues (above zero, climbing) and expenses (below zero, mostly flat). Time progresses along the bottom, but not evenly - initially I was updating every day or two, but now I'm updating less frequently.

Next, net revenue (income minus expenses): 

On this one, the time axis is properly scaled. I'm almost back to zero, as you can see.

Of course, I'm not including the time I've put into this project. My hourly wage is something like negative fifty cents an hour. So, this isn't (yet) a good way to make a living, put food on the table, or pay for health insurance. It's not even a good investment relative to a good solid mutual fund, although it will be if I sell out the print run by the end of the year, which looks likely if sales pick up a little around the holidays.

Anyway, looking good. I should hit break even sometime later this month.

Daggers Highschool by Jorge Zhang

One of the guys who reviewed Doctor Esker's Notebook is a game designer himself, and he's just launched a new Kickstarter for his game. The game is Daggers Highschool, a deckbuilding game that simulates a frenetic, comedic, and tremendously stressful high school, with deckbuilding mechanics. Looks like fun!

The link to see more is here: Daggers Highschool
Boardgame Geek link is here: Daggers Highschool BGG

Development version shown below:

Excessive game box size

I've been really enjoying Splendor, which I was given for Christmas. I've played a couple times in the past week after playing it for the first time a few years back.

I've been thinking about box size. I've commissioned some cool art for my card game Horde, and I'd like to get that printed up for distribution. It uses cards plus some scoring tokens, so I need a box big enough for about 90 cards plus 11 tokens and a set of rules. I've been using TheGameCrafter's token chips, which are a satisfying size and weight. All of that could probably fit handily in a small box.
Interestingly enough, that's also about the same component set as Splendor, although it has more like 40 chips instead of 11. Still, it shouldn't need a big box. But they gave it one! Here is a comparative look at the game:

The top picture shows how it's packaged. It looks nice. Below that is the space all the components actually take up.

Clearly, it doesn't need this big a box. It's bad for the environment and bad for storage. It's 80% empty space, and it needs a huge blow-mold plastic frame to hold it all. I wonder, though, if people are willing to pay more for it (and think more of it) if it looks like a bigger game than it is. At $25 retail, or $40 MSRP, I bet a big chunk of that price is actually the empty space in the box. I wonder if I can pitch a smaller box for Horde and convince people that it's as much of a value small as it would be with wasteful packaging. Sometimes when we shop we're just dumb sacks of meat, and I think this might be one of those times.

What's Eric Playing review of Doctor Esker's Notebook

A really nice review with lots of very nice pictures (nicer than I took myself).

What's Eric Playing review of Doctor Esker's Notebook

Thoughtful Gamer review of Doctor Esker's Notebook

A really nice one here:

Thoughtful Gamer review of Doctor Esker's Notebook

A business milestone - $2K

This past week I crossed $2,000 in revenue for Dr. Esker's Notebook. The last bit of that came from a distribution deal in Canada with a game store, who bought forty copies at a steep discount and arranged for a U.S. cargo forwarder who I could send the games to, which saved a lot on shipping and complexity for me. I am very grateful for that.

I haven't tried to get into game stores directly other than this effort, and I think that might be a cool avenue to pursue, particularly if I do another print run. Here is the updated revenue and expense chart and net revenue track. I've had pretty healthy sales on Amazon for the past week (around 2-5 per day), so that's helped too.  I've gone from being $3500 in the hole after printing to $1650 in the hole now, about two months later, so that's good progress.

Hungry's Doctor Esker's Notebook review

A positive BoardGameGeek review for Dr. Esker’s Notebook!

Hungry's Doctor Esker's Notebook Review

Jorge Zhang Dr. Esker Review

Another great review of Doctor Esker's Notebook! Spoiler-free, too.
Jorge Zhang Dr. Esker's Notebook Review

Another positive Dr. Esker's Notebook review

Here's another one, this time from ISlayTheDragon.com:

http://islaythedragon.com/featured/review-doctor-eskers-notebook/