❖ Version History ❖

May-August, 2024
Where we left off in our previous post, we had just launched the Phoenix Farm Kickstarter Campaign… and we had only raised about $3,000 of our initial $5,000 ask by the end of day #1. After three days or so (and after I think I may have bitten off all of my fingernails), we finally reached our $5,000 funding goal… but we had three weeks of time to advertise and get the word out there. So, we put every little slice of effort we possibly could into making this happen to it’s maximum potential!

After three long, hard, and exhausting weeks of trying our very best, we managed to collect $10,636 in donations for Phoenix Farm, which was absolutely amazing! (and equally necessary)!

But then of course comes the fateful moment of “Wow, we did it……… what do we even do next?!?”

Well, luckily, we are here to give the full run down of our next steps in the journey, along with some interesting trauma that I had to survive in the background of all this! (Hooray!)

Okay, well, before we go into all the storytelling, let’s begin with a checklist of what actually needs to be accomplished:

1. Get the money from the Kickstarter, so that we can turn the lights on for everything else.
2. We need to actually purchase Phoenix Farm from our Manufacturer.
3. We need to place our bulk orders for all accessories (Play Mats, Pins, score pads, etc.)
4. We need to run our 3d Printers (see above) endlessly to meet the demands for this year.
5. I need to craft our handmade items in my little workshop.
6. We need to design the official Lore Book! (This is an entire blog post to come later).
7. We need to purchase shipping materials.
8. We need to establish our Pre-Order Store on BackerKit & prepare surveys.
9. And finally, we need to prepare for a packaging party to get all the mail out.

So, as an interesting point for our storytelling today, one thing I will discuss is how we actually managed to time everything so well this year for our three-month turn around timeline & how we went about our ordering process with the manufacturer. Since this is our third publication process, we actually have one major advantage that we never had before when it came to purchasing Phoenix Farm :: previous funds raised & saved!

Technically speaking, our final budget needs surrounding Phoenix Farm worked out to be about $22,000 in total between all of the accessories & the game purchase. We had asked for $5,000 in the Kickstarter because we already had about $10,000 in funds we had raised at the Renaissance Faire the year before, and if need be, we could manage just making the game itself without any of the add-ons, but with additional funding came the ability to make more and more content for the accessories!

As an additional perk to these funds that we already had though, we could theoretically begin our purchasing process with the manufacturing facility the very moment that our Kickstarter hit official funding. This is because manufacturing at this scale usually does the payments in installments (like half now, half later sort of thing). Meaning, we actually had enough money for the first payment before we were even done with the fund raising process. This is important because it sped up our timeline for fulfillment by almost two months! And by the time it was about June, we were getting our final production prototype in the mail:

So… from April -> June, Manufacturing is underway for the game itself. During this time, the smaller orders (for things like score pads and the play mats) are super swift and not a concern. All that is left is making our handmade goods, and getting the book published. The book is going to take some time, because we have… about 1-million things to sort out on that agenda, which is why it will be its own post later.

There is however, one other nightmare of storytelling to share regarding the process of making our handmade goods… and this is that my plans for 2024 got dramatically changed in the middle of this process. In my head, i had anticipated using our 3d printer all spring & summer, with the intent of doing the finishing work at my desk while it ran (like painting our dice & gluing our magnets). This was going to take me at least a month or two to accomplish, and we had about three months to work with (while juggling everything else being discussed here today). Which, to be honest, was fine, this is what I planned for.

What I did not plan for was losing my house in the process.

I knew, back in January 2024, that I was going to be losing my room mates in the apartment where my workshop lived. This was not going to be a problem. My girlfriend at the time & I had already planned on moving in together, and this was going to be an easy segway that was planned for July when our lease was going to renew for another year. I had spoken to my landlord about it, got everything planned, and then dumped all my energy into timing this Kickstarter madness.

Fast forward to May 1st 2024, literally a week after concluding the Kickstarter with huge success on the mind, I get a phone call from my landlord, who told me that we were no longer allowed to be living in the house as of June 2024, because they are selling it (with us currently living inside of it still). This shook the literal foundation of my stability in all things… what was supposed to be my relaxing time of relentless crafting for Phoenix Farm very suddenly became a never-ending fight for survival while working two jobs. I don’t think I slept a single day this May. every day became a battle of arguing with our land lord, dealing with my frantic room mates who had to advance their move out timeline by two months, and also desperately trying to schedule apartment hunting for myself.

Needless to say, this dramatically changed my ability to meet my own deadlines. Not only did I need to find a new place to live, I needed to make almost x600 items by hand while also tearing my entire workshop apart to be relocated to another part of the city I lived in. Thank the gods, we managed to figure it all out. My girlfriend & I found a beautiful new home to hide in, moved in, got the printers set up, and put endless effort into making everything that we could to meet our deadline on the promised timeline of trying to ship the game out before September 1st.

While we did manage to get all of the hand made goods done on a good timeline, we did have several other major problems to be solved (and at least one more major nightmare to face) before we were done here. This said, we are only going to allow one nightmare per story here in the Librarium Games Design Journal! So, for today we are going to pause our journey so that we can come back for our next adventure in the Book Publishing world! (a feat we have not yet tackled here).

Be sure to check back soon to see how the Phoenix Farm Lore Book came together as a product, how we designed it, how we ordered it, and how it turned out amongst the rest of the Phoenix Farm product suite! As always, thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more adventures soon!