We're So Board!
We're So Board!
Episode 30 - Lander (with Creator Dan)
In this week’s episode we’re excited to be talking to the co creator of Lander, a new game that will be on kickstarter later this year! (link below) This game sounds like a lot of fun! It’s got some elements that might remind you of some of your favorite games but is unlike anything you’ve played before! Find out why we are excited to back this project and listen to find out what makes this game Rachel proof!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/intrepidgames/lander-after-the-crash?ref=discovery
Hello, and welcome. I'm Rachel.
Jake:I'm Jake.
Rachel:And we're so bored. The Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with said game to help answer the question, Will this cure our boredom?
Jake:That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to say, analyzing the best camera light and microphone products so that you can stream something without there being a huge glare on the components without blinding participants and making sure viewers can hear what's going on. Did you write this? I did. I didn't write this because I have all my streaming stuff figured out. Mm hmm. But I mean, does this have anything to do with what you posted on social media the other day?
Rachel:Social media? Hmm, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.
Jake:I was I was something that you posted on Instagram and Facebook. I think it was on Thursday.
Rachel:Was ist das?
Jake:Yeah, that one? Oh, yeah.
Rachel:You know, that's just a little project I've got going on right now. So I'm working on gathering all the right things right now. I'm, you know, I'm getting prepared for something. I can't say too much about it. But there will probably be more information in our next episode.
Jake:what it sounds like you're trying to stream something. But speaking of streaming, like I said, I already have all that stuff figured out for myself. I'm on Twitch at Naughty Dog 541. And I've been streaming semi regularly throughout the weeks. My schedule is up to date, and I change it on Sunday for the coming week. So you can come check me out there if you would like I'd really appreciate
Rachel:it. Yeah. All right. We are here with Dan, one of the CO creators of the game lander, which we'll be launching on Kickstarter later this year. Dan, thank you for joining us.
Dan:Nice to be with you guys.
Jake:Yeah, thanks for joining.
Rachel:Why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your game?
Dan:Yeah, I'm pretty much well, Lander is actually the result of a seven year journey. I started on Boxing Day with one of my friends in 2014. And basically surrounded with some of our favorite board games, that all of which were more than two players. And he just said, Oh, well, how about we make a game. And on from there, we just kind of got out some pieces of paper and some pens, and just started kind of playing nothing. And started asking each other questions about, you know, what should we have in the game, what not to have in the game, and so on. And kind of long story short, I think Lander is kind of a combination of a lot of our favorite board games, we've kind of taken some of the elements that we really love about those games. And we've improved on areas of the games that have always been a little bit frustrating. And over this kind of seven year journey, we've come through whereby we originally launched on Kickstarter in March of 2020, just before a lockdown is happening. And we were expecting some some big things with the current coverage that we had, we did the world's first play before your pledge campaign whereby we actually manufactured 130 copies of the game and sent it to board game stores and cafes all around the world. And we were on dice, Taro Geek and Sundry members of media, all of the big names of the industry 10s of 1000s of views on all of these videos, when we went to Kickstarter, we didn't get it right somehow. And the Kickstarter basically didn't get the numbers in the first few days. So we pulled the campaign. And then when the pandemic happened, both my friend and I got quite busy with our day jobs and working from home and so forth. But we haven't really had a huge amount of time to be able to come and bring the game back to Kickstarter. But over the past two years, I think the most exciting thing in this story is that whereas the day before your pledge campaign failed, you know, it didn't produce the results that we thought it might one of the things that kind of happened out of that is that all of these copies were in the world and then slowly we got random messages on our Facebook with people from around the world saying hey, have played the game, you know really loved this bit of of it. But this one thing we weren't so happy with. And over two years with this kind of pieces of information coming from all around the world, we actually took the entire game apart and have worked on almost every single aspect of the game to further refine it and improve it to where it is now. So the original Kickstarter version which was made in 2019. For example, we added in a fourth resource of water resource in Again, this enabled us to then separate the training depth into traits in training so that when you're developing your Pro, you can get access to some of the cars more easily. And we developed a solo mode for the game. Okay. And that's kind of a whole story in itself as well, we're looking at coming back to Kickstarter with with a lower price with a base game price, and then a deluxe version. And historically, we just went with a deluxe version. And then we're also going to release a small expansion with it. And from the original version, we also listen to the community. And we had these abstract artwork on the game's tiles. And we've actually got the artists to do artwork such that it kind of is a graphic illustration of what the planet's surface might be like. So the main resource types are energy. So we've got kind of Sandy kind of tiles, you can might imagine, there's some panels being placed on this titanium tiles, which are more rough terrain, and then there's kind of food tiles, and then through the rivers that are on those tiles or not, that's how you will get the water into your resources as well. So we're really quite excited to be here, because we've just kind of finished off the final touches to the game from all of these refinements and changes from all this feedback that we have, and really listened to the community. And we're really happy with what we've gotten out. And in some respects, kind of glad that we failed the Kickstarter the first time around, so that we can actually come to something you know, which is, in our opinion, is, you know, one of the greatest board games that we've ever played. So we're hopeful that other people might might think that too.
Rachel:Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, good on you guys, for like taking that failure and using it as an opportunity to like, grow and learn and make it better. Yeah, it's going to end up being a better game as a result of all of that. So that's really cool. And you already kind of explained some of the changes that you made as a result of some of that feedback. For our listeners who have not heard of this game, could you give like a brief description of kind of what it is what it's about and what you're doing? Yeah, of
Dan:course. So Lander was set on the first pi outside of our solar system, found to have liquid water on its surface. And it's set as the kind of near future scenario for Earth, where climate change and kind of the rise of power of corporations are such that six of the world's largest corporations have boatloads of money together to make a spaceship to go to this planet that we identified. And the whole idea of lander is that we were supposed to be the mission to set up the first colony on this planet, for the arrival of all of the pioneers aboard the main ship. But as the lander comes in, it crashed lands and half of the crew die. This is where your story begins after the crash. So from the deck of 42 crew members, you deal out a subset of those crew each game, so you only play with a small number of crew. And the theme of the game is such that you're trying to kind of outwit your rival corporations survive the perils of this new planet, and be the player who achieves the most mission stars to win the game. And that would then relate to doing the most development such that you would get the biggest market share of the, you know, the next wave of pioneers as they arrive. Okay,
Rachel:yeah. And so you were showing us kind of the setup for this. And also, we watched some of the old videos that you had on your old Kickstarter page. I really like the little triangle pieces that kind of clicked together in order to create the land as you're building it. I was really curious why you chose to go that path instead of like regular hexagon, old tiles, like you might see in Catan. Well, yeah,
Dan:so great question. I think it all goes back right to that Boxing Day, the very first day. And we actually sat together and we thought, you know, Chess has got squares, Catan has got hexagons, there are games, whereby there's a game board. And there's games where, for example, you've got cards, and there isn't anything. And we just thought that there wasn't a game with triangles, that was like a big game in the world. And we just thought that we'd be kind of unique in having those triangles. So we literally just had lights paper with scissors that we cut out. And the idea of the game, having the upgrading of the resources was bright back from really early on in the game's development on the idea that for example, you'd have a level one sector have a certain resource value and then as your grade goes to a level two, and as you upgrade it again, it goes to a level three He was right in the original, you know, really, really early on in the design. And then the idea that you've landed on this planet, I think really links into the fact that human beings, I think there's something inside us or not everyone, maybe, but in a lot of us, I think we were born explorers. I think we love exploring. And when you play games like Carcassonne, and you draw a tile, and you like eyes, that tile, I've always loved that feeling that you get, you know, it could be half a second, but when you just get something and it's new, and then you get to replace it, that was a big inspiration for how we kind of would grow the board away from from a crash site and use that tile placement to represent that kind of human desire to go and explore. Okay, okay,
Rachel:fair enough. That's cool.
Dan:When we have these pieces of paper, sat on the table and playing it, what we, what we found is that it's an absolute nightmare, if you ever played Catan, and not have the cardboard around the edge, yeah, place a piece and the whole board breaks up, it was my friend, actually, who came up with the idea of like, hey, let's try and lock these things together. And there was several iterations of design. And that actually came to when we actually went to manufacture, manufacture the first Kickstarter preview property that we really got that designed, right, so that when they click together, it is a really nice fit. And the really impressive thing with that is when you place the pieces on the sector's that kind of sum him. So you can move the entire board with a single finger, like around because it's one whole piece, but every time you click a new piece in place a little play a piece in to clean the sector. It's all together. So you don't have those kind of, you know, very common old game scenarios where you jumped the table. And
Jake:yeah, I saw that on the original Kickstarter page. And I thought that that was actually really genius idea. Because that is inevitably going to happen, especially with something where all those little pieces need to fit together. It's beautiful.
Rachel:Yeah. And since you're placing pieces on top of that, I totally agree. I'm the person that is always knocking the table or hitting my stuff and knocking it over. So this is Rachel proof. I think.
Jake:I would hope so. But yeah,
Rachel:so like the pieces click together, kind of like if anyone ever remembers, connects, you know, like the off brand of Lego kind of thing. I don't know if anyone knows what I'm talking about. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, the so they kind of click together like that. And it seems pretty solid. Like the video we saw was somebody like shaking the table and like moving the board around and everything stayed, you know, really nicely placed. So pretty cool. The cool design very unique.
Dan:Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a really nice journey took to get to the kind of the final design without working with the manufacturer as well. And you know, the their tooling was such that they could get it to be such a nice puzzle piece connection. That while it's, you know, easy to take it apart vertically, when it locks in it is really solid. So it's quite kind of tactile, it's quite pleasing to feel it click in and click out kind of thing.
Rachel:Yeah. Okay, I want to I want to talk more about like, the deep details of this game. It sounds like it's got a lot of aspects to it. So you've got like resource management with all the different like titanium and water and all those resources, right? Yeah, you've got Tableau building that you're doing with your crew members, and like adding abilities and items and stuff with them. And that it sounds like you've got bluffing abilities and alliances that you can make, it just seems like there's a lot going on. Would you describe that as like, there's just multitudes of strategy that you can bring to this and different areas, you can focus on kind of what are your thoughts on that?
Dan:One of the nice comments from some of the people that we sent out to Jeremy Salinas, Fremont versus people, this kind of quote was, there's a lot of cool things going on with Lander. And I really kind of was pleased that the game instilled that feeling that there's a lot to explore within the game. And I think that's why I would say that it's my favorite game, not just because I've made it, but because it's got that further thing that connects to that feeling of exploration. So you've landed on a new world, and not only can you explore the land around the planet, as the board grows, but the game has a huge amount of depth to it, such that you might play it, you know, 10 times. And over the course of those games, you can start to uncover different parts of the game. You know, you might focus in first game while understanding your like the resources coming in from the board, you might get a bit of a career development. And then as you start to kind of see the different elements of the game and some of the strategies and some of that dynamics within kind of the games ecosystem. It's almost like an onion with like the layers of the game that you can slowly start to peel back and really kind of sink your teeth into So this is like a board game that we think that we've made like four board games, people who love these sorts of games would really kind of hopefully be be satisfied by all the different strategies that you can kind of maneuver within. And I think one of the things which makes it the most exciting is that while there's a lot of things going on, so you've got the resource, as you mentioned, coming in from the board, and the table building, we've put in a new mechanic in the game, which is called influence, and this influence that that you have, effectively regulates the tech that within the game. So if you are, you know, horrible to one of your rivals, you'll lose a few points of influence, which relate to the end game score and mission stats, and how you kind of manage your influence and how you manage how you complete the missions and what mission types you'd go for, and how those linked to the accolades and so on, and so on. It really is such that you've got the ability to kind of maneuver within the system, however you want to play the game, right. And you might be a player that just likes a boat strategy. And you might think, I just want to do the upgrading and expanding on the board. I like that in games. And what we've done is we've made it so that if you just wanted to focus on construction missions, you could do that. And the construction missions are at a price where you can just do a board strategy early, and you just ignore your crew and just try and an EQ went out that way. But at the same time, where you start to get the experience in the game, when you achieve five missions styles of one of the three mission categories, which are construction missions, which relate to the board, or them as logistics and research. When you get five stars in one set, you get the bonus star. So if you, for example, were to get 15 stars of construction missions only, and the player was to get five logistics and 10 research, they might win the game with those with that extra bonus star.
Rachel:Oh, okay, I see. So it's only like the first five for a single type first time got it.
Dan:So the game incentivizes you to kind of move through the different mission types, but you can focus everything. Now, the kicker with this is that as well as the mission spars from the missions, and those bonuses, they're also accolades that you can play for. And the athletes provide you two stars that relate to the board, one star that relates to the Crew Development, and one star that relates to the mission types that you complete. So it could be that, for example, if you went on board, and you got the two stars from the construction accolade, and one star, if the construction missions is up, you might beat the player who did the other sets. I see. Because you'd scored on the accolade stars, okay, so whereas you'd have 15. So the way that the game works really does provide you with different ways to to win based on the accolades. So you might go and all board strategy, if the construction accolade was up, and one for
Rachel:three boards. So the accolades are randomized, yeah,
Dan:there's three sets of three. On the board, you've got either the player with the most upgrades, the player with the most expansions, or the player who owns the longest connected set of river tiles, okay, for the crew, it's the player who achieves the most in either science or engineering operations. And then for the missions, it's the player achieves the most mission and stars of either construction, logistics or research. And you'll pull one card from each of the three sets. So that every game there's always that variation as well. So when you start the game, and you've played, you know, a couple of times, you might kind of look at what's available, and play a different strategy that relates to that game setup.
Rachel:I like that in games, I like not being like pigeon holed into a single strategy. I do too. Yeah, being able to kind of explore and expand and like, oh, I tried this last time, and it didn't work out. So great for me. So I'm going to try this this time and having to play it over and over again, to really kind of figure out, you know, what you're doing, plus the elements of randomness that you're talking about, make it so that the strategy I played last time that worked really well for me doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work really well for me this time. Yeah. So that's really cool. It makes it brings a lot of replayability to the game, I think.
Jake:I totally agree. I'm not I'm not a fan of when a board game has a specific play style that is best suited to win every single time. So I liked that this has a variety of options of how you can play and how you can win. Yeah, I agree.
Dan:That kind of idea about not having one. One way to win kind of came out from us playing risk, or through our youth. And I think most people that play risk, I mean, spoiler alert, is that if you take Australia yeah over, you can pretty much win. Yep. So considering the, you know, in Monopoly, you'll get into a situation whereby the winner becomes apparent quite early in the game, and then all the other players in the game will just play out their win over the course of so many hours, we felt that those two parts of those very famous board games were some of the things that we wanted to design a game to overcome. Being novice game designers, you know, our journey, the seven year journey has been around our day jobs and so forth. And I think it's been quite interesting the iterations that we've gone through to get to this end product now, and how we've overcome those those things. So for example, I would say that in a lot of board games, when you have tape that it turns off a lot of players, yes. But what we've done with the game has said, Look, if you don't have take that in the game, we did an exercise whereby we took out the action club step, you will get the same dynamic as monopoly, whereby you'll get a player go into the lead, and then everyone walked out that way. So putting in that Take That element enables that regulation, so that rather than somebody just winning, and everyone else being, you know, less to be frustrated through the course of the game, Blanda has the action card deck that's now regulated with this influence. So if you play a bad card, you'll lose some some influence. But it's just enough. So that the tape that means that you don't get those runaway wins. And what we've typically seen from, you know, lots and lots of playtesting, is that you might be in the last year in last place. And there's just enough things that you can do to hit the win. And that feeling whereby you're able to win from behind is something that's taken a lot of time and so forth to get right.
Jake:So that kind of leads me into my question that I've been wanting to ask for a little bit. Two things, actually, one that being able to win from behind reminds me of another game dominant species, where it is not apparent who is winning until the very last turn. And you can be way, way ahead. And then out of nowhere, the person in last place just wins. But my question, originally that I wanted to ask was, you'd mentioned risk is one of the games that you play. You mentioned Catan. Earlier, what are some of the other games that you're used as your building blocks to kind of piece this game together?
Dan:Well, let's say that that Catan was the biggest inspiration. I can see that. Yeah. And that idea that you get resources in them and you do something with them was the founding piece, I would say that risk was the biggest influence for almost the inverse of itself in that risk made me not want to include dice in the game.
Jake:Right. Right. I understand that.
Dan:And then when we build on top of that caucus on that idea, with the towel placement on the exploring that band was a big contributing factor. Battlestar Galactica was an interesting one. Okay. Because in Battlestar Galactica, you have these different crew and they all have different abilities. Yes. Now, the crew cards in Battlestar Galactica are, like 20 centimeters by 10 centimeters. Yeah, and you have the ability to do quite a lot on like big space, but we wanted our crew cards to be card size. So quite early on, we have the decision that they can only have one ability, whereas in Battlestar Galactica, you have like a positive thing. And then they also have a negative as some kind of transplants. So with having that constraint of the size of a card and having one ability, it led us to having it so that it was a leadership ability. So the four crew members that you have only your leader as that buff, right, that was quite interesting that the physical components of how we wanted to make the game made a rule be the way that it came to be. All
Rachel:of the cards, all of the crew members have leadership abilities, but you are only like actively using the one that you choose to be your leader. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Yes, that's right. Okay. And you get to choose it's not like decided for you based on some other like number or anything like in dead of winter?
Dan:No, so there's a drafting process at the beginning of the game. So each player has effectively five turns in draft process, you'll play a piece of the central colony Governor marker in the middle of the table, and we choose our turn order based on the closest player to that so some people like to be player one and rich, try and get it other people go, you know, I don't want to be player one. So from that player, one gets to choose either to claim a piece on the boat, or to choose one of the crew members in the draft. And the crew members are chosen in the draft of the number of players, two crew members per player plus one One. So the turnover there would be that you get to either do crew on board, and it goes round, the last player gets to do criminal board twice, and then it goes back around and sneaks to the first player and backwards, and so on sneaking back within forward until players have got free claim sectors and two crew members. And in that kind of startup game setup, you then have your two crew members that you've chosen. And once you've chosen them, you then get to choose which one is your leader. So you don't have to pull the first one that you chose and making you leave, we get to choose that.
Jake:I mean, that's interesting. And then
Dan:all players place their crew members face down in slots, one, two, and then player one starts revealing their crew, which means that you can't just go like, Oh, you've got that criminal, I'm gonna swap my leader, that you've made it a decision.
Rachel:The draft is face up, though, right?
Dan:The crew draft is face down. So for example, let's say that we were playing three player game, that would be six plus one. So that'd be seven. So let's say that I was playing along, I'd see all seven crew,
Rachel:I see. But you would draw it into your hand.
Dan:Yeah. And then you don't know which print number I've got, obviously, then, if you pick up the deck, you'll know the other six, and so on and so on. But you'll get to a plate where, because I've met when crew first, maybe you don't like double board, because you'd potentially get better sectors than I would in terms of their productivity. So it balances quite nicely through the drafting process.
Rachel:Okay, that's really interesting. That's not typically how I feel like, like a drafting thing like that. Normally, it would be all like face up for everyone to see. And then people go around picking. So I'm interested in how that affects kind of starting positions. And it really makes you have to focus on like, what am I doing for my strategy, rather than what am I doing to try and counter your strategy? Yeah,
Dan:yes, exactly. So in terms of the setup, the workflow of the setup is that you would place the center hacks of a meeting sectors around it, you will deal with seventh crew, you would set up the mission roster. So there's one mission from each of the three types. And there are two missions that sit next to the mission roster, which are up next. So when you complete a mission, you choose one of those two to come onto the board. So you can see those five missions. And then the three accolades are revealed, which are in play for the game. So before you take your critical of the board, you can see all the starting game objectives, at least in the missions, so you can make some informed decisions about what strategy you might want to start.
Rachel:Okay. Yeah, that's really cool.
Jake:That's kind of an interesting, interesting way to do that.
Dan:It makes the draft very meaningful and common paths that tension player move. Yeah. Because if you know what's in the crew deck, somebody goes to take the crew deck, and they take the crew, and they put it facedown in front of them. And you might think, oh, did they go for the criminal that I wanted to be second? Or not? And you don't know. So when it comes back to you, you then have to make a decision? Like how valuable to you? Is that crew member? Or are you now getting further and further away on like the good tiles that are available? Right, that links into then potentially what the missions are and what the accolades are, and, and so on, and so on. So, um, the other thing is that they may have taken a completely different person, because they've got a completely different idea about how they're going to play the game.
Jake:Yeah, it makes that draft, very influential on how you're going to play the game and what moves you're going to make throughout the game. Yeah, I like that a lot. Actually.
Rachel:I agree. So you were showing us some stuff on Tabletop Simulator? Is this actually available for people to try out?
Dan:At the moment? It's not available for us to just kind of get out there? We've got it privately. Right? It may be that we put it available for download on our website. But there's a few more things that we just need to update. But in terms of before we go to Kickstarter, I would assume that we would have it available to buy.
Rachel:Yeah, okay. That'll definitely help people decide whether or not they want to back the game, even if it's just like a sample preview, like where you don't have all the cards available or you know, something like that in the Tabletop Simulator. But giving people the opportunity to try it out in that way will help people be like, oh, yeah, this is actually really cool. I definitely want to back this. So I think that's a great idea to have that available. It also kind of leads me into some questions that I had about your first campaign would the like try before you back where you actually went and published 130 copies of these and sent them around the world. So how far ahead of time did you send those out? Where did You decide where to send them? And kind of what was your thought process in that?
Dan:Well, having said the industry is complete novices, the original version of Lander, we believed in it, we thought that we've got a good game that people would really enjoy. And we didn't know how to engage with the community as such, from the perspective of why should you back us when you know, we have no experience. And we came up with this idea that we thought that if we make a sample run of copies, and put it out into the world, that the game should be such that people enjoy playing it, and that would help us fund. And from seeing kind of the development of board game stores and cafes and a pop up around the world. We thought that the main, I guess, demographics globally, is that America is the biggest board game market, followed by Europe, and then Canada, Australia, and others. So we divided up the world into kind of the major cities that had board game cafes that were English, or at least had an English website. And I actually had to call all of the hosts, it was a huge, huge logistical, wow. Yeah, and, you know, speak to the relevant person. And this suddenly, it took a really long time. Just to do that, I would say that what we learned from doing it is that we thought that we do something new and innovative, and that it would be really well received by the community. But I think that the weight of the game is such that when you go to a board game cafe, the clientele of these venues is typically looking for something which is lighter. And I think if we'd have made a splendor style game, only to sent that around the world, we probably would have done much, much better, right, making a reasonable weight Euro game, I think that it basically didn't get the love and attention, but that it could have done if it was potentially more in alignment with the audience that those venues have going to them. So the way that that worked out, we were quite disappointed by when we went to Kickstarter and saw the results of you know, all that effort went into actually manufacturing those properties, and so on. And literally every single reviewer, because we also made 30 copies to send to reviewers around the world. Every single reviewer said this is the best prototype that they'd ever seen, because it was actually a manufactured and product, right? It wasn't just prototype. And we wanted to do that as well, because we wanted to understand the manufacturing process, shipping, you know, fulfillment, distribution, all that kind of ballpark, which we had no idea of, before we started. And we thought that we really covered all of the bases that we've made a game that lots of people said was very cool, and had lots of good things going on with it. We've done all this work. And yet, we didn't get the backing we were hoping for.
Jake:I mean, it's unfortunate you didn't get the backing you were hoping for. But I think that that's really interesting that you took that as an opportunity to basically do a practice run for your manufacturing for your distribution. And I think if people listen to this and hear that, that'll actually be very encouraging to people who are considering backing because one of the biggest complaints about Kickstarter, I've noticed is that step right there, the manufacturing and the distribution, the idea might be great, but if it takes three, four or five years to get out, it's a problem.
Rachel:Yeah. And so I back I would say a decent number of games on Kickstarter every year. And you can tell the difference between the ones that know what they're doing. And the ones that are like, I don't know, I just had an idea for a board game. And I didn't realize all this other stuff that I would have to do. So I totally agree that it's very encouraging to hear that you've already kind of been through that process. And so there shouldn't be any mishaps along the way. I mean, obviously, you can't control the container crisis that we're experiencing.
Jake:You're not the one piloting the ship and the Suez Canal, they get stuck your flow.
Rachel:But I mean, it's encouraging to know that you've been through this process before you created a product and you've shipped it out and you've dealt with the fulfillment. And you are not only capable of doing those steps, but somewhat experienced and probably have learned some lessons along the way so that you can do a better next time.
Dan:Yeah, I would say that the key thing that we learned was about damaged stock that we weren't really sure of we also learned about if you have a single copy of a game sat in a warehouse of a fulfillment company. They will charge you for it. Yeah. Oh, wow. And they will charge you for the whole space. So we burned I don't We bought a bunch of money, just from one copy sitting in a warehouse that we weren't really aware of that had gone out being damaged, got returned and was just sitting there. Oh, wow. So when you think about the costs that go into a game, you have to in the manufacturing process, and something that we learned, quite readily make a proportion of your costs that go into that set aside some money for damages, and returns and so on. It's common knowledge, but actually, having gone through the problem of it was quite a big learning curve. And the issue with trying to get out and a new copy, and so on, and so on, I think that that whole part of experience having gone through it, I would now plan the whole situation to have that extra copies and so on, so that the problem can be easily solved. And then there's also having copies in a warehouse planning for how long they'll be there better communication with the warehouse, and so on. So that whole aspect to becoming a publishing company, I really feel as though we've got a good understanding of now.
Rachel:That's great.
Jake:I think that's a valuable experience for you, as a game designer and creator is also a valuable piece of information for people who are considering backing. I think that that is awesome that you have that experience. I'm sorry that it didn't work out the first time. But I think it's valuable to have that knowledge of what to do next time.
Dan:Yeah, I agree. I think one of the things, myself and Shawn, my friend who I'm making Lander with, we're both perfectionist. And we both really like to know that we're doing the job, right. And so I think that anyone that backs up is going to have real confidence that you are going to get this thing. And when you said about a game that's been half made, and they're coming through, well, this is a game that's seven years in the making, and it is done. You know, it is a finished thing that you can really enjoy playing again and again. And again.
Jake:I think it sounds awesome.
Rachel:Yeah. Let's talk about some of those details. So I think you had mentioned that you have a like tentative launch date again on Kickstarter for September of this year. Is that right?
Dan:Yes. The key thing that's happening in my life is my wife is pregnant with you a baby in hopefully the next two months. Oh, well, congrats.
Rachel:Yeah. Very exciting. Is your first. Yes. Yeah, very exciting.
Dan:That basically has put the kibosh on any funds and trying to release on Kickstarter until kind of overcome that, you know, and understood that new challenge in life, which is going to be fantastic. So we're looking at towards the autumn the fall, to bring the game into the world.
Rachel:Okay, what is your like, release timeline? Do you think if you launch in September, when do you think you might be able to deliver the game, since you've already kind of finished it, you're not like stuck developing pieces of it.
Dan:If you look, at most Kickstarter campaigns, from the big companies who have done it, they often have timelines, about nine months to be, you know, from close a Kickstarter to being on your doorstep, I would probably fall in line with that sort of timeline. Okay. That I think would cover us, one of the things that we found in terms of shipping and so forth, is that there can be complications with that. So with our copies, we had our European copies that were supposed to arrive on paper at the same time as the US copies. The US copies showed up about three or four weeks later, than the copies that came into London. So there can be all sorts of problems in the shipping world and logistics that can relate to that. So there's also that thing of if a boat comes in, do we want the people to get it as soon as it's ready? Or would that irritate people that one part of the wealth is getting much before the other? So, right? Yeah,
Jake:that reminded me of something that I heard another Kickstarter game. I don't remember who it was or what it was. And I think it's probably for the best that I don't remember. They were at a convention, and they were actually selling copies of their game at the convention prior to people who had backed it actually getting their copies. And some people were upset by that, which I have mixed feelings on. Like, I understand that, you know, they the backers haven't gotten their copies yet. But as a manufacturer, as a seller, if you have inventory ready, I think you should be able to get it out there.
Rachel:Yeah, it's definitely kind of a hard world to navigate with pleasing all of your backends right, so I can totally understand some people feeling like oh, the company I back to them. I supported them before this was even a thing like they should have gone out of their way to make sure that whatever I got my copy first, I totally understand that perspective. But you know, this kind of goes back to what we were saying about you can't control this, like shipping crisis that's going on right Right now, it's not your fault as the game developer, that we've got ships just sitting waiting for like a month to come into port and unload the cargo that they have. There's nothing that can be done about that. And so if you manage to get your copies, you know, in Europe before the US was able to get theirs as a result of that. I don't know, I think it's the smart decision for the company to go ahead and sell those copies. So I don't know. I think the truth of it is, you're never going to please 100% of your backers. But I don't know.
Dan:I think aspirationally we would want the people who are backing this on Kickstarter to get their copies first. Yeah, that would be our aspiration. Yeah,
Rachel:I understand that. But
Dan:I mean, for example, just with the games that we sent out in 2019, the first copies arrived in boardgame cafe in Melbourne, in Australia, at the start of June. Let's see the first of June 2019, the copies that arrived in Sydney, US arrived into the US around like the 31st of July. Oh, wow. So that was the difference. And the European ones came in at like the first of July. So it's a much quicker route to ship to Australia, and to go to the US into to Europe, depending on which way around the world to go can be fairly similar. But then, you know, we can have problems where the ship just wasn't able to dock and so on. So there can be quite that variability. So our aspiration would be that, you know, Bacchus get copies first. Yeah.
Rachel:All I can say on it. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Jake:I know. I agree with that. I know it's pretty early. But do you have any idea what your pledges are going to start at the moment,
Dan:I'm hesitant to say that as a fixed figure, that's fine. The reason I say that is that from redoing the numbers recently, the typical scenario for both game publishers is that you take your manufacturing costs the county by five, and then that becomes your price that you would sell your game out. And within that, you've got all of the other costs, that currently the cost of shipping, and VAT, and so on and so on, we're probably going to look at charging those in the pledge manager. And then the cost of Lander. Again, don't hold us to this because the rates of things can vary. But originally, we went to Kickstarter with the game $84. And that was for the deluxe version of the game, we're looking at going around the price point around $60. US dollars, US dollars, okay. And what we're doing there is we're having cardboard tiles instead of the plastic interlocking tiles. And we're not going to put a plastic insert into the box, because that plastic insert is about $1.50, which when you times it by five becomes a significant cost. And if you look at Terraforming Mars, Terraforming Mars doesn't have that plastic insert. So by going with the cardboard and taking that out, then we can bring it down into that price point, which might satisfy the resource management or gamers might expect to buy the game at that kind of price point, we then going to say, look, if you want the very, very cool interlocking tiles, you can buy the deluxe version, which will be a Kickstarter exclusive. And you'll be able to get access to that the price of that we haven't yet figured out but it will be probably towards, you know the original price that we went with. And then to satisfy the retail side of things, what we're going to do is we're going to have the base game as we launched on Kickstarter, and then release a retail copy of the deluxe components. Okay, so if you wanted to retell, you could buy the base game and the deluxe components as two separate boxes. And because of the fact that they're two separate boxes, they will be slightly more expensive, right. So the only way that you'll be able to get the deluxe version with everything in one box is on Kickstarter, and that will be the deluxe Kickstarter, but you'll still be able to get that subsequently on our planet as it goes through to retail.
Jake:That actually answered my next question is will there be a retail release of this? So that answered my next question.
Rachel:That's very cool. I mean, I think that makes total sense. Yeah, the different price points and like the changes that you're making from standard to Deluxe. That sounds like a great deal to me.
Dan:One of the key things that we had in the original box, we have the ability to kind of take cards out and we had a lot of cost in the game that related to the resource costs. So we've taken that out. We've moved to resource trackers. So we've saved cost there and so on. And as such we've been able to redesign the box internals to accommodate sleep cards. So if you want to sleep on cart, you can do. One of the things about Lander is in terms of the depth of the gameplay. There are, I think 339 cards in the game. So this is a big game, and we're trying to bring to the market at that kind of lower end price point round that kind of $60, which I know can be a lot for a lot of people, but it was literally about as cheap as we could make it while maintaining the integrity of the
Jake:game. I think honestly,$60 for a game is fair. Yeah. I mean, you're gonna spend $60 on any video game, any triple A video game?
Dan:Yep. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I might be completely biased. But I definitely think this is a triple A
Jake:game experience. Yeah, well, I think you're right.
Rachel:Yeah. I mean, it sounds very cool. I'm very interested to see more about it as you get closer to being able to release it on Kickstarter. So we're going to put a link in the description of this episode to your Kickstarter page where people can click to be notified. Yes. Alright. So that will be included. And just a reminder to all our listeners, Dan is waiting and hoping to gain more popularity with this game before launching it. So if this sounds interesting to you, definitely go and click that Notify Me button on Kickstarter, so that that can be measured, and they can really see what the interest level is in this game. Absolutely.
Dan:Yeah, we feel like last time, we did a whole lot of marketing with the platform, a pledge campaign and all the reviews that we had this time around, we want to say to the world, we don't really want to launch until we've seen a decent number of followers on that page, because then that will guarantee the game gets made.
Rachel:Right, right. Oh, I did have one more question. What is your funding goal going to me? Well, we're
Dan:quite keen to get this into the world, because it started off as a labor of love. Probably still is, but we do want it to come into the world. So when we went to Kickstarter, last time, we set it at 20,000 pounds. The campaign was in effect Sterling, what we are going to do is whatever the price point is, we're going to set our funding goal at the cost of I think either 500 or 1000 copies. Okay. And that will mean that if we get 500 backers, then because you need to have 1000 copies as the minimum order quantity from the manufacturer. So if we only had 500 backers, we'd need to buy 500 Just to get the game. Right. Okay. But we have decided that that's what we're going to do that the minimum. So providing we've passed that threshold, then this game is coming into the world.
Rachel:Okay. So I mean, that sounds like it's going to be a relatively low funding goal, meaning that you're going to be likely to be funded, especially if you wait until you have that interest level that you're waiting for. So I think this is all very promising that backers are going to get the product that they're wanting that it's going to be the quality that they're expecting, and it's not going to take five years to get right.
Dan:We want it in people's hands as quickly as possible. Because there's something about the journey that we've come to make this game, it's kind of gone outside of ourselves, because of the feedback that we have from around the world from the people leaves those played before you pledge copies, it feels now more like it's got all of that input that it's bigger than just what we kind of started out and kind of want people to play the game and love buying it as a result of this journey that we've been on and all the people who've contributed along the way. And if you are listening, and you know that you've sent in a thing where you've said, oh, you know, this part of the game I wasn't so happy with that's been invaluable. So we really want the rest of the world to be able to enjoy that kind of community polished product as it were.
Rachel:Yeah. No, that's great. Yeah. All right, Dan. So I think we're wrapping up. Is there anything that you want to say to our listeners anything you want to make sure that they know? And do you have any social media outlets that people can find you on?
Dan:Yeah, please find us on Lander, the game on Facebook, please click on the link for the Notify Me, we really need to build a following to bring the game into the world. There's a whole bunch of videos on our land of the game YouTube channel. And if you stay tuned on our Facebook and our website, www dot Landa the game.com. You'll see any updates to our launch and maybe as we discussed a link to a Tabletop Simulator if you're keen to stop playing. Great.
Rachel:Excellent. Any final words? Well,
Dan:it's been really great chatting with you both enjoyable interview, and thanks for your time and I really hope that in a year or so that you'll be playing Mandarin We can reminisce and maybe have a patch of them once you've had some feedback and let me know what you think about it.
Rachel:Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. I mean, I'm backing this game. I'm getting the deluxe version. I can tell you that right now. I want the little connects clicking things. So I definitely
Jake:want that because we need that to be Rachel proof. Yes.
Rachel:All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Dan, this has been great. I wish you luck. And I hope that you can get your campaign launch and successfully funded sometime this year. And also congratulations on the baby. Yeah, congrats on your launch. And there you have it. That's lander. Thanks again to everyone for listening. As usual, hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram at so bored podcast. That's S O Bo, AR D podcast. We love hearing from you. Any fun games that you're playing? Currently? Maybe if you're interested in backing this game, let us know. You can also send us an email at we are so bored@gmail.com That's W E ar e s, o b o a rd? And yeah, you can just interact with us on there and tell us what you've got going on in life. Maybe if you know what we're talking about, from the beginning of the episode, you know, this little secret, the secret project that I've got going on? If you're excited about that, you know, hit us up? Let us know.
Jake:Yeah. And also make sure you subscribe so you'll receive notifications when our new episodes are available. Also, if you could leave us a rating that would help us out. You can also now leave a rating on Spotify, which would help other people who might be interested in our podcast find
Rachel:us? Yes, definitely.
Jake:We also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the designer of our art. He is currently accepting commissions so check him out at mi m s c o SAR a on Instagram or on his website, Mitchell Mims? That's mi ch e l m i m s dot c AR ar d.co And once again, I am streaming summer regularly on Twitch. We have a good time. Rachel and I have been playing Val Haim lately, which is like a Viking survival crafting game. It's been really fun.
Rachel:I brought carrots back from the brink of extinction. So yeah, it's true.
Jake:Well, that's it. Thank you all for listening and we will see you next time. Bye.