Slow & Steady & a Race to the Stars
I want to highlight an upcoming game that I’ve been following for awhile that really demonstrates a great way to bring a game to market. A slow, and steady approach to building community, developing a game, and making an awesome product.
Edward “TK” King and co-designer Dennis Northcott started their publication journey for Galactic Cruise around the same time I started our journey with Nut Hunt. I remember fondly the early days of us on the Board Game Design Lab Facebook page talking design tips, sharing prototype pictures, and learning the ins and outs of bringing a game to market.
We took different routes with our games – where I spent about 18 months developing Nut Hunt and bringing it to market, TK, Dennis & team (Koltin Thompson who I haven’t interacted with as much) have had a much more measured approach and expects to launch Galactic Cruise on Kickstarter in the first quarter of 2024.
I’m extremely proud of what Ed and team have accomplished. A solid 6 months ahead of launching the Kickstarter they already have over 3,000 followers on the page, the game was a hit at Gen Con, and they’ve built a great game with a great community.
While TK is going to write a guest post with some lessons learned around the time they launch the campaign, I wanted to share some of my observations on what the GC team has done right – many lessons learned that I’m internalizing as we continue to develop our process.
Slow & Steady: Maybe most notably the GC team hasn’t rushed a single part of this process. They’ve taken the time to build a solid game, feel out their art direction, balance mechanisms, and engage with the community.
Consistent Playtesting: The Galactic Cruise team is constantly playtesting the game on Tabletop Simulator with any and all comers. And, I mean every week I see at least one, often multiple posts about playtesting. This has accomplished a couple of things – it’s created a community of people who have played the game, it’s allowed them to polish the game with a lot of feedback and viewpoints.
Consistent Engagement with the GC Community: The GC Facebook page has 660 members, and scrolling through the page you can see that TK and Koltin are posting on it multiple times a week. They aren’t just showing off the game & components but engaging with their community.
Hitting the Convention Circuit: There is no better way to connect with people than in person. Especially when it comes to board games. I don’t have a full list of what conventions the team has brought GC to, but from now until the Kickstarter launch they are attending (or sending the game to) at least 7 upcoming cons.
I am definitely learning a lot from watching TK & Dennis’ process, and am excited to see the fruits of their labor pay off with a massive Kickstarter success next year.
What awesome game communities have you been a part of before they launched?
