2024 Recap
What a year!
From running our first ever public playtest to crowning winners while demoing Tournament Arc™ at major conventions, 2024 was a year of incredible progress and learning.
Anime NYC attendees holding up Tournament Arc™ medals and some of their favorite athlete cards in front of game designer & artist, Skyler Badalament-Tirrell
So what did we do this year? Here are our highlights and biggest learnings from 2024!
Highlights
1. Seeing people love our game!
Hands down, the most incredible highlight of the year has been having the opportunity to see hundreds of people fall in love with Tournament Arc™! Even though we have been publicly playtesting and demoing for less than a year, we have witnessed countless funny moments, great character arcs, and memories be made.
What has pleasantly surprised us is just how many kinds of people have had a blast playing with family, with friends, or even with strangers! This includes kids, teens, young adults, older adults, board game enthusiasts, casual gamers, anime fans, sports fans, you name it!
One of my favorite memories was seeing the change in energy of a group of people who initially sat at our table to get a break from walking around the convention. They were not in the best mood when they sat down and were hesitant to try our game, but once they got started, their exhaustion seemingly vanished as they smiled and laughed throughout the whole game!
The biggest compliment we’ve received is the number of folks asking where they can buy the game right now and the number of folks who continued to come back to play again and again without us ever asking.
PAX Unplugged attendees enjoying a game of Tournament Arc™ at the PAX Together Demo Days table
2. Feeling our game come to life
There’s something special about holding a fresh print of a new prototype and seeing everything come together.
When this year started, we had only printed our first prototype, which consisted almost entirely of scanned index card doodles on initial templates. Each time we made any major changes, we would print a new prototype deck to properly test our changes and see how well all the newly finished art looked on the physical cards.
Every single time we got a new print in the mail, we could barely hold back our excitement to sift through the deck to find all the newly finished and updated cards. Seeing the deck fill up with more and more full color art has been incredibly satisfying!
The most exciting part, though, has been holding our first prototype box. Even though the cards themselves are what make the game the game, there’s something about having the box that makes things feel… real. We’re excited for the next big step which will be getting review copies from the manufacturer once all the art is complete.
Front and back of the prototype box, designed by Avery Helm
3. Finding community
At the start of the year, we barely knew anyone in the tabletop game design and publishing space, especially not in our local community. Now at the end of the year, we are fortunate to be surrounded by plenty of great folks in our area and beyond who are all in different stages of their journeys.
Throughout this year, we have found peers, mentors, collaborators, and friends as we sought opportunities for feedback, guidance, and help. It is through this community that we have been able to learn so much and grow in a way that has enabled us to achieve so much in just a year. We went from never having publicly playtested to officially (and successfully) exhibiting at one of the largest anime conventions in the country in just a few months!
To all the Discord servers, Facebook groups, professional societies, forums, local game dev organizations (special shoutout to Playcrafting), and the people behind them, thank you.
Board Game Besties meetup at PAX Unplugged
Learnings
1. Con prep is a science and an art
Preparing for an expo or convention is an ordeal. It can be really fun, but also incredibly stressful. And we’re not even at the point of selling the game yet!
Being artists ourselves, and being friends with artists who frequently table at conventions, we knew going in that there would be a lot of work that goes into making our booth look inviting. Even if you know what you should do technically, it still takes a lot of skill and a great eye to configure everything to look great.
In addition to the aesthetics, there are a lot of invisible decisions that can greatly impact your experience as an exhibitor. How are you transporting your signage and items? What’s the unloading process and setup schedule like? What proof of insurance is needed?
We also learned the hard way that exhibiting for 12+ hours a day for 3 days straight is a great way to lose your voice. Going forward, we know to bring along personal voice amplifiers for busier/louder spaces and to pack plenty of lozenges and water.
We struggled to get our booth set up at Play NYC @ Anime NYC but were able to get a decent booth together with the help of many kind folks running the space
2. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work in general
Even before starting Little Creature, we knew that self-publishing a board game would be a lot of work. This year has really cemented that for us.
Outside of my day job, I spend many hours each week researching, coordinating with manufacturers and 3rd parties, planning, finding/applying/registering for events, formulating and executing marketing strategies, managing emails, taking care of finances, etc. to the point where I have had to temporarily take a step back from my music (though luckily not completely). After having done this for over a year now, I have a much greater appreciation for every published game I see, especially from small teams like ourselves.
Despite all the work, we don’t regret deciding to go down this route one bit! It’s incredibly satisfying to dive deep into a new profession and see the fruits of our labor. Besides, there’s an incredible sense of accomplishment that we couldn’t achieve otherwise.
Sorting a recent shipment of promo cards
3. It’s okay to ask for help
With the board game design and publishing communities being so open and supportive, there are luckily plenty of freely available resources to help anyone get started. However, there are only so many hours in the day to sort through everything and develop all the skills necessary to execute every part of the process.
Sky and I learned that, while we do make a great team and cover a wide set of strengths, we realistically cannot do absolutely everything by ourselves if we want to get this game out to the world in a reasonable amount of time. We have already been working with our good friend and graphic designer Avery Helm for the graphic design work on Tournament Arc™, which has been amazing! So where else could we use some help?
We’ve never run a Kickstarter campaign before, so I was spending a lot of time researching strategies and was feeling a little overwhelmed. There are so many factors to consider and we wanted to make sure we were setting ourselves up for success. From playtests and demos, we knew that people love our game but weren’t quite sure how to scale out interest. It was luckily around this time that LaunchBoom reached out to us. It’s been great working with them and being able to learn from their community as well.
Speaking of community, it has also been great being a part of the GAMA Horizons Rising Stars program! Although I did not receive the GAMA Horizons Fellowship, I have been fortunate enough to connect with folks and similarly learn from seminars and additional resources as a Rising Star.
Overall, we’ve found that it can be highly reassuring to rely on folks who know what they’re doing and do it well. Even if it means they’ll just teach you and not do your work for you (e.g., LaunchBoom), the guidance is invaluable.
Major milestones of 2024
We got A LOT done this year! I’m particularly proud of all the incredible character design and art that Sky has completed over the last several months.
Let’s take a look at an overview of some of our key accomplishments in 2024! Note that there is a lot of behind the scenes work as well that isn’t included in the list below.
April: First ever public playtest of Tournament Arc™ (in the unpublished games section of the Long Island Tabletop Gaming Expo)
May: Character design and art complete for all 40 Athletes!
June: Playtested at more events: NYC Gaymer Pride & Indie Board Game Expo (Quirk Events x NY Society of Play)
July: Got our Tournament Arc™ medal, created promo cards, & did a big rebalance
August: Demoed at our first large conventions: Anime NYC via PlayNYC & Flame Con X
November: Completed preliminary box design and updated Sport card design
December: Demoed at PAX Unplugged and hit over 100 followers on our Kickstarter pre-launch page
What’s next?
With Tournament Arc™ almost done, we’re starting to prepare for our Kickstarter campaign launch. This means finalizing pledge tiers and add-ons, getting quotes from and deciding on an ultimate manufacturer, getting reviews, making the Kickstarter video and campaign page, among many other things! Expect to hear from us in a few months with an update on the expected launch date. Right now, we’re aiming to launch in spring 2025.
Thank you for taking the time to join us on our journey reflecting upon the last year! If you haven’t already, it would mean a lot to us if you signed up for our Tournament Arc™-specific mailing list and share with a friend :).
P.S. - We have a Discord server! Feel free to join here 😊.
With that, happy New Year and onto 2025!
