Welcome to Maple to Maple, uniting players around the
world, a 30 minute exploration of TJ and Gareth's four-game
experiences from across both sides of the Atlantic.
Each episode they share their thoughts and opinions on the
world of four games, including their favorite themes, games,
hot topics, and much, much more. I want to tell you all about two
people who have just completely, as I was telling them before the
recording, have invaded our home in the past few months.
Their game is amazing and they have another one coming out.
So we're going to talk about their whole work.
It's Dusty and Amy from Ducks Somnium and we're in other
games, botany and what is hasn't been fulfilled yet in the floor.
Is that right, guys? Yep.
Well, Dusty and Amy, thank you so much for being on Maple to
Maple. We appreciate it.
Yeah. Thank you for having us.
We're very excited. Yeah, I'm more excited than you
guys, right? Yeah.
Our listeners are going to get a whole new me today.
Just, you know, I'm going to try not to stutter and fall over
myself. Funny.
No, you guys are great. I always get nervous too.
I'm so nervous and shy. We, we were Ever since botany,
nobody cares about me. But these girls keep coming up
to Amy and they're like, I'm totally fangirling right now.
I'm fangirling over meeting you and Amy and Amy's so shy and
just not one to have fangirls and she's like looking at me
like. Fanboys.
Yeah, well, she's like, what's? Happening to PJ, can fangirl out
too. Unfortunately, I can't fanboy
too much about Amy because all my communications were with
Dusty. That's because she's so shy.
Yeah, it's all me. So I feel like all the emails
that came from Dusty. So I feel like I've got a better
relationship with Dusty and that's not.
Fair. And I hope to change that today.
So Dusty and Amy, you, why don't you tell us a little bit about
yourselves, how you got into the board gaming community and into
designing games? Because y'all have an
interesting story. That is a, that is a roundabout
story. It is so we, I mean, we've been
playing games a long time. I started in elementary school
with Axis and Allies and battle tech and magic and, you know,
the typical very nerdy 90s kids stuff and, and Amy and I started
dating when we were 14 and so we kind of grew up into it and.
And we also always played rummy. Which my rummy 13 with my my
with my grandma she was. Like 90.
She was, yeah, she was in her 80s when we met.
She made it all the way to 101 and was still like just an
absolute rummy shark until the until.
The every time we played with her and she'd beat us like
almost every. Time ruthlessly wouldn't care.
We play that and then we and we kind of got into it.
We started getting into lighter games that Amy would play.
And so like Munchkin and Dominion, Small World, Ticket to
Ride, stuff like that as they came along and.
Checking off all the boxes right now.
I know. Yeah, our pedigree is good.
Yeah, for sure. And so Fast forward to we, you
know, we finished college, we got married, we started, we have
4 businesses and they're all they're, it's relevant to, I'll
gloss over some of it, but it's relevant to how we got to board
gaming. Sure.
The first two businesses, one it does is a website, platforms for
travel marketing organizations. And the other is photography,
wedding photography. And we said ha, ha, between
these two, we are so diversified, nothing will ever
come along that simultaneously destroys travel and events.
Yeah, you can tell where that's going.
And so 2020 rolls along and decides that we shouldn't do a
whole lot of work for a few years.
And. We needed to find something
else. So we were like, well, also I, I
love taking pictures. And so we were like, well, I
want to build a lavender farm and then how can we make some
money so. We live next to the ranch I grew
up on still. And so we have, we have a lot of
space for lavender, Yeah. And then we're like, well,
lavender takes a little while to grow, so let's do some like
laser work and make some flower presses.
I love flower. And those took off like crazy.
We sold a couple thousand of those in a year and a half.
Actually, whenever we were like trying to figure out what
products to make, I was like, I want to make a flower press and
just he's like, I don't know about that.
It might. Not I said.
I said no one's ever gonna buy these stupid flower presses.
I mean, they look real nice, but no one's gonna.
And then. So yeah.
And that's like the thing we sold the most.
Yeah, we hardly ever sold any lavender because it wasn't
really harvested yet, but we sold, yeah, tons of tons and
tons of flower presses. OK.
So that all that condenses like half our lives into how we got
to manufacturing board games well.
Sort of because then Dusty wanted a resin printer to make
his own. I started painting Warhammer and
playing Warhammer and I wanted and which was denied me when I
was a child. Thank you parents.
Because it was too expensive. My parents wouldn't let me do
it. And then one day I realized I'm
an adult. I can do.
I could play Warhammer and and so.
I still make that argument today when people ask me why I don't
play Warhammer MY. Stepmom asked me when I'm going
to grow up and I'm like, I'd make a living not growing up
like specifically. So we were driving to a wedding
and as we often do when driving 3 hours to a wedding, we were
just talking about business and coming up with ideas.
And I said well you know, I really want one of these resin
printers. I want to print my own
miniatures and. Make a business case, yeah.
And then and Amy's like, OK, well, make it, you know, why
don't you try to make some money off of it then?
And I was like, well, people sell miniatures on Etsy and we,
you know, that's where our flower press store was.
And we were really good at Etsy. I was like, well, I could do
that, but all these people are selling the same thing.
Well, if they're all selling the same thing, how do we
differentiate? Oh, we must need to pay somebody
to make our own scopes. And then we'll sell our own
miniatures. And Amy goes, well, if you're
making miniatures, you might as well make a board game.
And. And yeah.
And that was it right there. But then we were making another
game like a. Sci-fi, fantasy, all the above,
and that's still going slowly. It just takes a long time we.
Realized how expensive miniatures are and how much art
costs. You're gonna need a staff pretty
soon. Well, that we, we have had
employees for our other businesses and I, I'm a big fan
of contractors. So we're going to try and ride
that out for as long as we can, but we're getting there and.
I want to point out really quickly, and I'm this is, this
is for Gareth's sake, You drove 3 hours to a wedding, OK.
Our, our our English friends complain about a one hour drive
and how long that is. Yeah.
Yeah, so I was trying. I love that when you said it.
Five hours. Yeah, we drive five hours away,
no, probably, and come home that night.
We do. You're in California, right?
You're in California is. That Yeah.
And nobody. Yeah.
So people, people in Europe don't understand how big
California is. I'm.
I'm like looking at countries over there and I'm like, oh,
that's only 40 miles across. My mom lives farther away than
that. Yep, it's true.
It's so true. So, yeah, so we were so okay.
So we figured out all this stuff was very difficult, which was
fine. We knew that we were figuring
those things out. We've done this, we've done
stuff like this enough times before.
But Amy was in the kitchen one morning and she goes, hey, I
have an idea for another game. And I said, okay, And she said,
I'm like, what's it about? And she goes, well, it's about,
it's about pressing flowers. And I said, OK, well, that's on
brand for us. We have a fan base, you know,
maybe that could work. And I go, what's the story?
And she's like, well, I've been reading all these books.
Amy collects old antique books and from like, you know, 18
hundreds, 1700s, she's like, well, I've been reading all
these old books about all these guys that would travel all over
the planet looking for flowers. And they'd be losing eyes.
And they'd have a pet Falcon. And they'd fall in pit traps,
bulls at the bottom. And they'd be on the side of an
active volcano. And Dusty was like I can.
Work with them. Yeah, yeah, we can make this
work for sure. There's lots of non traditional.
We got we you know, now we have all your pretty flowers and we
have adventure perfect. Like, and I was like, OK, well,
they're traveling the world. And then we then we sat down.
We're like, what's the game look like?
Well, they're traveling the world.
OK, well, that means there must be a map and you move around the
map. What happens when you move
around the map? Well, the all kinds of, you
know, you've got got flowers and these guys would be hunting.
Specific flowers events would happen.
Yeah, and all these random things would happen to them.
It's OK, that sounds like an event deck.
Oh my gosh, like seriously, pirates happen like all the
time. The more ridiculous the stories
are. 90% of the most ridiculous stories in that game are just
things that I took and completely loosely based on real
stories that I condensed into three sentences.
And then it just, yeah, it just took off from there.
We had a playable version of Botany in like a week, and we
had A and we had a business and I was already, you know, we'd
already put together all the business stuff for our other
game. And so, yeah, and took off from
there. So you have just managed to
breeze through 2 1/2 of my questions about.
Botany. We are wordy people.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So thanks for that. Yeah.
OK, you asked a question. You're going to get the whole
story. We can elaborate.
Yeah. Well, you, you got us, you got
us to the theme and how you got there, the time period, your
influence there, the history, your influence.
So let's I mean also. I was going to say also with the
history like the Wardian case came out with at that time,
which was so fascinating because it like made it made you able to
actually get your plants alive. It like reversed the survival
rate. So they had like a 5% survival
rate before the Wardian case and afterwards they had like a 95%
survival rate. So suddenly just the just the
fact that somebody made a little glass case suddenly made it so
that the entire, the the entire research of flowers and, and you
know, building a massive gardens in Europe and stuff was possible
with with, with foreign flowers basically.
That's amazing. That is incredible.
So let's let's let's step back just one moment.
Let's talk really briefly about like general overview of Botany
and how it's played for those of our listeners who maybe haven't
played it yet, maybe they're thinking about purchasing it
your local store. It's what I did.
I didn't back it on Kickstarter. I'm sorry I missed it.
But so, so tell us just a little bit about the game itself.
Obviously it's a map of the world, right?
Yep. So you're gonna learn something
about me and Amy. We don't know any of the
technical terms all that well for board game design.
And so I did not know Botany was a pick up and deliver game with
tableau building until somebody said it to me about Botany.
OK, So, yeah, so. Kind of design games.
Or like we pick out a theme and then we're like, OK, what makes
sense? How do we represent these, this
real world story so that it feels, it feels like a board
game representation of what's happening?
We've also been told we kind of build backwards too because
like, I have to find the artwork first because it has to be
available. So we start with a story and an
idea and what could an artwork, what could represent that?
And is the artwork there to support it?
And if the artwork's not there to support it, then we switch,
you know, we switch things around until it is.
Yeah, because we use all historical except for in
Lafleur. We did hire an artist to
supplement a few portraits. Yeah.
So I mean, as far as gameplay for botany is concerned, you
have a big map of the world. And so it's a real map from
1867. So it looks all old.
And we put places all over the map for places to go look for
flowers. And you have, you have flowers
in your hand that are like your target, like the places you want
to go to collect these flowers. And from that point on, what
you're trying to do is create the most efficient routes around
the world while dodging all these random things that are
happening to you and managing your budget.
Because back in the day, you know, there weren't ATMs. There
weren't ATMs. They would, they would leave England with the
amount of money they had. And that was the money they had
unless they managed to earn more money while they were out and
about. Like that was it.
Which, by the way, which by the way, is a brilliant mechanic the
way it works in your game. Oh good.
No, it's incredible, right? So it's like the money you have,
is it, but your state is still generating income.
Yeah, back in England. I'm super rich back home, I
promise. Yeah, right.
So it's when you return, you then have like you get to take
your income back, Yeah, go on another journey, right.
So it's constantly back and forth, yeah.
Yeah. And so every turn you're
spending your money, you're trying to get around the world,
you're trying to see if you can circumnavigate the globe or if
you should just run around Europe for a bit and come back
and everybody, and it's basically a race.
Everybody is racing to see who can make the best use of the
flowers. They have the tools they're
given. You get, you know, you can hire
crew, you get pets, you get items.
Very nobody. I've, I've so surprised nobody
has thought this yet, but I was 100% inspired by Talisman when
it came to like getting items and crew and and help and, and
so we took our own, you know, spin on that.
But they would have this and sometimes the parties for these
Victorian flower hunters would be so long.
They'd be supported by 100, yeah, hundreds of people just to
go and, and everybody would just be like, OK, we got to get from
point A to point B and survive. Why are we doing this?
Oh, that guy wants to pick a Pansy somewhere, right?
Like so. Welcome to my world.
Yes. Right.
Gareth is the wealthy landowner in England and he's like, I need
you to go pick that board game for me.
Oh yes, Sir, he's going to kill me.
He is going to kill me when he listens.
He's not that different. Yeah, same thing.
And if Gareth gets attacked by pirates, maybe you're good with
a shotgun. Yeah, there you go.
I'm not by the ray, but yeah, thank you.
For that so. So then after the race,
everybody. Everybody sees who's got the
most points and whoever has the most points at the end of the
game from yeah, reputation. Well, the reputation ends the
game, but then whoever has the most victory points from the the
how exotic and how many flowers they got and how big their
estate has grown wins the game. And so you're sabotage.
Your. Opponent.
Yeah, you can take poisonous specimens and shove them in your
opponent's garden. That's right.
That's fine. Like I personally almost never
play that way but some of my siblings like to play.
Dirty. So we have to put that in there
for them. And you have an entire expansion
kind of devoted to that. Yeah, like they are what?
Carnivorous Perilous. Bizarre.
It's all the weird plants. Like the ones that smell like
corpses and poop. Yeah, Anything.
Anything. So extra weird we need to figure
out like find all these bizarre plants.
And we try to make so some of the plants have like things that
happen when you get them. And so we try to make it so
like, you know, like this, like if it plants, like the size of
your kitchen, like it makes you move slower while you're trying
to move it around. Super prickly.
Yeah. Prickly.
Like if you. Get a banana.
You get to move more or something.
Like that, Yeah. Like it gives you more, gives
you more pep in your step, Yeah. So, so here you are on this
journey, this game about collecting plants, poisonous and
otherwise, later on trees with the expansion on trees in the
Victorian era. You've done all this research,
you've gotten the art secure you, you've done all this
together. And you know, you again, you
said, well, how do we make a game about this early on in the
process? I was just right before you came
on. So over 15,000 backers for
Botany and over 1,000,000 over $1 million rate.
We were never expecting that. Yeah, I was very, we were very
surprised by day one. It was very surprising.
Like what? And his dad was like, you made
how much on the. Board.
My dad was like, yeah, he was like, well, that sounds fun.
That'll be nice. And then he's calling.
And then after the, he calls us after he gets up in the morning,
he's done all his, you know, the chores out around the, the
property and everything. And he calls us up and he's
like, well, what's it look like? And I'm like, oh, we're at
$35,000. And he goes, you're at what?
Like off a board game? It was, it was very surprising.
Steel. So like, so surreal.
And then did you see that we're in Barnes and Noble?
Yeah. So we're in Barnes.
We're in 500 Barnes and Noble stores.
We're in Books-a-million. Just saw that.
Just saw your post, yeah. Yeah.
And so it just keeps going. We're already doing a reprint.
We did a big print the first time around.
We're already doing a reprint. And so we're very grateful to
all our fans. Like we just can't.
Yeah, we had. So, OK, so I'm a catastrophizer
when it comes to business and I, I build, I build.
All the plans I build are scalable.
If we had sold 100 copies or if we had sold, we're up to like
we're getting close to 25,000 copies sold, it wouldn't, it
wouldn't have made any difference in the, the, our
processes, our processes and the survivability of the plan.
And so everything scaled very nicely.
But I was fully prepared to just sell like, like if we, we had
internal goals and if we sold 500 copies, that was going to be
everything we needed. It was going to pay back all the
investment we had made on advertising and stuff like that.
And then we were going to print 2000 copies and we'd have 1500
to sell. And I had the whole profit and
everything out. And so that was what I was
prepared to do because we worked with Launch Boom and they're
phenomenal. And like we felt very confident
that we would be successful. We just didn't know that we were
going to be as successful as we were.
So I have a serious question for you in conversations that I've
had with gamers and non gamers. Not specifically about botany,
but just games in general, but also about botany.
I was approached and this question came up and I thought
it was interesting to get your take on it.
What do you say to people who claim or criticize that a game
like Bonnie is celebrating colonialism?
We're in an age where we're trying to, you know, bring
harmony and colonialism is bad. And how do what do you say to
folks who make that critique of your game and others like it?
Thinking that these people are. They're the original
conservationists plants. Yeah, they're just going around
having fun around the world and they're the original
conservationists. I we live in.
So this is sort of a this is sort of a tangentially related
example, but we live in we live in cowboy country.
Even though we're from California, most people don't
associate with that. We have the large, our town
where we went to high school has the largest three day rodeo in
the world. And you know, everybody,
everybody thinks Cowboys, you know, cattle tearing up the
land, hunting and everything like that.
The greatest conservationists I have ever met in my entire life
are Cowboys. They love the land.
They, when they hunt, they do so with respect for food and
they're concerned about the well-being of all, like the deer
populations, the duck populations, right?
And no, nobody thinks about it quite like they do.
And that's how I think about these, these guys that were
going around the world. And plus we were also just like
it's like. Make believe.
Yeah, it's make believe first. Have fun.
It's. A boring game.
But second off, they were only actually, The funny thing was I
got more questions, I got fewer questions about colonialism than
I did about people being concerned with like, like, are
they going to get involved in this war if it was this time, or
are they going to get involved in if it is this war, if at this
time? And I'm like, no, our plant
hunters, they're just they're so oblivious.
They're just concerned about their plants.
They're just running around. But they didn't go to places and
wipe out a whole population of plants.
They would go to place. They would, they would bring
home like ten of these flowers. They would take them, they'd put
them in Kew Gardens. They were raising awareness
about these places all around the world.
And now? Making seed banks.
Yeah, making seed banks and, and if you look at the work that
that all these places like Kew Gardens or what's the one in
Paris, is it the Jardin DuPont or something like that, All the
work they do started in the Victorian era and it started
with these guys. And it's like so, so my thought
is that they were the, I mean, they're the original
conservationists. You know, things were different
back then, but the whole goal was to find these flowers, bring
them back, show them to the world, document them for
science, learn how to. And the science also led to more
conservation. And medical advancement.
Yeah, you name it. So yeah, that that's my thought
about the whole thing. I love that.
I think that's great. I wish I would have we kind of
articulated that a little better when I, when that question came
up to me with some friends, I'm like, well, you know, it's
history. Oh my God, how did I, you know
what I mean? That's that is great.
And science has to start somewhere.
So we're set in the Victorian era and I'm going to make Gareth
proud. So your game, and I've told you
all this beforehand, but for everyone who's listening, if you
haven't gotten botany, you have to.
It is a perfect compliment to our favorite game, obsession.
Everyone who listens knows that obsession.
You're building your estate, Botany.
You play that second because now your estate is established and
you're traveling the world as one of the first
conservationists and you're bringing samples back.
You're creating seed banks. You're helping develop medical
research and science that would take us into the next century.
And that is the beauty of botany.
I love it. That is why it has taken over
our home and it's just a perfect part to and I think we've got
part one. If we have a trilogy, we think
that our friend Heather Dixon who just finished fulfillment on
Kickstarter, Apistocracy. Yes, Heather's great her game.
It's 1851 in London. So you're going to London,
you're part of the Tawn. You get married.
So I feel like you play that first on a Saturday afternoon,
then you play obsession so that you can establish your estate
and then you play Botany and you go and you're.
Spreading your wings to the rest of the world, yeah.
I love it. So I want to ask you about and I
think we'll shift gears to Lafleur, but I was really
surprised by how recent Botany was, how much time in design and
process everything between Botany and Lafleur.
So Botany. We basically handed the files
for Botany off around July. And we were already making our
next. We we have a list of 30 games
that are on the short list and cannot stop creating.
Yeah, he kind of gets a little. I got mad at her today because
she's supposed to be working on stuff for like all the all the
printings, like going in process manufacturing for Lafleur is
underway, the whole 9 yards. But we need to get the French
files, the French translation files together.
And I thought she was working on those.
And I go in there and she's got 82 tabs open for a totally
different game. It's not even on the next.
We. Already have two other games
working on that are the next games and I don't even know
where this one falls in the timeline.
And I'm just looking at her like, what are you doing?
She's like, I'm making another game like.
Playing with three different games, I like like just finding
the artwork, categorizing. Coming up with ideas.
Yeah. Stories and gameplay.
So, yeah. So we had already, like, Lafleur
was already baking by the time that Botany's campaign was done.
And then once we handed the botany files off the
manufacturer, everybody's like, wow, you turn that, you know, I
can't believe you're already working on our game.
I'm like, well, I mean, this is this is what we do.
And we have nothing to do while this game's been manufactured
for four months. So we made we made another game.
And we are actually, we already made another one.
And we're ready to say it out loud.
We have another game coming, War of the Posies.
So the floor is going off to the manufacturer and war, War of the
Posies, which is a it's a stand alone game in the world of
botany. But War of the Posies is more or
less done. It needs to be just play testing
but like the arts done, the graphics design is done.
It's much smaller, it's just a little.
Card game, it's a little card game.
That's the other side of botany, yeah.
But yeah, so it's like every time we have one of these lols,
when when the one game is done and been being manufactured or
whatever, we're not just going to sit around, we make another
game. So that's what happened.
So Lafleur started like like August of last year.
No, before that. Well, I mean, no, no, no like in
earnest, like 100% focused on Lafleur was like August of last
year. By then we already had like we
already had design ideas and some prototypes and art coming
together. But like, yeah, we sat down and
really started putting it together.
So it was ready by September or October to really start like the
the next the next level of play testing.
Like we have like all our internal play testing we do and
we think it's in a pretty good place.
And then we put it out in the world to see, like, what kinds
of problems do people run into? Plus also like, so we start off
with, I mean, I'll show you where's my?
Well, we're on audio, so this is not a visual component, so.
We. Usually like write on our cards.
Oh yeah. Like.
Just a little writing thing. And then, like Dusty always is.
Like I'm like, hey, Amy's like, what do you think of this?
And she's designed 300 cards for the game.
And I'm like, well, those are nice, but we haven't, we have
what's the gameplay? Yet like like playing with the
artwork? So the graphic design very much
drives the game too. And so if she has an idea, she's
like, here's the space you have to work with, what can you do
with this? And I'm like, OK, I got this.
We can do this. We can figure this.
Out like so. So again, I want to back up,
tell us Lafleur is not out yet. Tell us a little bit, what about
Lafleur, setting, gameplay mechanics kind of a little bit
about? So Lafleur is all about garden
parties, OK. And when we were making botany,
we kind of went back and forth on should the, you know, you're
putting stuff in your estate, you're bringing flowers to your
estate, You're, you're getting conservatories and orangeries,
people. Really wanted to build out their
gardens. More Yeah, we were thinking, OK,
well that doesn't really fit in botany.
Like we're going for like a light medium kind of game.
And that would be, you know, adding that level of complexity
would just mug like, like mud things up.
And so for Lafleur, they're like, OK, well, let's let's take
it. And now everything that
everything you're doing at the estate, you're doing it like,
like Amy wanted Rococo France. And in Rococo France, it was all
about like, you know, these beautiful expansive gardens, the
views, the water features, the, the, the architecture and of
course, what? And we're like, OK, but why, why
are these people doing this? Well, they want to have garden
parties, of course. And so every turn, see how it's,
you know, people call it a worker placement game.
And again, it's kind of, I think it's more like the workers
represent the actions you have. Cuz worker placement is all
about location scarcity and resource scarcity.
And that's not really Amy hates those games.
No, I don't like the she. Didn't like any blocked blocked.
Yeah, I don't like sure. Yeah, so you can go there, but
you just might not get the best. Yeah, so there's things don't
refresh it in the round, but yeah.
So, so you're going around Paris and you have artisans and, and
the artisans each have a unique ability related to 1 space on
the board. And so like that they, you know,
you place the particular artisan, like the the painter at
the flower market and, and she can do specific stuff.
And you go around and you you're getting flowers and using the
flowers to buy garden features and you put them in your garden.
They have some score to them, but they increase what you're
allured. So you have a little tracker
that's like how attractive active is your your Chateau for
water and and pavs and vistas. And then while this is
happening, every round there are visitors coming to Paris and
each of them is going to go to the garden party like, like Miss
Enriette loves water features because she thinks the blue
complements her blue eyes, right.
And so whoever has the prettiest water features, that's whose
party she's going to the end of the round, all the visitors go
to everybody's parties and they shower them with like prestige
and opportunity and, and victory points and all that stuff.
Flowers, more flowers, more coins.
And, and so you, it's everybody's jockeying every
round, everybody's jockeying to get the, to, to, to see who has
the prettiest garden in different aspects.
And see and based on the visitors that who can who can
attract those visitors and you're.
Constantly, like peering over the hedge.
Yeah, you're peering. The hedge is constantly looking
at what everybody else is doing. You're very concerned with like,
oh, Amy grabbed that, you know, the garden feature I was going
to get or, oh, I was going to get that flower.
And now I kind of figure something else out.
You can send special invitations to visitors.
And so, like, if two people are tied, the visitors can't decide
where to go. So it is leave town.
But if you send them a special invitation with one of your, you
have one of your artisans go and give them an invitation, they'll
come to you. And so like, I was like, oh
gosh, I'm not gonna be able to beat Amy on this one.
We're tied. And then she puts her artisan on
the on the special invitation and gives it to the particular
visitor. And then I'm, I, I think I have,
I have made more curses and angry faces about these people
going to their garden features than I ever imagined possible.
But that's, yeah, that's the idea of Lafleur is it's, it's
basically you're, you're building, you're competing.
Everybody's jockeying for position to see who, when these
visitors will come to their garden party.
And then if you, if you win, go ahead.
I was going to say, if you win, you get to host the biggest
garden party of all, the Grand Soiree, which is a very fancy
ending. I was going to say why we chose
Rococo France. Well, one, I love the flower
artist Pierre Joseph Redoute, and so he.
Guy is number one. She came to me.
She's like, this Guy has so much art.
We have to make a game all about him.
Some of. His flowers are in botany and I.
Just love really, OK. Yeah, so I love his artwork so
much. I was like, and he's the right
time period. He actually did work for Marie
Antoinette and also. A bunch of other famous.
Yeah, like really famous. People and so I was like, we
should include this. And then also I was an art
history minor in college. And so that's why I love like
the rococo over the top. And you know, I love gold.
To gold? Yeah, gold.
To everything gold. For everything, yeah, we need
the gold, the over the top, the pastel colors.
And so that's why. So again, when we make stuff,
it's very much based on Amy's whimsy, like what she's thinking
about and what she wants to do and where the designs go.
And then we'll be sitting there. We have this concept of the
superfan, which is, which is how we how we know like what
pictures to take and show and what to market and where.
And our superfan is this is this girl, Mary, who is very much
just like Amy's best friend. And and so we'll sit there and
be, I'll be arguing about McCann like I think this should happen
this way. Amy's like that's how it would
happen in Warhammer. No, Mary wouldn't like that.
And I'm like, ah, yes, that's right.
Mary would not like this. That's all I have to say now.
We. Yeah.
And as soon as she says that, then I I'm like, OK, you know,
that's a good point. We need to work another way
around this. We need to come up with a way to
make this simpler. Yeah.
And also so botany is more light strategy.
It's an introduction to strategy like it's.
Not heavy, it's. It's supposed to be fun like.
Yeah, I just say that is that is definitely true.
However, however it can, there's it can trying to travel around
the world efficiently based on the 454 cards in your hand.
Yeah. I mean, you're true.
It it's it's challenging and then you throw the event cards
into the mix. So I want to ask you, Amy, have
you played Rococo? I have not, but OK, So I
believe, I believe based on your description of the floor and
based on my experience with botany, I would say that the
floor would be an excellent compliment to.
Roco. So in Rococo, you're a designer
designing the fashions for the people that will be attending
the garden party. That's what you have to do.
So, so we used to, we never, we never actually did this, but we
used to dream that if you were playing Fantasy Flight Star Wars
games, you start with Rebellion and every time you have a fight
at a planet, you have to play a game of Armada.
And every time you play a game of Armada and you have a, you
have a, you have a starfighter battle, you got to play a game
of X wing. And so you go down to X wing,
then you come back up to Armada. Then you finish the Armada game,
you go back up to Rebellion. And this game lasts for like 6
months. And So what you could do is at
more. Like a year.
Yeah, exactly. At the end of every round for
Lafleur, every at the end of every round of a floor before
the garden party, you have to play a game of Roco Co.
There you go to. Get.
Your attention. OK, I would think you play Roco
Co to get your get your outfit together, then play Lafleur and
that'll be like the other side of the story.
Exactly who Are you ready? For the party.
Who knows? Who knows?
So I wanted to ask you about. I have a lot of notes.
Yeah, you, yeah, I'm, I'm scribbling while you were
talking. So.
And for our listeners, go back to episode 41, where Gary and I
talk about Rococo the entire episode because it's a.
Favorite. I have to go listen to that one.
Yeah, it's, it's really good. It's the art is done by Ian
O'Toole, who normally partners with Vital Lacerto, but this
game was not designed by Lacerto.
So it has a look. It is the look, but it is
beautiful. Huge, huge table presence and I
think it's going to be a good compliment.
I'm looking forward to playing a game of Rococo alongside the
floor when? Because we.
We did back it and we are looking.
Forward to coming. And getting that, getting that
orchids expansion, My wife is crazy for orchids.
She's got some up in the window that she's been growing for the
past two years, so she's really excited.
As the Orchid expansion is super fun, like, you know, I'm biased,
it's my game, but man, it's so it's so fun that if we had
thought about it when botany started, I don't know if we
might have found a way to like get it in.
I mean, it's it's a lot of extra cards.
So but so the orchid expansion, it's pretty simple.
It just adds a whole face up deck that anybody can grab while
you're moving around. And so because what would happen
back then is somebody would like a magazine would publish about
this particular orchid like in South America.
And all the plant hunters would, it would be like a craze.
And all the plant hunters would rush there to be the first
person to to find this this specimen and bring it back to
their Conservatory. And so we had these.
So you play, it's like a face up board next to bot, next to the
botany board and whatever space up there, anyone can snag it and
it it ends up actually. You change your route.
You change your routes because of what pops and and you think
you have a plan and then somebody moves away.
You didn't expect them to and they grab it instead.
It's very, it's actually very inspired by Lafleur too, because
it's the same kind of thing where you're like all of a
sudden very concerned with who's going to grab this thing before
I manage to get it like. So let me ask you, now that
you've completed your second kick Kickstarter project, talk
for a minute because last week's episode Gareth and I talked
about crowdfunding games in general, why or why not to back.
And we talked about the challenges that designers face
deciding to do a project on Crown.
Can you talk just for a minute or two about some of the
challenges that you faced when you decided to, particularly
with botany? Because I'm sure you learned a
lot of lessons for the floor about, OK, we've got a game,
we're gonna go to Kickstarter. Why Kickstarter over game found
or other platforms? Why not go straight to a
publisher? Like can you talk about that
just for a minute? Really, we didn't know much
about publishers. We had no idea that people
designed games and sold them to publishers and and.
Like we just assumed. And I sound so ignorant when I
say that we are very experienced business people for, you know,
for years we run around our own businesses.
Also, that's why too because we no business.
It never, it never. So like I, you know, when I look
at all the games on our shelf, I assumed that every person whose
name was on that game worked at the company that made the game.
Oh, I had no idea until we started listening to Board Game
Design Lab and that was after Botany's campaign that that that
was the case. So never occurred to us not to
make the game ourselves ever. And, and then we, so we started,
you know, I mean, step one, I was like, well, how much do
these things cost? And so we found our manufacturer
Step 2. You know, I, I literally googled
how to Kickstarter. I had no idea.
Amy's brother is a indie game developer and he made a video
game back in 2014 and, and did it on Kickstarter and he made
$27,000 and it blew our minds wide open.
And I was like, okay, manufacturing is expensive.
Well, how do we get, you know, how do we, how do we get our
name out there? How do we get some hype built
up? And Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is a place we could go to do that.
I don't even think we knew about no.
You probably back some other games.
Dusty likes backing games. Yeah, I mean.
We had backed like maybe 10 games in the time before Ohh
game Found. I hadn't backed anything on game
Found prior to that. I only backed stuff on
Kickstarter. And so we were very much just
like, go to our local game store, see a game.
I wasn't really following stuff online that much.
And so when we back stuff on Kickstarter was because like
Amy's brother came to me and he's like, hey, Binding of Isaac
4 Souls is one of my favorite games of all time.
And he's like, hey, Binding of Isis has an expansion.
You can go, you know, go get it here.
I'm like, OK, cool. So and then then when we started
looking into stuff, we're like, oh, Kickstarter's the one.
But as we got in farther, people like, oh, have you considered
game found? Well, if you look at game found
and you look at Kickstarter, there's lots of game found ish
games on Kickstarter. But game found has a target
audience that is very identifiable.
It's lots of bigger heavier games, hardcore games in the
hobby. And so the kind of cross sell
you're going to get there is very much tied to those games.
So if I was launching, if I was launching the next Gloom Haven
and somebody was like, hey, you should consider game found.
I would genuinely consider game found cuz there's lots.
I mean I back big games on game found.
And a lot of our target audience, I feel like one, they
don't even know what Kickstarter.
We had 20% of our backers were first time backers to
Kickstarter. It was so many people, it was so
many first time backers that people from Kickstarter were
contacting us to find out what we did so.
Let's contextualize those numbers for our listeners for
just a second. You said 20% of your backers, so
there were just over 15,000 backers for Botany and 20% of
that were first time. Back had never yeah, 3000 / 3000
had never, never been. Huge, but that is huge.
And so like so like trying to explain to them what game found
is would be like a non starter. A lot of our folks were like,
oh, I backed a Kickstarter once. And it was like.
A knife. Yeah.
And it, yeah, it was, yeah. Bird feeder.
Bird feeder or, and or like, oh, I think I've heard of
Kickstarter before. OK, I can sign up for this.
And so there's an element depending on who your target
market is, there's an element of of like having to educate them
on a platform they've never used before.
And so you need a level of trust there.
And I think if we had gone on game found, First off, we
wouldn't have had the cross sell that we had.
Second off, we wouldn't have had as many first time backers
because they never heard of before.
Percent of our people are women. 85, yeah, 85 percent, 85% of our
customers, give or take a few percentage points are women and
the board game industry is the opposite.
It's like 80% men. And so we're working in a, we're
working in a niche and a niche there.
And Kickstarter has much higher adoption rate amongst women.
And so demographically like it made it would make more sense.
But this is all stuff we learned after the fact in the very
beginning. It was just, oh, Kickstarter is
Kickstarter. We will Kickstarter.
That's how technical it was. And then and then the idea was.
We found launch. Boom.
We found Launch Boom and that helped us, you know, because
nobody's going to. It's very rare.
Like I try, I tell people Botany was not viral.
Lafleur was not viral. People are not going to buy your
product if they don't know your product exists.
And so we found Launch Boom and they helped us figure out our
advertising plan and get the game out there.
And we were amazed that so many people, even before the
campaign, were interested in it. And so we're feeling pretty
confident that we do fairly well.
Like we make enough to pay back the money we spend on
advertising. We make enough to hit our
minimum work on the manufacturer and have enough leftover to sell
to people. Can you imagine if we even made
like 300,000? That would be like.
I was like I said, and I said to her, I was like, it's not going
to happen, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal like we.
Don't. Know slow and steady, yeah, slow
and steady wins the race and we'll and we're no matter what
comes we will have a plan that fits, you know, fits all these
options, yeah. So let let me ask No, go ahead.
I was going to say, and we never even really thought about retail
either. Like what are we?
I had no retail plan, no retail plan.
On Kickstarter we found. Age contrived Bella's intent.
They were working, they had a they were working with Golden
Goose and and we met the guys from Golden Goose and their
whole deal is that they do they help you do logistics.
So that was a big one for us with.
Shipping. Shipping is Shipping is the most
dangerous part of Kickstarter. I mean, gosh, you can, you can
go to the Internet today and see stories about companies that
have gotten nailed by shipping and it you know, and that was
the, that was the win or lose point, like turning point on
their campaign. Dusty probably spent more time
on shipping. Than anything else.
I still spend more time. I had a meeting about shipping
today. I spend, I spend so much time on
it. It's so dangerous, it's so
difficult. We saw botany in 89 countries
and then if we had to figure out how to get that to 89 countries.
And so, yeah, so figured out shipping, we figured all that
stuff. Golden Goose helped us figure
out sales. They and you know, they got us,
they're the ones that got know like knew the folks at Barnes
and Noble to even get us seen by them in the 1st place, still had
to win it. But you know, to get seen.
And it's so difficult to be seen in, in the, in the era where
there's 5000 board games being released every year.
And yeah. And so it just started to, once
the Kickstarter happened and everybody started paying
attention to how, how many people were interested in buying
because that's the key is, is it like we didn't know I was going
to like we had to get it out there.
We had to get it seen. Once it got seen, then we're
like, Oh my gosh, people actually like this.
Wow. That's we were OK, that's cool.
That's really exciting. People like it now.
What? Like, oh God, what do we do now?
Well, and also whenever we were designing the box, at first we
tried different things and I'm like, that's not what I was
envisioning. And so I ended up designing the
box and like, people are like, I love the box.
No, it's gorgeous. It's like, it's not like most
other board game. Box, Amy said.
I want, I was envisioning every other board game box we have
that has like crazy art and explosions and all this stuff
and Amy's like, or a scene Amy's like.
I wanted to. I wanted to look like one of my
Victorian books. No, you succeeded at that.
I think the construction, it's, it's it's thick and sturdy.
My cat could sit in it and it wouldn't break.
We get so many pictures of cats sitting in that box.
They really like it. Yeah.
I also love the attention to detail.
You've got an an old map of London on the inside of the box.
Yeah, Amy loves those maps. So do you ever?
Lift up the tray out of outside of.
You know. There's stuff under the tray.
Is there really? Don't tell me that I I hate when
and designers do that. Oh my goodness.
It cost like it cost, it barely cost anything more.
And so we were like, I don't be a surprise for anybody to list
it out. For those of you who are
listening, I am lifting up my box right now.
Oh, look at that. Look at that.
Yep, I'm looking at artwork of herbaceous flowering plants.
Oh look man, you guys. We like those little details we
want. We wanted to feel like a premium
experience for people. In the back of the.
Board. The back of the game board also
has flowers all on the back. Of it I'm like.
Why have it just black when you can put flowers on it?
Absolutely. So Amy and I, so these little
details Amy and I fought so much about, specifically the foil.
Oh yes, the gold foil. When I say fought, my mom calls
us Co combative. We have even since we were 14.
We're running around the house arguing about this or that, and
neither of us is afraid to express our opinion to the
other. Passionate about.
It yeah, very passionate about these things.
And so we were gold foil is expensive, arguing about this
gold foil and I was like, nobody's gonna care.
This is ridiculous. It's so expensive and Amy's
like, I don't care what you think.
I don't care what we do for the rest of our lives.
I want this gold foil on this box.
And I was like, fine, whatever. You know, as as I as I do and as
Amy does, I realized that when when she's pretty and she bats
her eyes at me that she's gonna win.
And I said, fine, you can have the gold foil.
We can make it fit. You know, again, all business
like it fits within our cost of goods sold to make all the all
the do all the sales and everything we need to do.
You can have it. So the day we post on
Kickstarter, the stretch goal gold foil.
On the box. I'm talking e-mail after e-mail
and comment after comment. Oh my gosh.
One girl emailed us and she said when we saw that we hit the
stretch goal for the gold foil. I'm like, we, she's doing this
with multiple people. She goes, she goes, my mom and I
screamed and I turned around and I said, I'm sorry.
You were right, Amy. The the this is how you make the
girls scream gold foil nerd like me.
I don't get it. Foil like I I never would have
done that. And we got the gold foil on the
floor, too. Yeah, and the gold foil wasn't?
Even a SO. Wasn't even a discussion, it was
instant gold foil. Of course you can have that gold
foil on war. In the pose box.
We're making a tiny little box. The gold foil's gonna be
expensive. Amy's like the box for war.
The Posey's will have gold foil. And I said the box of the gold
war. The Posey's will have gold foil.
Yeah, of course. I love it.
I'd be surprised if we ever make a game that doesn't have gold
foil on the box. I would.
Be very surprised too. That's that is fantastic.
I love it. Gold foil.
That's how it works. Star signature.
Yeah. So it's.
The shiny thing that catches people's attention.
When it catches Amy's attention. Oh, shiny.
If if you don't have gold foil on this box, it'll change
everything. Yeah, it really will.
It looks like the old books the old.
All those old books had gold foil detail on the.
Front end and the raised. The raised lettering makes a
difference. You totally made Amy's day by
noticing that. No, that's.
I love that. I love that.
So thank you. So I'm gonna close out our
episode with a new segment that we haven't come up with a name
for. So if you listen to the last two
episodes, you've heard this. I am going to do a voice over
from a rule book and I'm going to read the introduction and
we're trying to figure out if how we're going to do this.
I think this last week's episode, it's like you have to
guess what it is and messages. Gareth and I are going back and
forth on the formula, but it'll be an obvious one, obvious which
game I picked. So I'm going to do that real
quickly. Players assume the roles of
Victorian era plant hunters traveling the world in search of
fame, fortune and the coveted Queens Prize in botany.
As they travel the globe to collect specimens, the players
will need to manage their expedition funds, experience
thrilling events, and acquire support for their journeys.
Whenever a player returns to their estate, they will add new
specimens to their collection and build new garden features
such as orangeries and conservatories.
The player with the most points at the end of the game will earn
the Queen's Prize in Botany and be declared the winner.
We obviously know what game that is.
I don't know, I'm still trying. It feels like it's on the tip of
my tongue. But I, I thought it was
appropriate. Garrett's not here to guess,
guess the voice over or whatever.
It's a little, it's a new segment we're working on, but I
thought it would be good to do a voiceover of the intro of your
book. Yeah, You know what, we need to
get you to do that voiceover for us, for our advertising.
I'm a very radio ads. I'm going to start running local
radio ads. You said you like contract work
and contract workers. I'm happy to be a contract
worker. Yeah, right.
Yeah. I also want to say, while I've
got the rule book out, the linen finish and the weight of the
paper, the quality of the rule book is, I mean, it's second to
none. Thank you.
So I love quality things. I'm like, I mean, the Victorian
era, it was all about like quality like.
So the pre production copy for Lafleur showed up last week.
And like it doesn't have. Linen.
And we knew it didn't have linen.
It doesn't have linen. We use panda Panda game
manufacturing. They make wingspan, they make
the scythe, they make all stone Meyers games they make.
I'm pretty sure they make a bunch of pandemic stuff.
They do a really great job and they.
Forgot to do my linen. Finish yeah, so Cardner our girl
from from Panda emails us. She's like, hey, just so you
know, the the pre production copies on the way, but the
factory forgot to put the linen on it.
But you know what the linen looks like so that's OK.
It gets here. Amy looks at it and she goes,
I'm like these look great. And she's like, I can't
photograph these. They have no linen on them, you
know, like. That's a huge part of it because
we are trying to take as content creators, we take pictures of
your box, your components, your board, your, your rule book.
And that glossy paper reflects the light Then yeah, you know,
we all can't afford big fancy studios and everything like
that. And so this is just amazing.
This is fantastic. And kudos for getting game trays
to to work with them because they make beautiful trays and
inserts. Your insert is fantastic.
Thank you. I love a good insert.
Our first guest on this show was Richard, the CEO of Folded
Space. Oh, that's cool.
Before we had any designers on, we talked to a man who makes a
living making inserts, so thank you for that so much.
Yeah, I I'm a fan of a good. I don't like when I open a box
and everything's just tumbling all around inside of it.
And so, yeah, I was, absolutely. So Amy and Dusty, thank you so
much for joining me on our on our episode and talk about your
games. I'm really glad you get the
floor to the table. I cannot express my gratitude to
you enough. Thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us join.
It's a lot of fun for us. It's still a little surreal.
I appreciate that and everybody, Gareth will be back.
The week after this will be our Gen.
Con recap, because I will be a Gen.
Con for one day. Sunday only guys.
So we're gonna. Be there.
We're flying out Sunday morning. That's yeah.
Yep, be on the lookout. We'll be there Sunday and then
we'll do our recap and then we've got a few more things
planned in August as we creep towards Episode 100.
Congratulations, that's exciting.
Congrats. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thanks everyone for listening.
Please subscribe and as always, we'd love to hear your thoughts
and ideas, so make sure to leave those in the comments.
And don't forget you can also chat with us both on Instagram
at Meeple the Meeple.