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.