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I actually just Kickstarted a card game I made for Itch! Over the summer I made a print-n-play game called Tiny Swords. It did well enough that I decided to expand it and now it's getting printed as a real-deal game! Not only that, but I got double the funding I asked for, which means I can do a WAY larger print run than I originally planned.
As for the game itself, Tiny Swords is a pocket-sized spin on Rock-Paper-Scissors. In it, players try to find and remove their opponent's Sword Cards. To do that, players engage in a Duel, a game of RPS using a card with a Duel Type on it (the square, triangle, and circle shapes above). Whatever cards get used during a Duel stay revealed, and whoever wins the Duel gets to attack their opponent's hand first. Players take turns picking and revealing each other's cards until someone finds a Sword Card. Tiny Swords are made of Blades and Hilts (which can be used as extra Duel Cards in a pinch), and Charms, which all have different game-changing powers. Some even activate when they're removed from the game, like a trap card! I started with 4 swords, but the final game on Kickstarter has 20 swords, each with their own Blade, Hilt, and Charm. I also wrote a ton of extra game modes, so people can play in tag-team with 4 people and other cool stuff. It's been super fun to make, and I'm really excited to see the final boxed game.
Oooooh, I remember Tiny Swords! I was, like, "are you kidding me? this is a brilliant idea!". Glad it was a successful campaign! :)
i was literally just looking at the kickstarter (i was looking up the tiny swords itch page for a talk i'm giving on print & play games at the local library next week). i had no idea you were kickstarting a version until just now. congratulations! i still haven't actually played the game - i felt bad printing out the beautiful pastel cards on my black and white printer. so thank you for solving my problem, i guess!
Why would it be a problem? I suspect not everyone who buys PDFs prints them out in order to play, and if they do, Letter and A4 paper are close enough in size that you'll just have some weird margins. For what it's worth, my own Tales of Space and Magic is typeset on A4, and nobody has complained yet. :P
Of course, that goes for tabletop RPGs. If you're talking card games or some other type of material that requires scissors, you'll need to either leave enough of a margin, thus wasting paper, or else make two versions of the game. And the latter is a big can of worms.
Me either, all I know is that Letter paper is a little wider and shorter than A4. This might help plan for an error margin (heh).
Yeah, A4 is hard as heck to get in the states unfortunately. I think you can get it at specialty paper shops and japanese bookstores, but other than that, I haven't seen it. I would just put safe areas on your prints so they can be safely cropped to fit both paper formats.
I put my print and play game called Edge of the Sky up on itch.io some weeks ago. It's a game where you build the board during the game, similar to Carcassonne (I totally love that game BTW), but you explore the world yourself with your air balloon and try to find three of the same type of element on each of the various islands before your opponents do.
It's pretty good so I've been recommended by multiple people to try and take the thing further- which is where I'm stuck. I could try to mail some publishers, but since I've already put this prototype up on itch.io I guess that will cause publishers to hook off, not to mention finding one will take a lot of time. Or I could try kickstarting it, but it's probably way more business and responsibility than I can handle, if it gets funded at all.
So if anyone could share advise on that? Feedback for Edge is also very welcome since it still needs some fine tuning. Thanks in advance. :)
I'm still new to this business myself, but I'd argue you might as well give it a shot and contact publishers anyway. If anything, you can show them what the audience for your game looks like already (if people have been downloading/buying your game), and that you've been taking feedback into consideration. Beyond that, you could look into a company like Print and Play to make your own polished prototype. These days, though, it'd likely be more painless to just Kickstart your own small-print run.
Thanks to the advise, I guess I'll go ahead and contact publishers then. Audience of the game is mostly my family and relatives currently, I could try to increase it a bit. And I guess I can link them to my Trello board or changelog which holds all my iterations to show that I'm actively concidering feedback.
Print and Play also looks very cool, if all else fails I'll just order some copies from there.