Burgoo Milestones

Burgoo Milestones

BurgooPrototype

Today is the last day of the Burgoo Kickstarter campaign. If you haven’t picked up a copy of the game, now’s your chance!  The campaign already hit its funding target on Day 1, so I’m only holding my breath to see if it reaches its last stretch goal of 20K to get slightly thicker tiles.

Looking back, I realized that I have reached a few milestones and broke a few personal records with Burgoo:

#1 – It has had most successful kickstarter campaigns of any my games.

This is based purely on the final total of funds raised and number of backers. Venture Forth only had 48 backers and raised $2913. Island Siege had 336 backers and raised $18,294. Burgoo (at this hour) has 3225 backers and raised $18,329 – I expect this to go up by the end of the day. This is due to several factors. First it had a price that you couldn’t pass up – $3 and free shipping anywhere in the world is pretty amazing. Second is that it is being published by the great people at Tasty Minstrel Games. They have built a solid following, are skilled at advertising, and just have this kickstarter thing down pat. Third is that Burgoo is a nice, quick, and portable game that can find room in any collection!

#2 – It has now sold more copies than any of my games combined.

The game has 3000+ backers on Kickstarter. Some of those backers have bought more than one copy. Using just the publicly available data on Boardgamegeek, Monkey Lab has 416 owners, Venture Forth has 323 owners, Island Siege has 43 owners (should be going up once the game is in full release). Now BGG is not entirely accurate, of course, because not everyone who owns the game has an account or logs their games, however you can see that I don’t have any smash hits yet.  The sales reports that I receive show much higher numbers, but still lower than Burgoo. It is a great feeling to know that my game will be played by that many people!

#3 – It has had the fastest moving production of any of my games.

I pitched the game to Tasty Minstrel at BGG.CON in November 2013. The contract was signed in December 2013. The kickstarter started and ended in January 2014. The game is set to be shipped by June 2014. That’s working at break-neck speeds!

#4 – It has the longest delay from design to professional publication.

As I mentioned on my kickstarter designer bio, this game was originally designed in 2007. I did a small “print run” of 30 or so copies of the game myself but that was it. It wasn’t until 2013 that I decided to take the game out again and see if it could be published. I had interest from three publishers, so that tells me that maybe I shouldn’t have had it sit on my shelf for so long.

#5 – It is my first published game that I pitched in-person to its publisher.

This sounds ridiculous since I have three other published games, but somehow it happened. Monkey Lab was submitted blindly to its publisher. Venture Forth was recommended to the publisher by a playtester/designer friend. Island Siege was passed from one publisher to the final publisher. For Burgoo, I actually sat down with Seth Jaffee from Tasty Minstrel to teach and play the game. That was the best of all!

I’m really happy with the way things have turned out with this game and am looking forward to making many more!

Burgoo Kickstarter Link: http://kck.st/1a4Zio4

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2 thoughts on “Burgoo Milestones

  1. Congrats on a fine little game (as well as your other published titles)!

    8 hours to go as I write this, and we’re $460 away from the $20k stretch goal. I think we can make it!

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