Update for friends and family :-)

Hello friends, family and early adopters! For those of you who have asked for an update (and for those who haven't!) here is an honest and unvarnished version of how it's going! A 5 minute read with the story of Party Snail so far (or just look at the pics and guess what happened). It's overdue update time... 

Quickly first, I wanted to reiterate a MASSIVE THANK YOU for all the love and support on the Party Snail journey so far. It means a lot, and seeing so many people get behind us, and hearing so many stories of people having fun with our games has been amazing.

And also a very big thank you for being among the very first people to buy a game and leave a review on Amazon (if you haven't left a review - one would still be hugely appreciated!). As you'll see, it hasn't all been plain sailing (to say the least!) so your support and help in this way really does mean the world.

So how's it been?! It's fair to say that October, November and the first half of December 2024 were extremely stressful weeks in my life! After an initial flurry of sales (including 1 all-night packaging games overnight - typical week 1 scene below!) and positive reviews from you lovely lot, Jungle Hustle and Snaptastic got off to a pretty slow start... Slower than expected - we were working around and about our 'worst case scenario' projections at one point 😬

It's no exaggeration to say that by early December I/we were very much in the 'oh my goodness what have we done?!' mindset. Tears were shed, hair was greyed, teeth were gnashed 😂 By about 10th December it was hard to see how this was really going to work... (trying to suppress the) Panic mode.

Thankfully things were going to get better... (below is a picture of one our first shipment of games to Amazon)

After a lot of delays, we also got our hands on the first copies of Ninja Hamster Apocalypse Disco mid to late November. I literally flew to Poland to hand collect the first couple of hundred copies to get them started as early as I could before Christmas, and get some reviews in the door. The manufacturer said it was the first time anyone had done that but desperate times and all that... A box, a suitcase and two very heavy pieces of hand luggage later...

Ninja Hamster also got a nice start in life, followed by a bit of quiet. The launch party for Ninja Hamster with some of our play-testers was a particular highlight of the year - I remember feeling that even if we were (or are?!) going to fail it was nice to celebrate the launch of the game with so many of the people who helped us make the game what it is...

As I said, around 10th December we were still pretty unsure of everything... We were selling games - great! The only problem was that we were literally spending every penny we were getting in on ads/marketing to achieve those sales - not so great! We were covering the manufacturing cost of the games sold and the postage, but literally nothing else. And this was after having re-mortgaged our house and ploughed in all we could to get things going... Tough times (although the arrival of killer merch buoyed me!!)



With 2 weeks to go before Christmas we made a strategic choice to sell less games, but to actually try and make some money by cutting down and reducing our advertising spend (sounds obvious in hindsight, right?!). Happily, it worked! We didn't make tons of money or anything, but we started to see at least a little bit of profit day-to-day. Even if we hadn't made back any of our initial start-up money, we were covering our costs and we got in enough to pay our accountant and insurance for the year. Hardly a spectacular win, but it was enough light for us to feel like this can actually work.

We finished Christmas having sold over 6000 games, having worked with lots of lovely independent retailers and also received loads of positive feedback on the games. We also learned a lot of lessons (some the hard way), and although I was absolutely knackered we came away feeling positively placed for this year. We enjoyed Christmas with a much more relaxed vibe than we had anticipated a few weeks beforehand! Nerf battles abounded...

The positive feeling started to come to fruition early this year, as we got some great news... Through a lovely friendly connection in the industry, we managed to land a deal to ship 5000 of our games to HMV in Canada. This was our first big win, and although we will only be paid when the games sell, it still feels like a MASSIVE positive. I stacked the 2 pallets myself (first time for me - I don't think I did too badly?!) and I can't tell you how satisfying it was to wave those off on the truck to eventually reach Calgary. A real milestone both personally and for the business. Hopefully the first of many future such shipments...

It really felt like a sign of what can be achieved with hard work, the positive collaborative attitude we always try and take, and a healthy slice of luck. Between these games and our sales over the Christmas period, we've now sold over 80% of our first print run of 15,000 games. Amazing! So amazing in fact, that we aren't trying too hard to sell games until we receive our re-prints...

I have also been working hard at another couple of things... Firstly, we have a new game coming later in the year - Clay It Again! It is a super fun play dough based game. Despite working in games for almost 7 years, it's also the first game I've been involved in that isn't just card/cardboard based so that's been a big challenge to figure out. The game is super fun - but how on earth do we make it?! Below is literally how I was trying to figure out how to package and make it!!

Working out the manufacturing and logistics took me to China and Hong Kong in early March, and I'm pleased to say I've found some great partners who will make the game, as well as re-printing our existing games. I really wanted to go and see the factories in person to make sure I felt comfortable with their working practices and ethical standards and both were really excellent. Needless to say, spending 5 days in China was also a fascinating experience, as well as full of delicious food! Clay It Again is due to go to print in the next week or two, all being well :-)



We have also decided to put our existing games into slightly larger boxes this year. There's a bunch of reasons for this, but the key one is to give our games more 'perceived value' at their price point. These decisions aren't easy but indie retailers flagged this as especially important, and so we have put in some extra bonus bits that make the games better (for example, a scorepad for Jungle Hustle) while making the boxes a bit bigger with more 'perceived value' and giftability. We were already pleased with our quality levels, but we've also been able to increase them even further by manufacturing in China - thicker card and a lovely 'soft touch' finish on the boxes. We can't wait to get our hands on those larger box games around September time. We'll be sure to let you know when Clay It Again and the bigger box games are available :-) It'll look a bit like this... But with a title added...



All of which brings us up to now! The business still has a way to go to be something I can actually make a living off of - getting games made is an expensive business! Abby has been amazingly supportive (and brave!) and I'm working 2 days a week freelance until the summer to help pay our bills. It has some impact on the business - it forces me to be choosy about what I spend time on (a good thing!) but it's manageable.

I'll be back to full-time on Party Snail for the final part of the year, to focus on our busy sales period. I'm really optimistic that we are on track with all my plans for the business. We hope to claw back all our initial investment in the business in 2025 by selling over 20,000 games this calendar year (including the 5000 already gone to Canada!), and we also have big plans for 2026.

I am trying to bring our timelines forward for making games (avoiding the last minute stresses!) so I am currently doing the fun bit of working on new games ideas for next year. We've got loads of ideas in the mix, and are just about to ramp up our play-testing both in-person and remotely with our lovely little network of testers. If one comes together quickly, there's even a chance we can get another game out in 2025 - who knows?!

There's no ask from this message (unless you haven't left an Amazon review yet - at this stage everyone counts a lot and that would still be huge for us!) but I just wanted to say a really big thank you and express my gratitude. It's been a real rollercoaster, an up and down journey of highs and lows. I'm pleased to see we feel on a much more even keel now and really optimistic about the future, but it's not an exaggeration to say that the support of friends and family (as well as your purchases and reviews!) has made a big difference and really been felt.

I'll try and post another update later in the year, but in the meantime thanks so much and enjoy the upcoming summer. Much love from all of us x

PS. FYI I don't want this page on the internet forever so it'll be deleted around mid-May :-)