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Patrick Rauland: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the Indie Board Game Designers Podcast, where I sit down with a different independent game designer and we talk about their experience in game design, and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland and today I'm going to be talking with Darren Terpestra, who was on the show in episode number 75, which is about a year and a half ago. He also created Ignite, which we talked about in that episode and it was funded on Kickstarter. And the reason I'm bringing him back on today is because I wanted to talk to him about a game design class that he took part in and we're going to get into it. And if a game design class is right for you. So Darren, welcome back to the show.

Darren Terpestra: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I didn't realize I was the first person ever to be on for a second time. So that's quite an honor.

Introduction

Patrick Rauland:
You are. I know. They'll have to make up a plaque or something. So I like to start with a lightning round. So I'm going to ask you a couple, a couple quick questions. All right.

Darren Terpestra:
Okay.

Patrick Rauland:
All right. Favorite flavor to add to coffee?

Darren Terpestra:
I don't actually drink coffee. I'm like one of 5% of the world.

Patrick Rauland:
Uh-huh (affirmative). What about a favorite flavor of tea?

Darren Terpestra:
Anything fruity. Although there was a passion fruit like orange one, one time. That was really good.

Patrick Rauland:
Sweet passion fruit orange. Love it. We're in the COVID times, what con do you miss the most?

Darren Terpestra:
I always loved SaltCON in Salt Lake City. I know that's super out there and small, but it was the most friendly convention ever. I don't miss Gen Con because one year I was sat next to the 10th or the anniversary tournament of Magic: The Gathering. And we were trying to play test Ignite about three feet away from a giant speaker. It was the worst.

Patrick Rauland:
Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of like a little weird things about giant tournaments that are challenging.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah.

Patrick Rauland:
Cool. All right. Hold on lost my place. There we go. What is a game you play with someone every single time at a con?

Darren Terpestra:
Oh, actually I try and play different games. Things that aren't in my collection. I love having other people actually teach me the game because every single time I play a game in my own life it's me teaching the game.

Give Us A Manufacturing & Fulfilment Update on Ignite

Patrick Rauland:
Right. Love that. And I by the way I'm very I do the same thing where I just want to play something new and different and if someone else can teach it to me. Fantastic. Love it. So normally, and this is normally I ask how did you get into board games and board game design? But we talked about that a year and a half ago, so I will skip… This is the first time I've ever skipped that question. So I want to follow up on your game. So episode 75 came out of June in 2019. We probably recorded it two to four weeks ahead of time, it's my usual setup. It's been a year and a half since we've talked. So you did this really cool game called Ignite.

Patrick Rauland:
And by the way we were at the same… I can't remember the exact convention, but we were play-testing at the same convention in Colorado in Denver. And I remember the Ignite table was over there and there's like a large ruckus group of people playing Ignite, and my little table where I played Fry Thief. So we were play-testing at the same time. So I want to follow up. Number one, how did Fulfillment go? And number two, how did the manufacturing process go?

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah, so man this is an epic tale. So we are still in production. Pretty much everything has been produced outside of the top tray for the base game because there's actually two trays, a top tray, a bottom tray. The top one has all of the miniatures and the bottom has the maps, the tokens all of the cards because it's a hugely giant deck builder. So that top tray we're adjusting and then the dwarf miniature is having some issues. So we're still getting the final version of that. So production is technically still pending, but essentially everything is manufactured. The big headache right now is that just China shipping is astronomically higher than it's supposed to be, the combination of COVID and Chinese lockdowns and Chinese precautions about COVID and just the amount of things that people are buying due to COVID, it's just all creating this perfect storm of shipping prices being way higher than they're supposed to be. So it should die down after Chinese New Years, at least that's what probably everyone on the planet is crossing their fingers for but that's the current situation.

Patrick Rauland:
Cool. So I wanted to bring up a couple things. Let's go into the Fulfillment first. Well, actually no very quickly into manufacturing, so my game was a very simple card game and a couple of tokens. It got manufactured pretty quickly sent over and actually I will share this. I want to say it arrived at the start of COVID, so everyone got it Fulfilled. I Fulfilled directly from China and that was months before COVID and then all the remaining games, I had an extra thousand games that I shipped to my place in Colorado and that arrived around March 13th. And so, number one, I just wanted to point out we're recording in February now. So if you do a bigger game, there's an extra year of manufacturing and talking and in your case you're making miniatures and there's a bajillion components and cards and boards.

Patrick Rauland:
I think it's worth thinking about you can make any game you want to, but if you make a little card game it'll probably get made in a couple of months. And if you do a bigger game, it might take a year or two just to manufacture all the pieces, that's a thing you should think about. And then I want to talk about Fulfillment for a second, and I'll actually give you a chance to speak rather than me just ramble at you. So how much research did you do before your Kickstarter? Did you have an idea of, “If I sell 2000 games, here's how much it would probably cost from China?” Did you like do that basic math?

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah, no, we got quotes from a variety of manufacturers. I actually wish not sort of I do wish that we had gone with a different manufacturer because we were supposed to have shipped it out prior to COVID. I believe prior to COVID, maybe during COVID, but definitely in 2020 it was supposed to go out the door. But then they sent us the fully manufactured versions and there were just massive things wrong with it that I've talked with tons of people and they're like, “No manufacturer should have sent you something with that many errors.” And so it's been a headache and it's sad because this manufacturer was highly regarded, highly recommended to me. And we're just not going to probably be using them in the future. Sorry, if you guys were looking into this right now, that is one thing that I'll say. Manufacturers will be following your Kickstarter updates and it can lead to some really weird conversations. I did not realize this before, but yes. So just for all of the creators out there, do not be surprised if your Chinese manufacturer is reading your Kickstarter updates.

How Did Shipping Costs Change?

Patrick Rauland:
Okay. Okay. So the thing I wanted to ask you is, you estimated cost… Let's just pretend you estimated $10 per game in shipping, that's probably way too high but let's just pretend you estimated that number. And now the shipping quotes, what are they, two X? Are they 10 X? How much bigger or roughly just roughly is the shipping costs right now?

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah, so we ate some of the cost, so there's essentially… There's three parts of shipment and I'm sure I'm not putting this completely, so don't quote me on this. But there's the cost to bring it from the manufacturer to the port. And usually what you want is free on board, which is called FOB. Sometimes that'll be included in your quote. So I believe LongPack, they always quote things with FOB included. And again, I thought my manufacturer did, but it seemed like it was actually only free on board for one of the shipments. So then the other shipments you have to pay for that cost to bring it to the port, then there's the cost of bringing it from that port and disseminating it to the different hubs that someone Quartermaster Logistics is using. And that I believe right now is what is extremely expensive because it's getting the shipping containers and getting it on boats.

Darren Terpestra:
And so when you have a pandemic and you have the buildup of Chinese New Year and just all of those things stacking on top of each other, that's when you run into… That's the price right now that I believe is super inflated. Then you get to the actual shipping hubs and you've got the UPS or USPS or whoever your Fulfillment company is using to send from their hub to people's actual doorsteps. Hopefully they're not using USPS, that was a joke. So those are the three different parts and only one of those really being ramped up I believe right now due to just everything. But it is a multiple of up to four, even higher of what it's supposed to be and that's not a small number. I believe for Ignite it was like 25 grand or something like that.

Patrick Rauland:
Wow. Wow. So here's the thing games already make so little money. It's not like no one goes into board game design to be like, “I'm going to become a millionaire.” That's not the path to riches. So at what point, and this is a genuine question at what point do you have to like ask your backers for more money or which point do you ask them to, “Hey, can we use a slower shipping method because we just can't afford to air freight it.”

Patrick Rauland:
At what point do you ask your backers to give you something in terms of leniency or leeway and in terms of maybe even asking them to pay more. Here's the thing you did all the math and then the world changed. So someone gave you money and said, “In roughly a year or two, I want a game.” And you say, “Cool, I've done all the math. It's going to be fine.” And then the world changes, there's a pandemic, Americans are buying tons of stuff. I've seen all these photos of cargo ships just waiting outside the port because they can't unload them fast enough. It doesn't seem fair to you and it doesn't seem fair to the customers. So I don't know how to resolve that.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. And I don't want any backers who are listening to this to be concerned that we're going to just jack up the price or anything like that. I think on the front end, you have to be sure that your margins for your game are enough that you can take on extra costs that end up coming around the corner essentially. We had an issue during the campaign where due to increasing the box size and just various different things, the shipping went past a certain threshold. And so shipping to certain countries, especially New Zealand became a lot more expensive when they hit certain pledge levels. It was usually like the all-in pledge level.

Patrick Rauland:
Got it.

Darren Terpestra:
And what we did is we said, “Hey, this is the actual price of shipping the game to you. We said it was this, but that was before we increased the box size there was a mistake that happened in that calculation.” Just all of these sorts of things. And so what we said is, “We can either refund you your thing, no hard feelings, or we can pay for essentially half of the difference between what you thought it was going to be and what it ended up being.” This is a business for me and I want to give people the best communication that I can. So we have weekly updates. I want to give them the best game that I can, but also I want to make sure that they're taken care of throughout the entire thing. So I don't think it's much of at what point can I ask them for money sort of thing. I think it's how can you ensure that they have the best experience with you possible even as the world is crumbling around you, so that they come back the next time you have another game.

What Games Are You Working On?

Patrick Rauland:
I love it. That's a great answer. So we briefly talked before we started recording about future games your working on, what else is going on with going on with you? Have you come up with a hundred new game design ideas since you launched Ignite?

Darren Terpestra:
Not quite a hundred, but I think I have four in the hopper and we have at least two Ignite expansions that we've already been working on. So we've got one that's like Worms Armageddon meets RoboRally. I'm guessing that'll be the next one that hits Kickstarter it's called Rocket Cats. It's got expo marker boards and static clings and it's like a side-scroller, so you actually fall down the map after each turn, so it's a ton of fun. If RoboRally is like pull out your hair in frustration, this is like side splitting laughter because someone just shot a rocket into their neighbor on their team. So that's a really fun one, we can't wait to get that one out. We also have a 4X Bag-Builder that we initially did for the Red Rising design competition that Jamey Stegmaier put together.

Darren Terpestra:
He was actually interested in the game, but it was after he had come up with the game that's currently number four on The Hotness list on BGG, which is the one that he and a friend came up with. So we are retheming it into a floating islands, dinosaur riding game. So it's super fun, but it really does get like that 4X feel in a two hour game. I'm super excited. I've only got one prototype of it because it took so much customization to create the game. But it's in the mail to me right now. And I'm super excited to play with it with my crew down here. So that's two, we've got an Among Us style, social deduction game, which is actually a real-time dice chucker. And no one should have come up with a real-time dice chucking social deduction game, but it is so much fun.

Darren Terpestra:
My wife's coworkers or not coworkers, roommates, ex-roommates. They are the sort of people that play Mysterium, and that's the extent of the games that they want to play. And they are constantly asking to play the Among Us game, which I haven't even titled yet just because it's just a crazy good time and everyone's having fun and you don't feel like you're getting left behind because you're so focused on what you're rolling and stuff like that. And so that's a ton of fun can't wait to get that one out. That's the only one that we might put ahead of Rocket Cats, just because we want to monopolize the Among Us fever. And then lastly, we've got a battle royale game that is very different from Reload, which is on Kickstarter right now. It's more like Captain Sonar, but you don't need eight people to play it.

Darren Terpestra:
So if you really like trying to track where someone is going and you want to get loot boxes and secretly be moving around a hexagonal map. This game is going to be awesome. And we have a really great time with it. That's what we've been working on over at Ginger Snap gaming.

How Do You Balance Fulfilling a Game and Launching New Games?

Patrick Rauland:
Love it. Now how do you balance an existing Kickstarter that you have to design and manufacture and Fulfill with new game ideas, are you parallel tracking them or how are you balancing those two?

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah, I think it's an issue of priority and the priority always goes to the backers of Ignite. It always has to go to ignite because that's what we, again, want to have the best relationship with our backers. And without them we don't have an audience for the next games. So ignite always comes first. And then after that it disseminates between the different projects just depending on what is closer to the finish line, which group of artists or whatever needs input the quickest, those sorts of things.

Think Like a Game Designer Course

Patrick Rauland:
Cool. Love it. So the reason I got you back on here is because you're in this program called Think Like A Game Designer, which was created by Justin Gary who created Ascension. So a couple intro questions is how did you hear about this Think Like A Game Designer course and what made it compelling enough to join? And let me just add one little thing there, as a person who's already made games, what made it compelling enough to join?

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. So it's such a good question. So I heard about it because I got an email from Justin Gary's company, Stone Blade Entertainment that was talking about it and I'm like, “Well, this is pretty cool. He's been in the industry for years and years. I'm a decently no name, new designer sort of person.” And so it's always interesting to me when a new game design book or course or something like that comes out. And so I took a look at it and it had a money back guarantee. And I debated about it just back and forth. But my brother-in-law at his company because he works at a company out of California. They essentially give you $5,000 every year to do self-improvement stuff. If you can prove that it's self-improvement whether it's a book, a course, all of these things, he's a coder it's like Silicon Valley-

Patrick Rauland:
What?

Darren Terpestra:
… like all of that sort of thing.

Patrick Rauland:
I'm so jealous.

Darren Terpestra:
I know. Right. But I think that thought process was really what got me to pull the trigger on it because I'm like if I take a course at this amount, and it helps me in this area that is essentially my profession it's going to be worth it. So that's really what ended up causing me to pull the trigger on it.

What's the Most Important Thing You Learned From the Course?

Patrick Rauland:
Love it. So what is the most important thing that you've gotten from the course?

Darren Terpestra:
So the course is very good. I do enjoy the videos, the practices that he gives, there are a lot of little tips and tricks that I have put into my own toolbox and just even recommendations of simple little things. This is straight from his podcast, so I'm not giving away the cow. But just writing down in a specific notebook what your ideas are as they come to you and trying to do three of those a day. Something like that that's just super actionable, but that you don't necessarily think about doing, or you forget about it, or you just don't do it because you didn't prioritize it sort of thing.

Darren Terpestra:
I think that's very important. I think what I really got the most bang for the buck from is they have a system at Stone Blade using a piece of software that they are able to essentially make cards from a Google Doc. And you can print them out in a format that you can just use one of those massive slicing machines to just cut up all the cards really quick, or you can export them pretty… I think there's only like one intermittent step, but straight into Tabletop Simulator. And so that process has probably saved me I don't even know how much time and hours and everything, because you can just try things sooner. And again, it's that time to failure that you're trying to get as low as possible. So it really allows me to just throw something out there hang out with my wife and some friends, try it out and see if it works. And so I think that system has been super beneficial and super great.

Patrick Rauland:
Yeah. It is amazing how much progress I can make on a game at a Protospiel weekend where I can just like… Someone will give an idea and I'll go, “Oh, I don't know if that'll work.” And I just make up some test cards on the spot and later that night or the next day, I will test out that next version and just figure out if it works or not. There's something incredibly powerful about failing fast to use the startup world jargon. That's awesome. So when you talked about ideas and writing down multiple ideas a day, I have my own experience with that but I'm curious for you, does that make it easier? Is it almost automatic now? Once you've gotten in the habit of doing that.

Darren Terpestra:
It is not almost automatic now. No. And that is one thing that I am trying to be better at still just because I use a notebook and sometimes I just write down like a theme that I think of as I'm going and it might be that, it might be a specific mechanic. I literally had a dream the other night of a game and I wrote it down in that journal. And now months later I'm taking that and we'll be prototyping it out at-

Patrick Rauland:
What?

Darren Terpestra:
… just something super, right. It's taken a lot of steps, it wasn't straight providentially given dream or anything.

Patrick Rauland:
Put it on Kickstarter.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. No, no, no.

Patrick Rauland:
Very cool. Okay. Under what circumstances, who would you recommend this course to or a course similar to it either this course or course similar? Who is the right person that wants to take a game design course.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. I think one of the big things about the course is the accountability and the discord group that come along with it. If you're the type of person that really needs a kick in the pants, I think putting money down on a course and then having that as the, “Wow, I paid money for this sort of thing, I need to get my money's worth out of it.” And again, that's not to diminish any part of the course, but to have that incentive of, “Hey, I've paid this much money, it's time for me to stop just sitting on this idea and continue to move forward with it.” I remember distinctly with ignite the moment that I was like, “I am tired of just sitting and waiting for this thing.” Because I had been working with an artist and he had fallen off the radar sort of thing and so it was just stagnant.

Darren Terpestra:
And I remember I think it was over a Christmas and New Year's break one year. And I was like, “No, I really like this game. I'm really passionate about it. It's super fun. I'm going to make this happen.” If you feel like you're at that precipice, this is a good place to cause yourself to jump off.

What Will You Change with Future Games?

Patrick Rauland:
Love it. Love hearing that. Very cool. So let me ask you some of the other questions I don't normally get to ask people. So you have now basically gone through this very long manufacturing and Fulfillment process with Ignite. Would you change anything next time? Moving forward.

Darren Terpestra:
I think right out of the gate, one of the things that you need to do is, especially if you're in a deck builder especially in today's day and age of Kickstarter is to make sure that your box can incorporate sleeved cards. That is one of the changes that we made because people hardcore requested it. And it just had different things that came from that decision. That decision point led to multiple other changes and decision points. And so if we had just decided on that earlier, that would have been super great. But other than that, I think the manufacturer that I ended up choosing, I would have definitely gone somewhere else again sorry if you're listening to this, but that's I think the biggest thing.

Darren Terpestra:
I think we came to Kickstarter prepared, which is it cannot be overstated how important that is. Make sure you know how much shipping is going to be, make sure you ask about the three different points of shipping, ask your manufacturer, “Is this free onboard or is this…” I think it's EXW or something like that. Ask your Fulfillment company that you are, or are not working with, “Hey, how much not only is shipping to the backer, but how much is it to get from the port of manufacturing to your various different ports that you're using?” Just make sure you have all of your ducks lined up in a row because if I didn't and I had done this, and then also ran into these issues that's when you run into big trouble.

Patrick Rauland:
I imagine that's when you go under. If you don't plan your Kickstarter campaign and you run into a problem, then you could lose all the money or you can lose every dollar profit and even have to put yourself into debt to fix some of your mistakes.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah.

Patrick Rauland:
Well, that's nice and depressing.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. I know.

Patrick Rauland:
But I love hearing that. It's really interesting to hear someone a year in, or more than a year into this whole process and what can go wrong. And I was just thinking to myself, I wonder if like… I think I'm a visual thinker. And so in my brain I made a pie chart of all the costs. This part is if I can raise $10,000 and this will go to manufacturing, this will go to shipping, this will go to art, this will go to whatever. And I almost wonder if we should just as game designers, add a slice that says, “Random nonsense that'll definitely break. Random thing that will a 100%…” When you literally have a special bank account. That's this is for all the random stuff that happens to you in life. It feels fine when random stuff happens to you, but if you don't plan for it then it's just a miserable experience.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. Yeah. I think just making sure that you have the margin built in, you have to have the right value proposition for the Kickstarter backers and it needs to be at the right price point, but you need to make sure that you're not… If you're trying to deliver a Gloomhaven quality component game and you are charging the same as a CMON, and then you also aren't planning for difficulties. That's just a storm brewing, waiting to happen.

Patrick Rauland:
I want to go back for a second to the cards. This was months ago, maybe even a year ago on Twitter, it was a screenshot of Kickstarter comments. And one Kickstarter comments said, “Please make sure your game has sleeved cards otherwise it's garbage and I won't buy it.” And the very next comment was, “Please make sure you don't have space for sleeves cards because the cards fall around in the box, and I hate it and it's a bad campaign and I won't back it. And I loved seeing them back to back because people on Kickstarter are very opinionated. How do you handle that? And some people won't back you if you don't have sleeve cards, some people will only back you if you have space for sleeved cards, how do you decide to handle that?

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. We really wanted to make sure that we had the best, best experience for both worlds. So we have room for sleeved cards, but then we also have those little inserts that you can… Just like those foam inserts so that the extra space gets taken out.

Patrick Rauland:
That's cool.

Darren Terpestra:
You can always have more space, like worst comes to worse. You take some of this stuff from the expansion and put it into your base game. You can always do that, but you can't… I don't know, people are going to…. I don't think anyone for Ignite at the beginning was like, “Oh, if there's not room for sleeved cards, I'm out sort of thing.” I think just if we had been able to make that decision earlier then we would have had a lot of questions answered earlier, and then it would have been a little bit smoother of a transition.

What Resources Would You Recommend for a New Game Designer?

Patrick Rauland:
Cool. I love that. That's great. So I'm going to switch to some of my ending questions here. What is a resource that you would recommend to another Indie game designer. And I'm going to check your old podcast to see if you can try to give us something different this time, or if you happen to give the exact same thing as you did before.

Darren Terpestra:
I think I know what I said to this question is probably the same thing that I would still say, which is to play a lot of games. There is no resource I don't think that is going to allow you to solve the problems that come up in game design, other than playing games. I remember playing Gloomhaven and then pieces of that falling directly into place when I did my own solo and cooperative expansion for Ignite, it just fell into place. And that wouldn't have fallen into place except that I had played Gloomhaven. So play a variety of games, play games you don't like. Play games of all sorts of different types.

Darren Terpestra:
If you're not an area control person, play some area control. If you're not a set collection person, play some set collection. Just make sure that you're getting a wide plethora, a wide gamut of things to try because all of a sudden something is going to fall into place either from a review that you've seen or a game that you've played. And it's just going to be that little switch that turns it on.

Patrick Rauland:
Love that answer and I very much agree with it. Although I will say last time you recommended Jamey Stegmeier's book.

Darren Terpestra:
Really. Oh, wow.

What's The Best Money You've Spent?

Patrick Rauland:
Yeah, yeah. So it it's cool, but this is life, right? Our opinions and answers change. So what is the best money you've spent as a game designer?

Darren Terpestra:
Maybe that's the one that I answered my board game collection, best money that I've spent in game design? Obviously the course was a great value for me. I got in on the beta floor, so I'm not actually I'm not a 100% sure how much it costs now. So that was great value. I've actually started buying more board game related books. I can't recommend any of them right now because they haven't come in yet. This has been a very recent thing. Sorry. That's about the best answer I can give at this point.

What Does Success Look Like To You?

Patrick Rauland:
No, that's good. Sorry, I'm looking through the old post here. This is where you recommend played a lot of games. So you did recommend this last time just under a different question. Good job. You're very consistent. Love it. And the last real question is what does success look like to you?

Darren Terpestra:
Man that is a loaded question. I think that success to me looks like having a established gaming company that people recognize for having unique games coming out consistently of high quality that play differently, or very uniquely from other things that they've played in the past. I don't want to do a bunch of worker placement games that have slightly tweaked formulas anything like that. You probably won't see me create a worker placement game anytime in the near future, unless it's something really crazy. Because I enjoy and want to push the envelope into places that haven't really been done before. No one's really done a Captain Sonar that doesn't require eight people, no one's really done a dice chucking social deduction game that's in real time. I want to create a company that's known for unique and quality games.

Overrated / Underrated Game

Patrick Rauland:
Love it. And your last answer… This is so fun to look at your answers. I think you really wanted to do Ignite well, I'm reading between the lines here or summarizing, but you really wanted to do Ignite well, and you're hoping to do future rounds just continuing to grow the fan base. So that's cool. Love it. So I have a silly game at the end here, so it's called overrated underrated. And just to remind you of the rules, I'm going to give you a word or phrase and I'm going to say, “Are water bottles, overrated, underrated.” And you just have to say it's overrated because of one sentence. Does that make sense?

Darren Terpestra:
Yes. On it.

Patrick Rauland:
Cool. Video chats, overrated or underrated?

Darren Terpestra:
Overrated.

Patrick Rauland:
Give me a one sentence reason why?

Darren Terpestra:
This is probably completely just because I'm completely over video chats. 2020.

Patrick Rauland:
Just video chat fatigue. There we go. Dice-chucking games, overrated or underrated?

Darren Terpestra:
Underrated. I think they have a lot of opportunity.

Patrick Rauland:
Okay. Bouncy ball chairs, overrated or underrated?

Darren Terpestra:
Definitely underrated. Sorry. You've been seeing me bounce up and down during this interview.

Patrick Rauland:
That's great. And so professional game design and by that I mean for people who want to be game designers as a career, is that overrated or underrated?

Darren Terpestra:
It's probably overrated just because I think there's a ton of people that think that it is this glorious light at the end of the tunnel, and that they just get to hang out at board game conventions the whole time. And you don't realize that you hang out at board game conventions the whole time, but you're stuck in a booth and you're like that little display that someone presses a button and you say the same 16 sentences to them until the next person comes by and presses that button. You are that buttons sir.

Wrap Up

Patrick Rauland:
Right. Got it. Love it. Darren, thank you so much for being on the show.

Darren Terpestra:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me seriously.

Patrick Rauland:
Where can people find you and your games online?

Darren Terpestra:
gingersnapgaming.com is our website. We've got information up about three of our games right now. The other two don't have enough artwork or a box cover yet to be able to put up there, but you can see the 4X Bag-Builder, Ignite and Rocket Cats.

Patrick Rauland:
And just because we talked about this course, I also wanted to give a shout out to this course. So I put the landing page for the Think Like A Game Designer Mastery Course is a little bit long, so I won't read it out but I will have a link for it in the show notes. And I think the main page is thinklikeagamedesigner.com and there's also a podcast. So if you want to learn more about that course you can check it out there. Yes. And then I think that's it. So if you like this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes.

Patrick Rauland:
Oh man, I normally have something funny here. I did not prepare in advance. Darren, I'm going to read the one we did last time. If you leave a review, Darren will help you fight off any Lizardman attacks from Ignite.

Darren Terpestra:
Great.

Patrick Rauland:
And you can visit the site to indieboardgamedesigners.com. You can follow me on Twitter. I am at @BFTrick on both platforms, Twitter and Board Indie. That is B as in board game, F as in fun and trick as in trick-taking games until next time everyone happy designing. Bye-bye.