Our Inspiration for Estate: Raise the Realm

Exhibiting at Origins 2024! 

Four years ago, we set out to create Estate: Raise the Realm. We’ve faced plenty of challenges, but our mission has remained the same: to craft a game with a captivating story.

The gaming world is full of complex, mechanic-heavy games. We enjoy those too, but they often need the right group of players with the right amount of time to play the game. Our goal was to balance complexity with universality, and that’s what inspired Estate: Raise The Realm. Here are three key factors that guided us:

Building A Deep Narrative Story

Estate: Raise The Realm is the beginning of a story-driven trilogy. It introduces players to the world of Estate, where each leader has a unique backstory related to ending the Great War. Players get to shape their estate’s future by deciding what to build and which track to pursue — whether it’s a powerful court, a rally of common folk, or rich resources. As players dive deeper into the trilogy, the story and gameplay evolves.

Creating a Gateway Euro Game 

We’ve worked hard to make a game that’s both simple and rich in strategy. You start with four basic actions, making it easy to pick up. The challenge lies in deciding how to make the most out of each action and balance various victory conditions. This mix of simplicity and depth is what makes the game engaging for players of all levels. 

Endless Replayability

Replayability was crucial for us. The unique player mats are a big part of this. When you choose a leader, you’re not just picking a character—you’re picking a unique estate to rebuild. Each leader comes with special abilities, starting cards, and a different strategy to explore, offering a fresh experience each time you play.

These elements are designed to keep the game interesting and replayable, blending simplicity with complexity in a way that invites discovery. 

This game is our love letter to the industry, and we hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed creating it. <3

Prototyping Tricks and Tips

Hey folks - we have had other creators reach out to us about our prototyping techniques. From Version 0 to the current version, we wanted to run down all the resources we’ve utilized and share some lessons learned along the way!

Our First Prototype AKA ‘Version 0’

Number of Versions of this Prototype: 2-3

Prototyping Cost: $60

Generally speaking, your first prototype is a proof of concept to validate and iteration on the mechanics you’ve set up. For us, that meant spending as little time as possible creating a working version of all the parts. Almost all of the main components were hand-drawn on paper, with the exception of cards, and parts borrowed from other games (in this case I think we borrowed from Scythe for the cubes, resources, and VP gold.)

Lasering in on the cards, Estate has always been card heavy, and we had built out all of our cards that needed printing in a spreadsheet. To avoid having to manually type this out, we used a MailMerge feature from Apache Software. We wouldn’t recommend this software to anyone and there are now much more convenient mail merge tools.

If we were to do this over again, we’d recommend using the combo of Google Spreadsheets and Google Slides for a V1. There are several convenient MailMerge add-ons (usually ~$50) that will let you quickly create a slide for each of your cards and you can resize the presentation to your desired card size. If you are already familiar with or paying for Adobe InDesign, don’t buy MailMerge! You can also do this directly in InDesign with a CSV, there is some finickiness to how you setup and merge in images, so make sure to look over a tutorial before getting started.

We probably went through 3-4 variations of this version and avoided reprints by keeping extra space on the margins of our paper components to let us adjust as needed.

Version 2 ‘Unpublished Version 1’

Number of Versions of this Prototypes: 2-3

Total Cost: $350 - 400

Modified Cost (if you avoid Staples and can find a cheap place to print): < $100

For this version, we wanted to incorporate more theming and narrative. We also were trying to be more intentional about the sizing of some of our components (which initially, we erred to a size much larger than we needed). Some of the ‘printed’ components were still hand-drawn, but we added some thematic coloring and images from Dall-E to the cards to create a more immersive experience in the game. We also set up some initial iconography for the game, some of this we designed ourselves in Adobe Illustrator, others we purchased from the Noun Project, which is a great low cost resource for a lot of different images and icons!

This was our first step towards iconography in Estate and it’s become a critical tool to quickly communicate ideas in the game (and thus reduce cognitive load, which is really important for happy gamers!), and helping to create a game that is themed to the medieval fantasy world we are building - who doesn’t like looking at fancy crowns, scythes, and money bags??

This was also our first attempt at a rule book! Which we made in a Google Doc (you can see that OG version here, if curious).

We made the regretful decision to purchase print assets at a nearby Staples thinking it would save us time and if we were to go back and do it over again, we’d be going to our local library to print  (which only charges $0.25 a sheet to print IN COLOR!)  I think a lot of folks, ourselves included, will be concerned about how oversized prints will turn out, but there is this very convenient PDF method called  ‘tiling’ which allows you to adjust the print settings and print out a larger image on multiple sheets of paper in such a way that it can then be cut and taped together. (Here’s a helpful tutorial on that!) This will save you so many dollars over the course of your print needs ( in lieu of going to Staples to do oversized prints.)

We also had a friend with a sweet 3D printer, and they offered to print just about anything, we chose Meeples.

Version 3 - Manufacturer ‘Light’ Edition

Number of Versions of this Prototypes: 2*

*We reprinted a set of the cards to iterate on some of our mechanics.

Total Cost: $300 - $400

I refer to this version as the manufacturer ‘light’ version of Estate as it was the first time we started testing out actual prints of components from game manufacturers. There are several online you can use to print one-off components from.

Again, we were a card heavy game, and we wanted to test out different materials for our cards (such as a linen finish, who doesn’t like a linen finish in their medieval game?). We used two different resources for printing:

• BoardGamesMaker.com: If you really wanted to, you could print out just about every component for your game from boardgamesmaker.com, if you are a medium weight Euro game it will probably be a $500+ game, but you’ll have your game! We were pretty picky and choosy about what we wanted to print out. For our game, we chose to prioritize cards and resources.

• Resources: We setup an Illustrator file with ½ inch ‘mini-size’ resources. 121 pieces in total costed us $21.00.

• Cards: The cards were a bit more expensive (for our first print we had almost 400 cards across the entire game -> we’ve since down-sized that to 250 in later iterations). For this first print run we shelled out about $100.00 for this card print. It was pricey, but well worth it, as play testers loved the texture and feel of high quality cards and it certainly gave our game an edge at attracting attention in Unpublished Playtesting areas. 

• SmartPress: We used SmartPress to print out several copies of our rule book. This cost about $40, but it definitely drove traffic to review, read, and provide a level of feedback on our rulebook we had not had previously. 

• To set this rulebook up, we used InDesign to make the file and tested out several sizes before settling on one that…fit into the game box we had designed. (Pro tip: before you start making an 8 ½ x 11 rulebook make sure to check your box dimensions! Resizing this burned about 2-3 hours of our time!)

If you are going to use either of these services (and I am sure there are many others out there like them), make sure you get your files in well ahead of time for printing as you can save, quite literally hundreds of dollars on shipping.

Version 4 -  ‘Manufacturer’s Samples’

Number of Versions of this Prototypes: 2*

*We reprinted a set of the cards to iterate on some of our mechanics.

Total Cost: $1250 (Plus an additional $500 deposit for future manufacturing / tooling costs)

To date, this has been our most expensive, and also, most valuable mistake. Our files had reached that critical juncture where they were ‘print ready’.  We had created some really nice packaged InDesign templates for our cards and other ‘templated’ files, and Illustrator files for everything else.

We were eager to get a sample from a manufacturer to see how everything would look ‘finished’. Given our timeline to launch however, we also needed extra copies to share with digital content creators to help get the word out about our Kickstarter. 

If we could turn back the clock, we should have only received one $300-500 copy so we could assess how everything was before running a print on 9 other copies. For example, we have an amazing 3D castle we’ve been designing as a stretch goal for the crowdfunding campaign. This was our first time seeing it not digitally and it’s a little too small and needs a revisit by our graphic designer.

For this prototype we chose to work with Panda Manufacturing. They have a lot of brand awareness in the industry and we have been happy with our engagement with them thus far. As a new publisher, they’ve also given us a ton of time and tips to help us succeed over some common design challenges (like that time we merged our art layer with our die lines, keep them separate folks, it’s going to save you so much time!)

Well, that catches us up to the current version of our game. We hope you’ve not only enjoyed the read but also found steps you can take to lower your prototyping costs! All in we’ve probably spent ~$3,000 on prototyping over the last four years, and if we could do it over again we can probably cut that value in half with the suggestions above.

Thanks for reading! We will continue to write about our experiences leading up to Estate’s Kickstarter launch this June. If you like Euro-style worker placement engine builders, make sure to sign up for launch updates!

Cheers,

Devon

Our First Unpub Prime

Sunday, 9:00 am - We had just arrived in the ballroom. The night before, the room echoed wall-to-wall with the voices of game designers, creators and artists, and most importantly play testers. Today, we were the first ones (okay maybe second) to set up our board game. And this was no surprise, given that the previous night convention-goers had stayed up into the wee hours of the morning (I had heard as early as 3:00 am from one of the organizers.) Kathryn and I, on the other hand, had retired early, a respectable 11:30 pm, as the morning was important to us.

It was our last time to playtest Estate  before heading out early for a flight back to Orlando.  Others we had spoken with intended to stay through the afternoon, play testing the day away before taking their flights and long drives back home. This was Unpub Prime after all, and it only happens once a year. For Grod Games, our first year and a visit well worth it.

What is Unpub Prime?

A board game convention - a hotbed for prototypes of  upcoming tabletop games and an early, ‘first-look’ for the gamers that like them. The first two days were jam-packed with back-to-back educational sessions covering topics like self-publishing or partnering with publishers, building and manufacturing prototypes, incorporating narrative, and more, from a diverse set of speakers working across the industry.

The second two days? Games, games, games. 

We know committing to traveling somewhere for an event like this is a financial commitment. To that end, we wanted to share our experience so you can be better prepared and more informed about making the decision. TLDR: we recommend it, and here’s the drilldown as to why:

1. Feedback: A former colleague and friend once said, feedback is a gift, just not something you want on your birthday. If you bring a game to Unpub, you will receive a lot of it! We were thankful to receive a lot of validation for Estate, but also, a ton of unique critiques from other game creators that harnessed perspectives we had not considered. There’s nothing like sitting down with someone as they turn over every stone in your rulebook or give you a golden nugget of a question on one of your game mechanics. There is a huge added benefit over play testing online to see how players will physically interact with your game. Oh, and be prepared to share your own feedback on other’s games as well!

2. Learning: This is our first board game - some pitfalls and stepping into unexpected risk here or there is, well, expected. The sessions at Unpub Prime really helped to pull back the curtain on a lot of uncertainties, for both trying to self-publish and working with a publisher for your game. It was humbling to recognize where we had areas yet to improve and be worked on in order that our game and hobby business thrive.

3. Networking: Mayor Ben of Unpub said it best on day 1: “We are better together.” Unpub Prime brought together a lot of amazing creators. Through a nice mix of structured and unstructured networking, we came home with a wallet-full of contacts and Sunday night I found myself compelled to draft emails to other creators I had met to share more feedback on their games and reconnect post-conference. At Unpub you can expect to meet a lot of other game creators very passionate about tabletop games, you’ll also meet publishers, players, storytellers and more!

Outside of Unpub Prime,  the Unpub organization conducts satellite events for play testing throughout the year at other board game conventions like Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH, and PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, PA. This one in particular, is one of a kind for advancing board game prototypes and hats off to the organizers for a great event. We’ve never felt more confident about where we need to go with Estate (we’re launching a Kickstarter in June at Origins Game Fair!)

Ok, plug over - we hope you’ve learned something about Unpub and our experience and we look forward to next year.