A colleague of mine had this warning sign in her office of the dangers of trying to do too many projects at once:
Jugglers don’t get paid very well and sometimes balls hit them in the head.
Currently, we have two games on the market and are determined that VERY SOON we will have updated, improved versions of those games completed. Spirit Lake 3.1 is due out in June.
If you compare our first game with our second, Fish Lake, you will find big improvements in artwork and game play. We even had the same artist. However, with the second game we had more experience and more time to get it done.
Our third game, Forgotten Trail, is for a slightly older audience, and it is even better. After you play it, you will have improved your vocabulary, learned basic statistics, honed your basic math skills and had an enjoyable few hours.
We have THREE artists who have been working on artwork for the game and the poster, postcard and photo for the Kickstarter rewards (thank you again to everyone who backed us!) Gonzalo is working on Forgotten Trail and starting this summer he will be full time (again, thanks to Kickstarter!)
Even more exciting news, we received a grant to do a fourth game, which will begin development June 1, and I just returned from the Fort Berthold Reservation where we were discussing developing a new game in collaboration with them.
Yeah, that’s five games, which is at least three too many to be working on simultaneously.
I’ve always treasured people who help me early in a struggle, whether it is in life or building a company. Those people who took a chance on Spirit Lake: The Game when we were a very new company taking baby steps are near and dear to my heart. That is why we are spending the next three weeks honing improvements to get out a new version to them. Of course, anyone else is more than welcome to buy it!
Several of us will be working almost exclusively on getting that update out. By the time our new grant starts we will have at least one game done and on the back burner for months so we can work on Forgotten Trail and our newest project, Aztech Games (details coming soon!)
In case you find yourself in a situation with too many projects, here is my two-pronged solution that, so far, is working for us:
- Assign teams to one or two projects, so no individual is working on five things at once,
- If some people must be involved in all of the projects, schedule them sequentially so that they finish off one or two projects before starting on any additional ones.
Also, watch out for balls.
