So, what’s this then?

Survive the Card Game is a survival themed card game for 3 to 7 players.  The players represent one of the final pockets of humanity desperately trying to stay alive in the face of a ceaseless and brutal nuclear winter.  So, in essence it is a game that tries to capture the reality of social collapse in the face of dwindling resources, only in a way that’s fun for the whole family!

The rule system is very simple and easy to learn.  It’s kind of like poker, crossed with go fish, crossed with a hostage negotiation.  

Players are trying to collect resource cards: food, water, and shelter.  For each resource they don’t have at the end of each round they will lose a life token (each player has three of these).  If they lose all of their life tokens they are out of the game.  The last player left standing is the winner.  

Into this very simple system we’ve added some additional card types to spice things up a little.  Trash cards are useless and designed to disappoint.  Beast cards are dangerous wild animal encounters that will make you regret drawing cards from the deck.  Weapon cards can be a life saver, or a danger when in the hands of an aggressive player or someone you’ve annoyed.

The game operates on the interesting premise that, whilst it is effectively a competitive game where there can only be one winner, the players will need to cooperate with each other most of the time in order to attain the resources they need to survive through each round.  So, the majority of the game is about negotiating with your fellow players in order that they help you beat them.  This is where all of the fun is to be had.  

Ok, but what’s it like to play?

The fact that the rules are specifically designed to allow you to be inventive with your trading and negotiating means that there are a lot of fun and interesting interactions to be had!

We’ve found that playing super aggressively usually inspires every other player to ally against you and quickly remove you from play, so the game tends to reward the sneaky players and those who bide their time.  

We’ve experienced the occasional heated grudge match.  We’ve also had some games where philanthropy got the better of everyone, and the game was basically thrown to let the nicest player win!  

Who thought of this?

The concept of the game was initially inspired by a survival board game idea my twelve year old son Brody had thought up.  When he told me about the idea, I suddenly realised how easy it would be to adapt the survival theme to a card game.

That night I made a quick prototype by scribbling onto a cheap, standard deck of cards.  After several play tests with family and friends, we realised that not only did the idea work as envisioned, but–even better–it was actually a lot of fun.

Who are you people?

Duncan Beale has been a game enthusiast for many years, and has worked on game system development for countless decades.  Actually, that’s not true.  You can count them.  It’s a little less than three.  He’s also been an artist and designer for about the same amount of time.

Brody Beale is a young game enthusiast with a seemingly bottomless well of thematic inspiration for game ideas, and who aspires to one day work in the computer game industry as an artistic or creative director.

Riley Beale is an even younger game enthusiast, and has been an integral part of the play testing process.  He was, for example, the first person to think of swindling other players in trade by giving them trash cards.

What stage of development are you at?

Since the idea was first hatched, we’ve gone through several iterations of prototypes.  We have experimented with and refined the rules of play.  We’ve play tested extensively, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

So, based on the positive feedback, we’ve decide to forge ahead.  We have been in discussions with manufacturers, and all of the rules, art design, and packaging are finalised.  Everything has been costed, and we are basically ready to start production.

Why should I give you my hard earned money?

If you think this game sounds like fun and you’d like to play it, then pledge to our campaign so we can make it and send you a copy.

If you simply like the idea of supporting small, creative business endeavours, then pledge to our campaign to help us get up and running.  This isn’t the only game idea we have in the works, and successfully funding this campaign will definitely motivate us into continuing to produce more games in the future!

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What are you spending the money on?

The vast majority of funding will go towards manufacture, which totals roughly US$3200.  We've set the target for AU$5400 to allow some leeway with currency conversion.  5% will go to the good people at Pozible, which is about AU$270 if we hit our target figure.

Anything left over will contribute to business startup expenses, like trademark registration, webstore setup & maintenance, ongoing costs, etc.  At this stage we are only looking at direct webstore sales rather than retail, as retail is more difficult, has more ongoing costs, and has a reduced margin.

If we somehow manage to shoot well past our target then the aim will be to produce a larger first order quantity.  This will reduce the cost of the unit price, as well as mean we will have more stock to start with.

What might go wrong?

We've waited until we are right up to the final stage of development before seeking funding, and we've done our best to leave as little to chance as possible.  

Fluctuations in the AU$ value will affect cost, naturally, but as stated we've slightly over quoted our target to allow for this.  If there are any really serious fluctuations in the dollar value, then this campaign is probably the least of everyone's worries.

There is always the potential for unforseen manufacturing or shipping delays.  Again we have done our best to make allowances for this.  The manufacturers' advised production and shipping timeframe is about four weeks from confirmation of order.  This means that we should realistically have stock by the end of August, and I would expect all pledge orders for the game to be delivered before the end of September.  That means we've allowed an additional four week window to fulfill all orders, and we expect this to be more than enough leeway.