Where it all Began.
When I started officially working on Plan: Z in early 2021, I wasn’t sure if I’d pitch it to a big wig game company or try to publish it myself when the time came. All I was focused on was making the game I had in my mind. I had been playing around with the idea and reached out to my best friend Sean Bland and asked him, “Hey, what do you think of this game.” and explained the general rules at the time, rough as they were.
His response? “You need to make this game. Like now, I’ll invest. board and card games are so hot right now.”
With that I set to work on refining rules, cycling back and forth between different art styles, game mechanics and adding/removing various components. Plan: Z mutated and evolved several times. eventually i came to where I would need to make a decision on how to publish and who would manufacture it.
After some waffling back and forth I decided that I’d rather keep the idea in house and maintain full control over what happened with it. This meant needing to start up my own game publishing company. I knew after Plan: Z I wanted to make other games for the gaming world to enjoy. Owning my own publishing company would allow me to do just that.
The idea was intimidating at first, since I was already working full time and a single father. But I took the leap and came up with AvDenn Games LLC. I tapped a local artist I had known for a few years (Stephanie Wendeloski) to create a professional looking company logo. Armed with a few crude sketches of what I wanted it to look like, she set to work and came through with a design I absolutely loved. In the meantime I continued to work on all the component designs, packaging for the game, and filing all the required paperwork for licenses, permits and copyrights.
I sourced a manufacturer that could make prototypes on the fly and ship them to me with ease. After various prototyping iterations and many design blunders, I had a full complete game.
The downside? I would still need to secure some kind of funding to bring it to market.
The clear choice was to launch a kickstarter campaign. I would be able to show people my game, create some cool rewards and hopefully raise enough to bring the game to life without risking any large amounts of capital. So far the journey from idea to fully realized game publishing company has been a rollercoaster filled with lots of trial and error, new experiences, and invaluable knowledge. I am very excited to see where this road takes us going into 2023. I remain humbly grateful for all the support from my friends family and the gaming community as a whole.
At the time of writing this, the launch of the kickstarter is still 15 days away and I’m hopeful it will be a success and that by 2023, game stores across the country will have Plan: Z on their shelves.
