We went to our first convention as game designers! With no experience, no idea what to expect, and a whole lot of nervous excitement we loaded our boxes (and the chocolate our business advisor told us to bring) into our car and headed off on the journey to to Manchester to attend Tabletop Gaming Live 2022 as exhibitors!

 

The first day was to set up, and we were given our own little space in the Victoria Warehouse, Shed C, Booth 56! We got to work straight away bringing in boxes, unpacking and just generally making it look inviting - I would say we done a cracking wee job! After this it was back to the hotel so we could get our plan of action down and be ready for our first day of our first ever convention! After a slightly stressed nights sleep, we got up, grabbed a coffee, and off we went!

 

We arrived an hour early and went and sat around the stall just to observe what everyone else was doing, our convention companions around us also started to arrive and we are pleased to say they were all lovely and this helped us ease into the start of the day! In some of the booths beside us we had Fate of Witches by One Bold Games - a great game where you are playing to become the High Witch - and is coming to Kickstarter very soon; as well as Emmanuel’s Collective who sells some wonderfully designed RPG t-shirts, and some really cool dice bags and other accessories! It was an absolute pleasure exhibiting beside these guys!

 

Now it took a while but through a lot of nerves we managed to get our pitch down for our game and not only did we get interest, but we got sales! Gaming people, at a gaming convention, full of big name games, BOUGHT OUR GAME! We must say this is in big part to our homemade Wheel of Fortune where if anyone in the vicinity would so much as glance at it we would shout them over and ask them to give it a spin before launching into our game pitch! We are so happy that anyone who came over had a great time at our stall, and seemed to not only enjoy our chaotic energy but the concept of our game!

 

Apart from selling, we also used this as a huge excuse to network, and while Mark and Katie looked after the stall, Chris went round many of the other exhibitors introducing our company and coming back with as many business cards as he could carry - and big shout out to Parable Games, Dream Big Games, Dungeons And Flagons, Geek Native, and Arklin for making us feel so welcome to the scene!

 

Before we knew it the two days of the convention was wrapping up, and after rushing around to buy some games for ourselves from our fellow creators it was time to pack up the car, grab a cheeky Nandos to decompress and head back up the road (with a stop at Tebay Services because Mark is obsessed with it)! We are only now recovered (in part because Mark and Chris stayed up till 2am laughing about a frog) and processing how it went - but all in all we would say it was a huge success and we cannot wait for our next one!