Van Ryder Games LLC

What has made

such a big hit?

(A two-part article)

In Q4 of 2021 we released Final Girl into the world. The Kickstarter backers were excited and were all sharing their experiences. The game was getting rave reviews and you practically couldn’t scroll your social feed without seeing something about it. Van Ryder Games has had hits before, but something about this seemed different. In just a few short weeks, the first printing had sold out. Retailers that backed our Kickstarter had the advantage of seeing the sales first, and some of them were able to get in reorders before everything was sold out. Others, both retailers and distributors, were too late to get any by the time the buzz had found its way to them.

We are always a bit cautious to “declare victory” so to speak, but it seemed that what everyone was telling us was true: Final Girl was a certified hit.

This would be solidified in early 2022 when we ran our KS campaign for Series 2 of the game. We’d been working on S2 for about a year in anticipation of the game being a success and before we knew it, launch day was here. After hours, days, and months of prep, we hit the button to launch the project. That moment is the moment that everything for VRG changed. On day 3 we hit the $1 Million dollar mark and by the end of the campaign the funding settled in at over $2 Million dollars. It was a truly humbling and rewarding experience.

What’s the secret? How did we make Final Girl such a huge hit? I can tell you what we did, but it is very important to understand that there is no silver bullet, no guaranteed hits. No one truly knows what makes a hit. But what I can tell you, is that you have to do something DIFFERENT, something no one else is doing. And that thing can be subtle… or incredibly obvious, but you show me a hit game and I bet I can find something it did differently than everything else.

Our first evergreen title was Hostage Negotiator. I can almost guarantee you that at the time most anyone (myself included) would have said that a solo-only game would never sell well in retail. And that it wouldn’t probably sell well anywhere. But as we know now, it did. Solo gaming was on the rise, there was a demand and a gap in the market that wasn’t being filled, solo modes were uncommon and solo-only games were exceedingly rare. Additionally, the theme of the game was unique, and more than that, perfectly suited for a solo only game. Despite its success you still don’t see other games using this theme. Why? Because who wants to play a multiplayer game where someone has to be a hostage taker and kill hostages? Very, very few people would be ok with that. But when the game makes those decisions through AI, and the player is in the seat opposing the evil forces, such a theme becomes much more palatable and it works.

But what about Final Girl? What is different about that? From gameplay to product engineering, Final Girl is a unique… not just product, but product line. Check out the next issue of Around the Table and find out what we did, despite being told before and even after release that “That will never work!” A.J. Porfirio, Van Ryder Games President and co-designer of Final Girl

VAN RYDER GAMES AND BYRON JORJORIAN

A BEAUTIFUL GAME FOR CLEVER PEOPLE

Keepers is an interactive card game where players will try to outwit their opponents by playing a card from their hand after hearing only a single word. Players all vote on which card aligns the most (or the least!) with the word and whichever card gets the most votes is a KEEPER!

Keepers features the amazing photography of VRG Sales Director, Byron Jorjorian. Byron has been a professional nature photographer for over 40 years and has sold thousands of his pictures. You can find out more about Byron’s photography at byronjorjorian.com

www.VanRyderGames.com

15-30 min 3-8 players ages 8+

msrp: $34.99 sku: VRG011

The Thing – The Board Game from Ares Games is an intense game experience based on the 1982 cult movie by John Carpenter. In this

“hidden role” game, one player is initially the Thing and the other players are humans.

They must cooperate to survive – but who is really on their side?

aresgames.eu

Dragon Shield Matte Dual Sleeves from Arcane Tinmen offer the same incredible quality players expect from Dragon Shield, but with a fully opaque, black interior design. These sleeves are perfect for double-faced cards or for perfectly concealing card backs during gameplay, regardless of lighting conditions. Order from GTS Distribution now Check out these new Graphic Novel Adventures from Van Ryder Games. There are more new and exciting themes for your customers including science fiction, tournament fighting, and dark fantasy. Plus, a new Sherlock Holmes mystery! That makes a total of 20 books in the GNA line. byron@vanrydergames.com

Travel, make money, and provide a unique experience for your customers without any financial commitment! RPGTravel creates custom tours to real world locations themed towards your games. This experience can be RPGs in 15th-century castles, board games overlooking steaming volcanoes, or card games at the base of ancient ruins. rpgtravel.com, or stop by our booth #839 at Origins.

After half-a-year of daylight, we must prepare for the dark season. The roads will be treacherous but they will need to be braved to keep our cities thriving. In Merchants of the Dark Road from Elf Creek Games, 1 to 4 players assume the role of those courageous merchants.

While the job is perilous, fame and fortune await! patrick@elfcreekgames.com