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Fiveaside

Football Card Game

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by Fraser Cairns

Hi James, please introduce yourself:

Hi guys, I’m James from the West Midlands, I work in Digital Marketing and I’ve spent the lockdown hours working on my new game that I’m excited to bring to Kickstarter to see if we can get it off the ground and into reality.
 

What is the game and how is it played?

It’s a 2-4 player card game, more along the lines of ‘short and snappy’ as opposed to Monopoly or Risk. It has a football theme based around retro gaming – hence the ‘blocky characters’. In short, you try and build a Fiveaside team to a set formation and when you do you can challenge your opponent to a ‘Kick-off’, at which point the player whose team has the most stars combined scores a goal, first to 5 goals wins. However, there are ‘Referee’ cards that make it more unpredictable and challenging!
 

What’s the inspritation for the game?

It’s a combination of things, mostly drawn from my youth as a 90s football fan. Think of Panini sticker albums, Corinthian big heads, retro football computer games, Top Trumps etc. I think of the fun particularly of fast-paced card games and I wanted to bring a little bit of that back, particularly as we’re all guilty of spending too much time attached to screens, it’s nice to play physical games from time to time. I’ve wanted to produce a game like this for some time, but only really has 2020 provided enough time to put the project together.
 
Cards

What’s the Kickstarter process like?

It’s a lot harder than it looks to create a compelling campaign. I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t just ‘build it and they will come’. I launched an under-baked version of the game early Summer, however I’ve learned so much about what makes a good campaign and now fairly confident the game will be backed into reality this time around – launching on 27th Oct. It’s as much about building an audience and bringing people on the journey as it is getting the message out to as many people as possible. You’re better off getting a bunch of advocates who really like the idea of the game than a following of thousands who just liked your Facebook page and that’s about it. 

Kickstarter has some benefits in so much as it’s fairly low cost to entry, I’ve spent some money on prototypes for gameplay testing and images, along with some ‘core’ costs like trademarking, but you really can launch a project cheaply and if you don’t reach 100% of your funding goal then the backers don’t pay any money and you’ve not committed to producing an unviable product at low quantities.
 
A common misconception about Kickstarter is that you’re buying equity in a business, in fact you’re effectively buying the product, just like a regular ecommerce store, but you don’t pay a thing until the campaign has ended (typically 20 odd days) and nothing at all if the project doesn’t meet the funding goal.
 

What’s the plan for the game post campaign?

Depending on campaign success (or failure – nothing is guaranteed!) the game could go in a couple of directions. I want to raise enough money to purchase another batch of games (minimum order quantity) to sell direct via the website or via Amazon. It’s the minumim order quantity required by the printers that really drives the funding goal required on Kickstarter because that is going to be the lion share of the minimum cost required to bring the product to life. I think the mechanic is quite suited to an app (having said we ‘screen’ too much) I think it would be an interesting evolution. However, the core ambition is to steadily produce the core prodcut whilst releasing one or two expansion packs a year to enable players to ‘refresh’ their Player or Referee cards. I don’t want them to be required to play there should anybody want to see some new characters.
 

How can our users get involved if they like the concept?

Visit MyFiveaside.com and log your email to get updates and be reminded at Kickstarter launch.
The project goes live on Tuesday 27th October.

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by Fraser Cairns

Hi James, please introduce yourself:

Hi guys, I’m James from the West Midlands, I work in Digital Marketing and I’ve spent the lockdown hours working on my new game that I’m excited to bring to Kickstarter to see if we can get it off the ground and into reality.
 

What is the game and how is it played?

It’s a 2-4 player card game, more along the lines of ‘short and snappy’ as opposed to Monopoly or Risk. It has a football theme based around retro gaming – hence the ‘blocky characters’. In short, you try and build a Fiveaside team to a set formation and when you do you can challenge your opponent to a ‘Kick-off’, at which point the player whose team has the most stars combined scores a goal, first to 5 goals wins. However, there are ‘Referee’ cards that make it more unpredictable and challenging!
 

What’s the inspritation for the game?

It’s a combination of things, mostly drawn from my youth as a 90s football fan. Think of Panini sticker albums, Corinthian big heads, retro football computer games, Top Trumps etc. I think of the fun particularly of fast-paced card games and I wanted to bring a little bit of that back, particularly as we’re all guilty of spending too much time attached to screens, it’s nice to play physical games from time to time. I’ve wanted to produce a game like this for some time, but only really has 2020 provided enough time to put the project together.
 
Cards

What’s the Kickstarter process like?

It’s a lot harder than it looks to create a compelling campaign. I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t just ‘build it and they will come’. I launched an under-baked version of the game early Summer, however I’ve learned so much about what makes a good campaign and now fairly confident the game will be backed into reality this time around – launching on 27th Oct. It’s as much about building an audience and bringing people on the journey as it is getting the message out to as many people as possible. You’re better off getting a bunch of advocates who really like the idea of the game than a following of thousands who just liked your Facebook page and that’s about it. 

Kickstarter has some benefits in so much as it’s fairly low cost to entry, I’ve spent some money on prototypes for gameplay testing and images, along with some ‘core’ costs like trademarking, but you really can launch a project cheaply and if you don’t reach 100% of your funding goal then the backers don’t pay any money and you’ve not committed to producing an unviable product at low quantities.
 
A common misconception about Kickstarter is that you’re buying equity in a business, in fact you’re effectively buying the product, just like a regular ecommerce store, but you don’t pay a thing until the campaign has ended (typically 20 odd days) and nothing at all if the project doesn’t meet the funding goal.
 

What’s the plan for the game post campaign?

Depending on campaign success (or failure – nothing is guaranteed!) the game could go in a couple of directions. I want to raise enough money to purchase another batch of games (minimum order quantity) to sell direct via the website or via Amazon. It’s the minumim order quantity required by the printers that really drives the funding goal required on Kickstarter because that is going to be the lion share of the minimum cost required to bring the product to life. I think the mechanic is quite suited to an app (having said we ‘screen’ too much) I think it would be an interesting evolution. However, the core ambition is to steadily produce the core prodcut whilst releasing one or two expansion packs a year to enable players to ‘refresh’ their Player or Referee cards. I don’t want them to be required to play there should anybody want to see some new characters.
 

How can our users get involved if they like the concept?

Visit MyFiveaside.com and log your email to get updates and be reminded at Kickstarter launch.
The project goes live on Tuesday 27th October.
Fiveaside Kickstart Promo