Hello there!

So as the title suggest, we’re back from Essen and I’ve finally managed to sit down and write about my experience there, so here we go!

For those that haven’t heard, Essen Spiel is one of the biggest events in the board gaming industry, a four day magical land for board gamers around the globe with more and more visitors and exhibitors each year. This year it surpassed the number of 160.000 total visitors! That’s a gigantic number!

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As you may have already known, we had booked a table at the Author’s Workshop so we could present and demo our first game Small Star Empires. After some minor problems with our schedule (traffic jams etc.) we finally managed to get to the Messe Essen and took our spot and set up our table. We pulled out the big banner, the prototype copy, our business cards, put on our Small Star Empires t-shirts and we were ready to rock!

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Considering this is my first time at Essen as an exhibitor (I was there last year as a visitor), I had a fantastic four days! We got to demo the game to a lot of people, talked to many more of the visitors on our table as well as other exhibitors, and we got to finally meet some of our awesome friends from Facebook in person.

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Now for the part where I’m really glad that we did all this: The people loved the game! I couldn’t be more happier than I am at the moment. They loved that it has a quick setup, it is quick to play, and they also enjoyed the art and the minis! The minis were a blast! Many people were even disappointed when I told them that the game isn’t selling yet and their reply was that they would have bought it instantly if it were selling. I hope that says something about the game! 🙂

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We were also visited by some publishers and reviewers, including the great guys from Dice Settlers and a reporter from the now kickstarting game magazine Il Gioco and the next period will probably involve contacting and sending prototype copies around to those publishers, reviewers as well as other contacts.

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To wrap up, we had great fun there, the atmosphere was amazing and if you haven’t been, you should definitely come next year! Hopefully by that time, we will have Small Star Empires and another game or two out there so we could also be having a proper publisher booth! 🙂

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Thanks for all that visited, played and hung out with us, and thanks to all of you who are reading this and giving us the support!

For the end, I also have to thank my friends Ivo, Darko, Jane and Marija that have supported me throughout the fair!

Until next time,
Milan

PS: You can see a full album with pictures here: Essen Spiel 2015