Trapdoors

"I should create a competitive puzzle game!", I thought as I chuckled at my friend's message. A year ago, I made a small hex puzzle for this friend and her 10-year-old daughter. The child liked the puzzle so much that she carried it in her go-bag. She would challenge strangers to beat her time in solving the puzzle. I recognized that there are few competitive puzzles on the market, and fewer that can be played by people with different skill sets. Fast forward 6 months of intense focus, prototyping, and playtesting, I created Trapdoors. I designed the components and the cards, and wrote the rules. I subsequently spent months researching manufacturing companies and crowdfunding opportunities. I chose Hero Time, a game manufacturer in China that is owned by Europeans who are committed to upholding higher Western factory standards. 

What is special about this puzzle game? I play many different kinds of games. For the most part, the beauty of the experience lies, not in winning, but in the connection around the game table. Over the years, I have found that games that can be played by children and adults or readers and pre-readers are the most well-worn games in our collection. Trapdoors is that game. It allows people of different ages and/or abilities to play together. By adjusting the number of open trapdoors, a parent can play with a child, and an expert can play with a novice. Because Trapdoors has such simple rules, each player can hone their spatial reasoning and strategic planning by using their own creativity. 

What is my timeline? I am planning to get Trapdoors manufactured and shipped with a couple weeks buffer before the holiday season. My Kickstarter campaign should start mid-July and run for 30 days. In mid to late August, Hero Time will begin manufacturing, and take an estimated 60 days. From there, Prime Shipping will take over and get these games out to us all by the end of November with a sea freight voyage of 30 days. So look for your game in late-November to early-December. I will provide timing updates to this site.

Why am I launching a Kickstarter campaign? I created the prototype for Trapdoors with a 3-D printer. While that was an easy way to bring an idea to life, the fact is that all the puzzle game's components take 40+ hours to print. It is a cheaper, quicker way to create the puzzle game with an injection mold, and this custom mold will cost $10,500 to make. And that is before using it to create the components. So my budget of $21,000 will pay for the creation of the mold, and the manufacturing of 1,000 puzzle games.

Who am I? I am Maritza Maxwell, owner of Hatch Skills and Liminal Space Games. I have been a game aficionado and a crafter my whole life. I am only surprised that it took this long for the two to collide. I graduated from Amherst College with a BA in Fine Arts and Art History. I also have an MA from Bryn Mawr College in Art History, specializing in 15th-Century Flemish painting. I am currently on the Board of Directors at The John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC.  Through Hatch Skills, I sell my acrylic-turned items in galleries, at craft fairs, and through my online shop. This year, I opened my second brand Liminal Space Games to house Trapdoors and my future games, as well as the playing cards and jigsaw puzzles created with images of my original art. I have had the pleasure working with the artists @daydraw and @sidmallick, and the companies Crowdfunding Nerds, Hero Time and Prime Shipping.