INTRODUCTION As a wannabe game designer, I have a great interest in ways to cheaply produce and sell my designs. When it comes to RPGs, this is relatively easy with PDF and POD sites all over the internet. But, I have other game ideas I want to try out. Board games and CCGs are also passions of mine. But, they are not cheap to produce and still maintain a level of quality I like.

Enter The Game Crafter. This website offers a POD alternative for board and card games. From this site you can buy the games that others have created using the site, purchase pieces for games, or even use their templates and printing services to create and sell your own game.

Curious to see the quality of the products this site offers, I bought three games. One, a card game called Seppuku, which looks to be fun but requires additional work to construct some special dice to play so I have not played yet. The second was Jump Gate, which is a game made up of a number of smaller tiles and a few different types of pieces. The third, and final, game I bought was HITOYA, another board game with the use of a couple of different pieces.

This review is not of the games I bought, or of the games available on the site. Since the site allows anyone to add a game if they want, the quality of the games is sometimes less than great. Case in point is the seeming Magic: the Gathering rip-off based on excrement. I wish I was making that up.

Instead, i am reviewing the service itself, and the quality of the components they use.

SERVICE The site itself is pretty easy to use. From the main page, there is an easy to find link to the publishing portion of the site, as well as a page of demo videos to walk your through the process.

Cost Estimator Your first step is to use the cost estimator to give yourself an idea of whether your game idea is one that would be economically feasible. This page gives a limited view of what the components you think you will need for your game will cost. There are fields for number of cards, boards, pages of documentation (for the rules), pawns (both standard and "specialty"), poker chips, winks, and dice. You also have a field to enter if you want play money or not in this game. Along with this is what they call the "handling fee," which is the additional costs associate with the production of the game.

While the cost estimator is not comprehensive, and in the case of specialty pawns may be inaccurate depending on which specialty piece you want, it is a baseline for what the games may cost to produce For example, looking at the game Jump Gate (which had the most components of any of the games I bought) the cost to purchase the game was $29.95. In the estimator, this would have been quoted as $47.41. Not exactly accurate, but when you take into account that the boards used are smaller than the average (and this is where the majority of the costs are coming from), it is not too bad of an estimation. Looking at the size of the boards used, and comparing it to the maximum size of the boards possible, it is likely that they are quoting for the larger sized boards and can print on those but cut down to the size required. Assuming this,the quote can be taken down to $28.11. T His is closer to the actual cost of the game, so it is likely this is the case with the estimates. This is something that should probably be more clearly stated or implied on the site so potential creators are not discouraged.

Templates After you have used the estimator to give yourself an idea of the viability of the game, you need to download templates to make the printed components. There are separate templates for cards, game boards, stickers, cover art, and rules documentation.

All graphic templates are available in five formats (Illustrator, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, and PNG). This variety should make it easy for anyone to find one that works for their needs without having to jump through too many hoops to find a usable program. The only exception to this is with the stickers and cover art, which are only available in Photoshop, Illustrator, and PNG.

The card templates are available in both horizontal and vertical format. They are for cards in the standard poker size. The templates are easy to understand, giving you a guide as to where the card will be trimmed, how far to have full bleed art extend on the card, and a guideline for the border. Overall, if you have any skill with using the graphics programs these files are for, you should have no issues using the templates to make decent looking cards.

The board templates come in four sizes (4x4, 4x10, 10x10, and 10x16). These look just like the card templates did, with the same information and ease of use. One important thing to note is that these are the only sizes and shapes of boards available. If you have a board that does not fit into one of these basic sizes, you will need to either have the board broken into multiple pieces or have a board that requires cutting by the players. Either of these options would provide its own complications, but neither is very difficult to work around.

The sticker template gives you a small circular sticker that can fit on the wooden tokens the site provides. Again, the template is easy to use and provides the same information. The only real negative to the stickers is that they are limited to one size and shape only. If you wanted to have a sticker for something other than the wooden tokens the site offers, you would have to find some other way of providing it.

The cover art template is the only one that includes different information than the others. Cover art serves three purposes for the site. First is for the banners on the site itself. Second is for various scroll bars on the site. Third is for a small sticker sent with the game to be added to the box the game ships in to label it. All of these are created off of a single template, even though they are all of different sizes. You use the template as normal, with sections on either of the sides of the template labeled as being cut off for the game label. This means you will have a small sticker with whatever image or game information you want on it, and a larger image with more information on either side of the core image to represent your game online.

Finally, the rules templates are merely guidelines to help you determine what information you may want to include in your game. These are in no way required to use, merely being an aid to simplify the layout of the game and make sure you do not forget some important aspect of the rules. These are included in Open Office and MS Word formats.

Upload The site has a page that tells you more of the specifics on what you need to do to make sure the files are properly formatted. Images need to be JPEG, GIF, or PNG format when uploaded, and there is a chart on the site to tell you the resolution the files need to be. It is stated that any image uploaded will be automatically converted to the proper DPI, but that may affect the look of anything converted in this way.

Documents need to be in PDF format. The document should be in 8.5"x11" (US Letter) size. All rules documents are printed in color, so if you wish to include color illustrations or text, they should show up as intended.

To upload the files, you can upload one at a time directly from your computer into the game manager. If you want to upload in larger quantity to save time, there is FTP access. All of the information you need to know about the upload process is included in the site. Once uploaded, there is a Game Manager on site that walks you through the process. It is recommended that you view the video of the process on the demo link to make sure you understand the process the first time. While the manager looks easy to use, it is not out of the question for a person to make a little mistake that could affect the look of the end product.

Pieces Once you have completed all of the previous steps, you are given the option of adding any other components you desire form the pieces the site offers. This is where the site really seems to shine in my opinion. The number of pieces possible is pretty extensive.

There are a handful of relatively basic pawns. From 1" plastic to 1 3/4" wooden, in about 8 different colors, the ability to have pieces for multiple players is evident from the beginning. As you move up in detail, you get meeples, cars, rockets, planes, tanks, submarines, and speedboats in the same colors as the basic pawns. There are also some more unique pieces such as rubber pirates or die cast metal knights.

Among the pieces less likely to be used for players, but still useful, would be the variety of resource-type pieces. There are the requisite cubes, octoboxes (basically cylinders), hotels, and houses (all in the colors possible for pawns). There are also Small wooden barrels and bottles that could possibly be of use. Most exciting of the resource tokens are the selection representing the standard resources used in most popular resource management games (I'm looking at you, Agricola).

The next group of pieces available are those used for counters or markers. Small wooden rings, clear plastic winks (in two sizes), small plastic poker chips, glass gems, paper money, and plastic coins are all possible...all in a variety of colors.

Next up are the dice. Any of the standard rpg dice are included. All but the d6 are random color, so you have little choice when you get to these. The d6 come in two sizes, the larger of which (16 mm) can be with numerals or pips. The d10 come in percentile or regular numbering.

Finally, there are the other miscellaneous pieces that may be of use. These include sand timers, spinner arrows, game and card stands, plastic or felt bags to hold parts, and small notepads with pencils. With the inclusion of these, it is pretty easy to have a complete game straight out of the box when ordered from this site.

Price Once you have completed the process of creating the game, all you have left is the determine the price and add it to the site. On the game manager screen, the site will tell you the actual cost of production. All you need to do is set your own price based off of that. If you want this game to be sold for cost, you can do so. If you want to make a profit, you merely determine how much you want to make per sale and price accordingly.

As soon as you have completed all of this, you merely hit the publish button on the site. Immediately, your game appears i the shop and notifications are sent to Facebook and Twitter mentioning the new game.

COMPONENTS So, how do the components stack up in actuality? Pretty decent, actually.

The cards and boards are of the same card stock, which is of decent heft. The website mentions more detail on the specifics of the printing process and materials used, so it would be a good idea to look at that if you are interested in using them.

I am happy with the results that I have seen in the games I purchased. The cards and boards looked good, with the colors showing up well and the card stock being of good quality. The only complaint I had was that the cards all have a bit of a raised edge to them. Not enough to be of concern, but just enough to be noticeable to the touch. I would imagine with a bit of play, this will disappear, so it is not a concern as much as a minor quibble.

The tokens and pieces included were all of equally good quality. While the poker chips are what I refer to as "dollar store game" chips, they are not bad. Since real poker chips, or even the larger heavier plastic ones, would not be cost effective I cannot complain. They are functional for what they are needed for, and the rest of the components are nice.

I am particularly impressed with the wooden tokens that are for use with the stickers. These are of a good size and weight, and the stickers are a great way of customizing them. These tokens also have a little bit of a lip on them, allowing the sticker to be lower than the actual surface of the token. This will prevent the stickers from being damaged by play, which is a nice touch.

The rules documents are very nicely printed in color. They are merely loose pages with a trifold to fit into the shipping box. There is nothing to distinguish these from pages your could print yourself, and the fact that they are all left loose is a little frustrating. A single staple would have made a difference in the presentation of these, but that is not something that the buyer cannot add themselves.

One final note is the packaging. The games are shipped in the same box used to hold them. It is a standard looking white cardboard box similar ins style to those sold at hobby stores to hold trading cards. It is of decent strength, and the size is determined by the size of the game in it. In the case of the order i made, I had one larger box containing all of the games, with two smaller boxes to hold two of the smaller games. Each game also comes with a black and white sticker to label the box. While i would probably have preferred the games shipped in a different box than the one they will be stored in, I cannot fault the company for shipping this way to reduce cost and waste.

CONCLUSION Overall, I am quite happy to have discovered this site. The process of creating your own game is ridiculously easy, with video tutorials available to walk you through any of the site-based process. The component quality is good, especially for the price. While there are a few minor concerns, none of my complaints really merits much beyond my own aesthetic tastes and all are easily dealt with.

If there is any down side to the service this site offers, it is that the whole thing is too easy to use. With a process this user friendly, you have a large number of less-than-stellar games distracting from the one or two real gems. My advice to anyone wishing to use this to publish a game is to make sure you know how to market yourself so your customers can find your product without having to wade through the crap.