This will be my 15th time participating and the start of my 6th year of doing this :). Saturday my wife and I made plans with some friends to drive up to their house and see Avengers Endgame. For that reason, most of my Saturday is shot, but I'm going to give it a try anyways. Last time I had a conflict I didn't finish. Having even less time may finally trigger something in my brain to keep the idea simple. We'll see.

I usually use C#/MonoGame, Paint.NET, Gimp, Inkscape, Bosca Ceoil, and other tools, but I'm keeping things open.

Also, I'm trying to also build a thing...

I've created a number of games for Ludum Dare, and I look back on them fondly. When I have friends & family over it's something I like to share, but going to the computer and bringing them up or fumbling with my phone kills be present with people. The experience is different when I reminiscence about the SNES games I played as a kid where I can pull out and/or the display the cartridges & boxes I have sitting around or on display. Physical things source conversation and give us a chance to share experiences with others, and they bring life to a room...

With all that said, I'm curious if there is a desire in the community for a service that would allow you to print a physical release of your game. A print-on-demand thing like Shutterfly or The Game Crafter (but focused on video games). You'd design the box art & instruction booklet within a template, upload them & your game, and then receive a copy in the mail. I think something like this would be valuable, but I really don't know.

I had intended on building out the infrastructure to "launch" an MVP of the service in conjunction with this weekend to see if anyone would be interested, but I fell flat on getting a site together (only a landing page :(). I have the capability to create boxes and manuals. Here are some reproduction boxes I've created as I've learned to make them:

I've made a bunch more boxes to get the process down. The boxes are roughly 5 inches wide, 7 inches tall, and 1 inch thing. They are about the same size as a SNES box, but thinner. They are also 2 pieces top/bottom like a sturdy board game box. Shrink wrapped they look great on a shelf. I have less experience with manuals, but do have the capability.

What I'd like to know... Is this something you'd be interested in? Should something like this exist for hobbyist game devs? Would you like a copy of your game to put on your shelf? Feel free to reach out to me at:

shawn@lostprintgames.com.

Good luck everyone, have fun!