It’s been 5 years.
2019. UK Games Expo.
I arrive in jeans, and my iconic purple t-shirt with the huge yellow ‘R’ on it. (those of you who know it, you're probably sick of it LOL)
I’d just crossed the big field from the train station, and find myself looking up and around in awe at these massive Expo Halls.
There’s still an hour to go before the Expo officially opens, but my gosh is it already swarming with people.
I’m intimidated, nervous as heck, anxious thoughts flooding in.
Earphones in, I play ‘OK’ by Robin Shultz.
‘Its gonna be okay’.
30 minutes later, I finally find where my booth is - a little off-center in the main hall, but still smack dab in the middle of the action.
I catch up with Graeme, Fiona and Daphne (my business partners from Accentuate Games, who published Rats to Riches), we set up the booth, and wish each other good luck.
‘Its gonna be okay.’
I’ve shared the origin story of Rats to Riches countless times now - starting out as a volunteer social enterprise project to teach school kids financial literacy, then facing dozens of rejections, then eventually meeting the right people and opportunities that set the game up for success.
But what’s happened since then?
Have we indeed gone from Rats to Riches?
Well, yes, and no.
It’s a complicated tale.
The Tail of Rats to Riches.
The UK Games Expo for this year, 2024, has just passed, and as my Instagram feed showed me content from the event, it brought a smile to my face. So many awesome memories from what feels like an era ago.
On that fateful summer day at the UK Games Expo in 2019, we officially launched Rats to Riches to the world.
Soon after, the game went on to win the Gold medal in the Independent Toy Awards, and the University of Manchester Venture Further award in the creative category worth £3000.
Avengers: Endgame just released in cinemas a couple of weeks prior, and the timing could not be more poetic. “I love you 3000.” In a way, the Games Expo felt like my Endgame; my finale to cap off this chapter of my life.
- Rats to Riches was featured in The Telegraph, as one of the top 10 family board games to buy for Christmas, alongside Monopoly and Splendor.
- UK Departmental Store John Lewis retailed the game in all 60+ stores across the country.
- Dragon’s Den Peter Jones tweeted about the game(!!)
- We translated the game to launch in Israel and Amsterdam markets.
- We even signed a deal to expand to the USA!
The highs just kept getting higher. When it rains, it pours. Nothing at first, then everything at once. And it felt AWESOME. Like I was on top of the world, only to surpass that top the next day.
I think you can guess what happens next. What comes up must come down. Gravity. Nature.
Life, am I right?
COVID came, less than 6 months after we launched, and severely disrupted our sales and traction.
John Lewis cut countless product lines, especially new products like ours.
Sales plummeted.
As quickly as people got to know of the game, they seemed to forget about it even quicker. The world was in a pandemic. Pandemonium. Everyone’s priorities pivoted.
And so did mine.
I had just started my full-time job with the Singapore Navy, and was looking to put Rats to Riches in the past. What once felt like my magnum opus, the proudest achievement, was now reduced to just a cool university side project to make conversation about.
And as of 2021, two years after launch, it truly seemed like that was all it was ever going to be.
We had still done a decent job selling the games, but definitely not to the level that we had hoped or expected.
Accentuate still wanted to re-sign a contract extension, but with much less attractive terms.
But meanwhile, halfway across the globe, in Sunny Singapore, the game was taking off!
Fresh out of the Circuit Breaker lockdown, people craved social connection, human touch, digital detox. And board games were a perfect fit.
My friends would send me screenshots of their friends playing the game, and texting them, raving about it. While sales in the UK hit a slump, we were selling out here! Mind Cafe would order hundreds more sets at a time, to be shipped from the UK, much to the bewilderment of our UK business partners.
Right now, we are selling out of copies for Rats to Riches. We have just over 30 copies remaining, which means that we've SOLD >11,000+ games (!!). It’s gotten to the point where we’ve had to raise prices from S$39 all the way to S$79, but people are still buying it!!
Man, just writing that alone brought chills. if you'd told me 5 years ago that the game would go on to succeed the way it has, amidst a pandemic which effectively shut down 90% of our retail sales in our launch year, I would have responded by saying you are crazy.
Those of you who knew me back then might remember my grand vision for the game, when it was still in development: 'We will overtake Monopoly's monopoly.'
It was my mantra, my motivation. My way of challenging myself to do better, to keep iterating, to believe that success is possible, in an industry where a dozen new competitors emerge EVERY SINGLE DAY.
It was a lofty goal, but in my mind i knew that the odds of success were truly slim, and realistically i should be glad to even sell 1000 copies of the game, much less to even think about 10,000.
What a nice, sweet ending to the story, you might be thinking.
Perhaps this blog entry has seemed like a farewell speech, from a retiree looking back on the 'good old days' (the 'days of yore' for my ACS mates).
But no.
The journey has only just begun.
The success of the game in Singapore has ignited a new partnership with The Mind Cafe, to start a new production run reprint of the game.
5 years since the first retail version came out, I'm excited to announce that the second edition of the game, Rats 2 Riches, is being mass produced RIGHT NOW!!
This rowdy racket is finally back, and with a ravishing refresh! Aptly titled: 'Rats 2 Riches', it features the same core mechanics as the beloved award-winning first edition, but now packed with even more fun, even more strategy, and overall Gouda Gameplay.
We have Pipe Pipers, Cesspit Champions, Color Colonels, Turn Tycoons, and of course, Nukes.
I won’t spoil everything for you here - just a little tease and tickle 😉 If you'd like to find out more, go follow the Rats to Riches Instagram page (@ratstorichesgame), or better yet, grab a copy of the game and play it with your friends and family!
And as always, thank you for reading all the way till here! Thank you to everyone who has supported me, believed in me, and walked this journey with me :) The game would certainly not have gotten here without you.
See ya in the Sewers!