I recently wanted to get a higher quality prototype made of a few of the components for Swords for Hire.
I will be taking the game to Proto ATL next weekend and will be doing a lot of playtesting. One of the complaints I have gotten in my current in person playtesting is that the board I am using can be hard to read. I have made some adjustments for visibility, but I always intended for the board to be bigger as well. I wanted to test the playability and visibility on a production quality game board.
I decided to go with board game maker.com for a number of reasons. The main reason was that they stocked the board type I wanted, 20×20” seamless quad fold. The other manufacturers I was looking at did not have that board size available for single quantities.
The second reason was that I found their image upload process very simple and user friendly. There was no need to download a template and fit the image to the template. You just upload the image, it gives you a preview of what it will look like, and you can crop as needed. As a new designer this was less intimidating for me than some of the other manufacturers. I didn’t have to worry about using the wrong template or using it incorrectly. It was as easy as uploading a picture to Facebook.
So far my experience with Board Game Maker has been very positive. They emailed me after I put my order in and let me know one of the borders on my cards would likely be cut off or uneven based on the current image. It was just for my reference cards so I wasn’t concerned. I was more concerned about getting it done quickly so I will have the pieces for Proto ATL, so I just told them to run it as is. I am curious how bad it will be. It should be a good experiment.
After I responded to the email it took about a week for my order to be processed and shipped. I am still waiting on shipping but I’ll share all the details when it arrives.
Overall though I found that using Board Game Maker was very simple and intuitive. I liked the UI and the image upload process. I found their customer service to be timely and responsive. Their production time is quick. As long as the parts turn out ok I will be very happy with my experience.