📦🚢 The Print Run Is Done. Ready Steady Slope Is on Its Way to Amazon 🚢📦
The Print Run Is Done. Ready Steady Slope Is on Its Way to Amazon
In March 2024, a heavy dump of snow closed every lift in Alpe d'Huez for a day. We went back indoors with a pen, some paper and two restless kids, and by the evening we had the first version of a card game. ❄️
After two and a half years, and many rounds of play testing, that game has just come off a production line. 📦
The first print run of Ready Steady Slope is finished. The decks are boxed, the boxes are packed into cartons, and the cartons are at sea, on their way to Amazon's UK warehouses. 🚢 For a game that started on a sheet of paper in a snowed-in chalet, that sentence still feels slightly unreal to type.
The best game you'll ever pack for a ski trip.
It's worth saying what finished actually means. The deck holds 45 individually designed cards across 195 in total, and every one of those designs has been painstakingly laboured over, from the artwork to how it feels in your hand. Then came the printing, cutting and collating: the Resort cards, the Equipment, the Pistes, the Weather, the Form, and the eight Specials that cause all the trouble. Each deck goes into its box, and every box carries the same 16 real resorts, from Aviemore to Whistler.
The eight Special cards have had an upgrade: they're now finished in holographic foil. ✨
Attack cards: Blizzard!, Wipe Out!, Avalanche!, Off Piste! and Global Warming!
Defence cards: Nailed It!, Flair! and Snow Patrol!
They're the cards that swing a game, the ones that get slapped down with a mischievous grin, so it felt right that they should have a wicked twinkle when they land.
We're as excited to see the finished deck as you are. Picture a foil Blizzard! flashing across the chalet table just as your mate thinks they've got the game wrapped up. Worth the wait. 🌨️
Pen and paper in 2024. A finished print run in 2026.
The Long Way Round 🚢
Our game is going the slow and steady way: by sea. Somewhere out on the ocean right now there are cartons of Ready Steady Slope, which is a strange and lovely thing to think about when the whole idea started on a snowed-in afternoon. Once they land, Amazon checks them in, the listing switches on, and that's the last step between a box in a warehouse and a box on your table.
Some of you have been with us since the pen-and-paper days. The founders' list, the Designer Diary on BoardGameGeek, the friends who played the early prototypes and helped us refine the game into the finished article we're proud to share today. Thank you. You're the reason this is a real thing now.
What's in the Box 🎿
For anyone just arriving: 45 bespoke designs in a 195-card deck, 16 real resorts, 2–6 players, 20–30 minutes a game, ages 8 and up. You pick your resort, gear up, complete your pistes, and try to stop your mates doing the same. The Alpe d'Huez card is in there, of course, a nod to the mountain where it all started.
If you want a nudge the day it lands, the founders' list is the place to be.
Next stop, the warehouse. Then your table. 🏂🎿🃏
– RSS Team