OK, it's not as exciting as the phone books, but a bigass box-o-my game pack just arrived on my doorstep. My publisher, Swift/Cosmi, just sent me my complimentary games. Here are some box-shots.
Boxed version front
Here's the front of the boxed version. Surprisingly, there is more than just a CD in the box, there's a small manual that's got summaries of each game.
This is probably the best looking box that my product's ever had. Kudos to Cosmi for going with creativity rather than consistency in their product-packaging.
The "buy one get one free" coupon inside is an offer to buy one of their other titles for $2.95 P&H. Their personal lawyer, form-filler, and crossword-puzzle software is in the list. Any of those would certainly be worth the P&H.
Boxed version back
Hey, I'm Y2K compliant!
The back looks pretty good. I'm much happier with this one over the old Expert box, which had one big screen shot of the old game-browser and three tiny screen-shots (one of which was not even one of my games).
The screen-shots, on the whole, look pretty good. I would've liked to have seen Olive Wars or Backgammon, because they look compelling, but on the whole they did a pretty good job. Cosmi wanted to put the recognizable stuff on the box.
I'm also happy to see that "juggling man" finally saw light (the little red-shirted guy on the leftmost screen-shot). He was a little character that I drew for a game called LANWords for Saber Software (now a part of McAfee). I had him juggling letters in LANWords, but the art folks had better ideas. They re-drew an awful-looking cartoonish version of him for some giveaway T-shirts, but he never got out in his original form. I always liked him.
I'm not quite sure what "Ultimate Checkers" is :)
Jewel Case Front
This is the front of the Jewel-case-only version of the games. If you buy the boxed version, the CD comes in one of those little paper window-envelopes. I used to not like the little window-envelopes, but I'm finding that they're handy when you've got a big CD collection.
I'm also glad to see that they're making a big deal of the games being fully licensed. It was disheartening to see my old game pack outsold by shareware collections.
Jewel Case Back
Here's the back of the CD-only version. It's pretty-much a condensed version of the boxed back.
No Y2K statement though. Hopefully it won't affect my sales :)
Yes, you probably noticed that I finally mentioned the name of my publisher. Swift/Cosmi is, like Expert, a discount-rack publisher, but they're privately-owned rather than public. They're based in LA, and they seem to be a good group of folks.
Sorry to be stealthy about the publisher, but I wanted to make sure that they had everything ready before I started blabbing about it. Hopefully the games will be appearing in a retail outlet near you soon.
Finally, big thanks to the following talented-yet-unpaid folks who earned a place of immortality in the "about" box for finding bugs in the beta versions. Your free copy will be in the mail RSN.
Dave Barnett
Thomas Burnett
Geoff Howland
John Munsch
Ken Smith
