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Local seeing success with table top game

Sylvan Lake’s Ryan Leininger has launched Tiny Ninjas on Kickstarter
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One Sylvan Lake man is seeing tremendous success with his newest endeavour, a tiny board game.

It has been two years in the making, but Ryan Leininger is thrilled to see so many people interested in his game.

He originally launched the game through Kickstarter in mid-May, but cancelled the campaign after only a couple days.

“Kickstarter is it’s own unique landscape,” Leininger said, adding there is genreally a 48-hours to gain interest and be funded.

When he only raised $6,000 out of the asked $11,000 in the first two days, Leininger cancelled his launch to take stock and learn.

Many others told him he had made a mistake, that no one would trust him if he relaunched.

After a week of speaking with many others, and looking at what other table tops games were doing on Kickstarter, he relaunched.

Leininger relaunched with a new funding goal and rewards for funders.

In 10 hours of the new campaign he was funded.

“It was an amazing feeling to have it funded, and so quickly,” Leininger.

“It was a lot of clicking and clicking to refresh the page as we got closer to the goal.”

Tiny Ninjas is the brain-child of Leininger who created the two-player game so that he and his wife Layla could take it with them on trips.

The small game is designed so it can be completely played within the box.

Leininger says the game is small enough, and simple enough that it can even be played while travelling on a plane.

“It is a mix of strategy and luck,” explained Leininger. “You have dice that are the luck, but strategy is needed because of the cards you attack and defend with.”

“A lot of people don’t like dice games because it is all luck. The cards give the strategy where you have to think about what you are playing and when.”

The game has gone through many changes from the beginning when it was hand drawn cards and simple dice.

This is thanks to the years of play testing it has gone through.

Leininger says he valued the input of gamers when creating and fine tuning the game before launch.

Recently he took the game to a convention in Edmonton, where the game won a People’s Choice Award.

“They told when something didn’t make sense, or when something needed more or less,” said Leininger.

The game is only available through Kickstarter, as Leininger says he won’t be selling through stores.

“I’ve been asked about Kickstarter exclusives, and well, the game is the exclusive,” he said.

The Kickstarter campaign goes until June 22, and is set to ship sometime in November.

Leininger says there will be small tweaks to the look of the game before it ships out before Christmas this year.

For those in Sylvan Lake, Red Deer, For McMurray, Edmonton and Calgary local pick up is available for the game.

“I am so, excited. I can’t wait to see what happens.”

While Leininger’s focus is solely on this game, he says he has ideas and notes on possible other games under the Tiny Ninja umbrella.

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