Foxnut Publishing
You’ve designed the game.
We’ve launched one.
Foxnut Publishing is an end-to-end partner for independent game designers — manufacturing, branding, distribution, crowdfunding, and retail. We built our own game before we built this service. That’s the only reason we can tell you exactly what the mistakes cost.
No upfront cost to apply. Response within five business days. How your idea is protected →
Our own game commercially launched · Physical products shipped to ~100 countries · Manufacturing relationships in India
§ 01 · The problem
The game is done. The hard part just started.
You’ve spent months — maybe years — designing something that works. You’ve playtested it with strangers who didn’t know you, and they came back for a second round. You know the game is ready.
What you don’t know is everything that comes next.
You’ve looked at manufacturers. Every factory quote requires a spec sheet you don’t know how to write, a minimum order quantity that sounds terrifying, and a sample approval process with no guidance on what you’re actually approving. You’ve looked at Kickstarter — the success stories, and the ones that shipped eighteen months late and cost forty percent more than projected. You’ve looked at distribution, and discovered that getting into a retailer — let alone a distributor — requires relationships nobody tells you how to build.
You’re not stuck because the game isn’t good enough. You’re stuck because taking a physical product to commercial launch is an entirely different discipline from designing one — and there is almost nowhere to learn it without paying for the education in full.
That’s what Foxnut Publishing is for.
We made the mistakes you’re about to make — on our own products, with our own money, before we offered this to anyone else.
§ 02 · What’s included
The full path. Not a part of it.
Most “publishing services” handle one slice of the problem. Foxnut Publishing covers the entire journey — prototype to shelf.
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Manufacturing & Production
Factory identification, spec sheet preparation, sample review, and print run oversight — with a set of eyes that knows what a defect looks like before it arrives in a box of 500. We’ll tell you which materials are worth the premium and which spec decisions will cost you on the back end.
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Brand & Packaging
A game on a shelf competes visually before it competes on gameplay. Your game needs a name that works across markets, a visual identity that signals the experience inside, and packaging that retail buyers will actually stock. We handle brand architecture and packaging direction from scratch, or work from what you’ve built.
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Distribution & Retail
Getting onto Amazon is step one. Getting into a specialty retailer is step three. Getting into a national distributor is step five. We map the right sequence for your game, your print run size, and your target geography — and we make the introductions that typically take an independent designer years to build alone.
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Crowdfunding Strategy
Kickstarter and Gamefound campaigns are not self-executing. The campaigns that fund quickly and ship on time are built on realistic MOQ math, a pre-launch community, a clear fulfillment plan, and a campaign page that sells the experience rather than the components. We plan and produce the campaign. You run the game.
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Launch & Marketing
A launch without a marketing plan is inventory. We build the launch playbook — pre-launch community, press and content strategy, social proof activation, and post-launch sell-through. For games that warrant it, we connect you to Foxnut’s network of practitioners who have run consumer launches across international markets.
Your game stays yours. We bring the machine.
Foxnut Publishing operates as a publishing partner, not a publisher in the traditional sense. Your IP is yours. Every submission is covered by a written one-year confidentiality and non-use commitment — we don’t use what you show us without your consent, and we don’t share it outside the founding team without your say-so. And we’ll tell you, plainly, when a game isn’t ready for commercial launch rather than take it on and deliver a half-result.
§ 03 · The process
From where you are to where you want to be.
Every engagement starts the same way: we read the game before we say anything.
- 01
Prototype Review
Submit your prototype. We play it. We read the rules. We look at the components and the print files if you have them. Within five business days you’ll hear one of two things: we think this is commercially ready and here’s why — or we don’t think it’s ready yet, and here’s what would change that. We don’t take projects we can’t finish.
- 02
Commercial Assessment
If we move forward, we map the commercial landscape for your game: target market, comparable titles, distribution pathways, and realistic unit economics at the print run sizes that make sense. This is the document that shapes every decision that follows. Most designers have never seen one built properly. You’ll have one by the end of week two.
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Brand Build
Name, visual identity, packaging direction, and retail positioning. We work with you on the brand — your game, your voice — but we make it commercially viable. The goal: a game a buyer picks up without knowing anything about you and immediately understands what they’re holding.
- 04
Manufacturing Run
Factory sourcing, spec preparation, sample approval, and production oversight. We manage the manufacturer relationship. You review the samples. We handle the conversations that require knowing what to push back on — and what not to.
- 05
Launch
Crowdfunding campaign, distribution outreach, retail placement, and marketing execution — sequenced against your print run timeline. A launch is a system, not a moment. We build the system. You show up for the game.
- 06
Post-Launch
Sell-through strategy, reorder planning, retail feedback loops, and — for games that earn it — expansion into new markets. The launch is the beginning of the commercial life of the game. We stay on until the game is standing on its own.
§ 04 · The proof
We’ve done what we’re about to help you do.
The decision to build Foxnut Games before Foxnut Publishing was deliberate. Not because games were the obvious commercial play — they were not — but because we refused to advise independent designers on a process we had not run ourselves.
So we ran it.
We designed the game. We playtested it through forty-plus game nights with five hundred players. We navigated the print specs, the sample reviews, the material calls, the print-run sizing. We built the brand and the packaging. We opened pre-orders and launched without a distributor’s infrastructure. And before any of that, this team spent years manufacturing physical products in India and shipping them to roughly a hundred countries.
We made mistakes that cost real money — specs we’d read differently now, timelines we’d plan differently now, calls we’d push back on sooner. Every decision, every mistake, every corrective is the playbook Foxnut Publishing now runs for independent designers.
You are not hiring advisors who have studied the game publishing industry. You are hiring practitioners who have been through it. The distinction is not subtle.
Case 01 — on our own record
In
A notebook of true incidents involving one uncooperative cat, and a stack of hand-cut prototype cards nobody wanted to play twice.
Out
Cats from Hell — a manufactured 118-card game with its own brand, site, and first print run on pre-order. Designed, manufactured, and commercially launched by Foxnut Studios.
catsfromhell.co →The designers we publish will appear here next. The first case on the record had to be our own — that’s the whole point.
§ 05 · FAQ
The questions you’re already asking.
What kinds of games does Foxnut Publishing work with?
Card games, board games, and party games — physical products designed for 2+ players. We don’t currently work on digital games, RPG sourcebooks, or large-format miniature games. If you’re not sure whether your game qualifies, submit it. We’ll tell you.
What does “commercially ready” mean? My prototype isn’t finished yet.
We work with prototypes at various stages. What we need to see: a playable, rules-complete version of the game — physical or print-and-play. We don’t need production-ready files. We need to understand the game. If the prototype isn’t far enough along, we’ll tell you what it needs before we’d take it on.
Do I need to have funding already?
No. Crowdfunding is one of the tools in the launch playbook, not a prerequisite for working with us. We’ll help you determine the right financing structure for your game — a Kickstarter, a pre-sale, a small private print run, or a direct approach to a distributor.
What does working with Foxnut Publishing cost?
Our fee structure depends on the scope of the engagement. We work on a combination of flat project fees and, in some cases, a modest royalty on commercial sales — aligned so that our upside is directly tied to yours. We’ll discuss structure in the first conversation. There is no cost to submit your prototype for review.
How long does the full process take — prototype to commercial launch?
For most games, six to twelve months from the start of the engagement to a live launch. Manufacturing alone typically takes ten to sixteen weeks once specs are locked. We’ll give you a realistic timeline in the commercial assessment phase — not the fastest possible timeline, but the one we can actually deliver.
Do you work with designers outside India?
Yes. Foxnut spans Bengaluru and Paris, with manufacturing relationships in India and distribution experience across South Asian, European, and North American markets — the founding team has shipped physical products into roughly a hundred countries. International designers are not an edge case for us.
What happens if my game doesn’t sell?
We don’t take on games we don’t believe in commercially. Part of our value in the commercial assessment phase is being honest about what a game needs to reach unit economics that work — and sometimes that means telling a designer the timing or positioning isn’t right yet. We’d rather have that conversation before a print run than after.
Your game is ready for the next step.
Most independent designers spend years trying to figure out the path from prototype to shelf — attending conventions, reading forums, making expensive mistakes one at a time. You don’t have to. The path exists. We’ve run it.
Submit your prototype. We’ll tell you where it stands, what it needs, and whether we’re the right partner for it. Honestly, and within five business days.
No upfront cost. No sales call before you hear our assessment.
Why we built a game before we offered to build yours
We got into this because we couldn’t find the answer to a straightforward question: how does an independent game designer — someone with a genuinely good game — actually get it onto a shelf?
We looked for the answer in forums, at conventions, in the publishing contracts that circulate as cautionary tales. What we found was a landscape of fragmented, expensive, often unreliable services — and almost no one who had run the whole thing end-to-end and was willing to tell you what it actually cost.
So before we offered to help anyone else, we did it ourselves. We designed the game. We wrote the specs, reviewed the samples, made the calls no one warned us were coming. We built the brand. We opened the pre-orders. And we brought to it the years we’d already spent manufacturing physical products in India and selling them around the world.
That sequence — doing it ourselves, at real cost, before advising anyone else — is why Foxnut Publishing exists, and why it exists the way it does. We are not a service. We are a partnership between people who have been where you are and know the path forward because they paid to learn it.
If your game is ready, we’d like to hear about it.
Ameya Sahasrabudhe & Swati Thakur · Foxnut Studios · Bengaluru