Case Study — Game Design & Sales Funnel
Medusa
The Brief
A Notion doc.
No buyers.
Yet.
Medusa's creator had built a genuinely great card game — mechanics tested, balance tight, a mythology worth caring about. What didn't exist was a way for anyone outside the playtest group to discover it, want it, or pay for it.
The entire universe lived in a Notion doc and a stack of prototype cards. The brief was to give that universe a visible brand, then build the exact path from "never heard of this" to "pre-ordered before launch" — because lore and art direction only pay off if there's a funnel waiting on the other side.
How We Worked
Three decisions
that funded the print run.
Selling a game that doesn't exist yet is a trust problem before it's a marketing problem. These were the calls that earned that trust.
Most game launches bolt lore onto marketing as an afterthought. We reversed it. Before a single funnel page existed, we built the world's visual language and a lore bible deep enough to make collectors care who's on each card.
9 archetypes builtA limited founder's-edition tier, real pre-order pricing windows, and a countdown that was genuine, not decorative. Every constraint in the funnel was a deliberate lever — not a manufactured one.
320 orders / 72hThe first physical units hadn't been printed when the funnel went live. Photoreal packaging mockups and finished art direction did the selling — buyers were responding to a fully realized object that, at the time, existed only as files.
₦4M pre-launchThe deck that sold itself.
Five numbers from a launch that started as a Notion doc and ended as a funded print run.
Revenue
in 72 Hours
unit shipped
Built
via Pre-Orders
The Outcome
Funded before
it shipped.
Generated entirely from pre-orders, before a single physical unit had been manufactured or shipped to a customer.
The founder's-edition tier sold out within three days of the funnel going live — validating demand before the print run was even committed.
From an unbranded prototype and a lore document to a fully funded, pre-sold print run — in nine weeks.
The launch generated a waitlist for the next print run before the first one had even shipped — demand that outlasted the original funnel.
We had a great game and no one to sell it to. Nine weeks later, we were sold out before we'd printed a single card.