The Detour that Sparked Bumfuzzled!

Most folks probably don't know that the original business plan for Puzzle Bomb was cardboard puzzles! I had gotten into wooden puzzles a few years earlier, and many friends would think they were super cool, but then balk at the prices. Even I was still adjusting to buying $50-$100 puzzles rather than the $15 cardboard puzzles I was accustomed to, but man, the interesting piece shapes and tactile satisfaction had me hooked!

So, why cardboard? I thought I could bridge the gap, creating cardboard puzzles with far more intricate and customized die-cutting than the average puzzle, maintaining the price point or cardboard, but with the whimsy of wooden puzzles.

I even got to the point of having a sample in-hand! I doubt most folks have ever seen our first puzzle, which exists as a one-of-one sample on my puzzle shelf!

It's actually a neat puzzle, so why did I switch gears?

The Serendipitous Detour

I'm very much a "get it done" person, with not a ton of patience when things are taking way longer than I think they should. As I developed the other two puzzles that were to be the initial line-up, the die creation process was taking a super long time. I was also working with artists to design the cuts at this juncture, not having any confidence in my own artistic abilities (more on that later). This meant I was pretty much always waiting on someone.

In that impatience, I had the thought: what if I doodled out a wooden puzzle idea? I had been doing some abstract wooden puzzles from a handful or artists, and loved that style of puzzle. I've also always been a doodler, so I set out doodling. I put a few days doodling in (these days, I put more work and effort into the sketches!), and this was the not-so-pretty result:



Not having vector graphic skills, I found a guy on Fiverr to digitally trace this sketch (I still work with him to this day!). The Lord had already given me a bunch of experience in manufacturing due to my job at BoardGameGeek, so I poked around for a laser cut wood manufacturer, and within a month, I had this sample in hand:



A month for an in-hand sample vs. months and months sunk into the initial project was great! Still pretty much on a whim, out of boredom and not really having anything to lose, I decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the puzzle. God always knows where He's taking us well before we see it, and not only had He placed me to learn manufacturing at BoardGameGeek, but also I'd accumulating a good amount of crowdfunding knowledge.

I don't recommend anyone launch a crowdfunding campaign in a state as unprepared as I was, but with pretty much no following other than what I'd garnered in a wooden puzzle Facebook group, I launched the thing. At the end of it all, 646 folks decided my puzzle was as cool as I thought it was, and Bumfuzzled 1 was put into production!


The Major Challenge: Overcoming Self-Doubt

Even with this success, I still considered this a one-off project to get something done while waiting on the other work, as it was outside our original plan, and didn't consider myself an artist.

However, around the time I was producing and shipping this puzzle, I had really neat opportunity arise to turn another wonderful artist's wooden puzzles into affordable cardboard versions. I had sunk quite a bit of time, effort, and expense into this project, when the project ended rather abruptly (I don't want to drag anyone through the mud, and still appreciate this person, so I'll spare the details).

This, plus all the delays with the original project, left me at a bit of a crossroads. Do I push ahead with the original cardboard puzzles, or use this Bumfuzzled success to pivot to something else? The only thing really standing in my way was my own doubt of my ability to artistically create more puzzles people would like. After all, that job had always been for other folks more talented than I am.

Many of you reading this might have these sorts of lies swirling in your mind, holding you back from who God created you to be. Not just regarding a job or a skill, but down to your very identity. I'd highly encourage you to start talking to Jesus about those doubts and fears, being willing to surrender everything to Him; even those things that you're sure that you're sure of. He'll meet you there, and walk you through it. What lies on the other side, living out of His truth of who you are, and free from the lies, is nothing short of miraculous!

I don't remember how exactly I walked it out, but I decided to give it another go, committing myself to three more puzzles to turn Bumfuzzled into a line. After a lot of time and patience (remember, I tend to be low on patience, but doing things with Jesus, you get an abundant supply!), these puzzles popped out:



A bit better prepared, I launched another Kickstarter, and over 1,000 folks thought they were worth paying for! Hmm, seems like there might be something to this Bumfuzzled concept!


Side-Note on Gaining More Patience...

Again, I had an opportunity to grow in patience when it came time to ship the puzzles. While all of our samples looked great, we started receiving customer reports of misaligned puzzles. After personally heading to our fulfillment partner's warehouse to see the extent of the problem, individually checking thousands of puzzles, I found about half the production run wasn't up to snuff, dumpstering over a thousand puzzles. Yikes!

While tossing that many puzzles was painful, the real damage was regarding the confidence of those early customers. While we replaced every sub-par puzzle, and encouraged every customer to please reach out to, my gut is that a *lot* of folks got misaligned puzzles, and just chalked it up to an untrustworthy Kickstarter campaign, moving on without communicating the issues. To this day, we haven't gotten even close to the sales numbers we had in this campaign, and the fall-off to our next release was rather steep. But, through prayer, patience, and perseverance, things have been slowly building again since then!


Now a Brand Staple!

It's now hard to imagine Puzzle Bomb without the Bumfuzzled line, as we head into the Summer 2025 series, which features Bumfuzzled 20, 21, and 22! If you haven't seen the new designs yet, you should check them out!

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/puzzle-bomb/bumfuzzled-summer-2025-collection

They launch next week, and I actually have a folder of completed designs that currently extend into the beginning of 2027! So, Lord willing, despite the rather accidental beginnings, Bumfuzzled will be around for quite some time to come!

Love and blessings,
Chad and the rest of the Krizan family