Our family made a card game

Me and my two kids made a card game. Why?

Well, first let me go back. A few years ago, we went to my cousin’s house for the holidays. She brought out a game, “Cover Your Assets”. And a group of us played at the dining table after dinner. It was great fun. The game was simple, didn’t take much to learn and at the same time the strategy and gameplay was limited.

But it was fun to see everyone’s faces, typically casual, cordial interactions became heated, competitive, ecstatic and even angry! It was fun and funny to see people’s reaction and not their typical holiday dinner, food coma, staring at the TV or devices selves.

I thought it was a great way to interact, laugh, play and lose ourselves in the game play. Allowing ourselves to get heated and excited in the sandbox, that we knew was fun and games and forgiven when all was said and done.

So we thought it might be fun to develop a game, that was quick and easy to learn right away, but didn’t sacrifice game mechanics. Allowing more complex strategies, moves and plays. That can be played across all ages and different personalities.

It became a family project, coming up with the concept, rules, strategy, design, artwork, production. It was so much fun and valuable to come together as a family on a creative collaborative project. Discussing ideas, debating points and hypothesizing scenarios. It was such a great experience to work together as a family, to create something out of nothing.

The unforeseen benefit was opening up a place to have conversations in a new and interesting context, outside of “how’s school”, “what’s for dinner” or the latest meme.