Static Zombie

SarrettAdams

For a couple of years, Michael and I kept saying that we should get together and make some games. But life kinda got in the way. He was already working at a game design company, making virtually every game Cranium's released since the original, and I had a full time job also. We tried to meet every week and put something together in time to bring to The Gathering, but we wound up cancelling our meetings more often than not. It just wasn't happening.

Early last year, Michael's employment situation changed and we got serious. We not only kept our meetings, we increased their frequency. We brought a couple of prototypes to last year's Gathering (neither of which panned out). We created an LLC and got ourselves a Washington state business license. And we sold our first game. This week the first production copies arrived, and last night I played the real thing for the first time.

It's called Tunebaya, it's a singalong party game, and it's available from a new publisher named SimplyFun. They're using the Tupperware business model of in-home sales, so you won't find Tunebaya or other SimplyFun games in stores. Instead, a consultant will offer to throw a SimplyFun game party at your home, where you and your friends can try all the SimplyFun games and buy any that you like. If there are no consultants in your area, you can purchase directly from the SimplyFun web site.

As for Tunebaya, I'm pretty happy with it. Many people recoil when you bring a singing game to the table, but then wind up having fun despite themselves. With Tunebaya, the whole idea is to create a singalong, so it's not about what obscure songs you know-- you'll be singing the songs you think everyone else can join in on. Your bad singing just blends in with everyone else's. The fun isn't in singing on-key, it's in singing off-key with gusto. And the game is short, so it doesn't wear out its welcome. If people are having too much fun to stop, they can always just play again.

We may get a couple more games in the Simply Fun pipeline-- their HQ is ten minutes away, so pitching to them is convenient. And we're psyched about a family game we're developing that more or less sprang to life from whole cloth. Midway through the first playtest we smiled at each other because we knew we had a game. We have little doubt we'll find a publisher for it. It's just a matter of dialing all the variables to the right settings first. The fact that the game worked from day one excites us, because that kind of instant gelling isn't common. Usually we grapple with an idea for a while, folding it this way and that before it finally stands up straight.

The creation of SarrettAdams helps explain why The Game Report has been MIA this year. I'd rather be creating new games than writing about existing ones, so the magazine has stalled out. I'm trying to think of ways to restructure it to get myself jazzed about it again, but it may be a while.