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About

About Us

Hey stranger, thanks for taking the time to check out our about page. 

Currently I’m paying the bills as an Automation Engineer & Brian works as a Nurse. Malarkey is our first foray into creating a board game and we would like nothing more than  to continue making interesting and unique games. 

Kickstarter – Here we come!!

The Origin Story

Inspired by “The Game of Games”, Brian decided to stop at the local GoodWill store and buy a dozen different board games one night on his way over to my house and proceeded to pitch me on the idea of making our own drinking game. Not long after he arrived, we were heading out to the local dollar store and purchasing dozens of random items to use as game components. With bags full of board games, random dollar store junk and a fridge full of IPAs we started working on Malarkey. 

We spent all night coming up with card ideas, thinking of categories, figuring out rules, mechanics, board game dimensions, etc. After spending most of the night cobbling together the Alpha version of Malarkey we played a few games. 

And you know what? It wasn’t half fucking bad! 

Encouraged by just how well the game went the night before, we seriously started to consider whether we could create something that could compete in the growing drinking games market. We bought dozens of drinking games and proceeded to play all of them over the next few weeks.  About half way through our *Ahem* “Research”, we started to realize that not only could we create something that could compete… We could make one of the best drinking games out there!

That was nearly 2 years ago. We’ve been creating, iterating and developing Malarkey ever since as a passion project. Nearly 240 cards, dozens of iterations, innovations, and hundreds of hours of play testing later – We’re finally ready to share Malarkey with the world.

 

 

The Art Work

The art style we finally decided on was inspired by the amazing hand drawn Art of the platformer game “Cup Head“. The 1930’s rubber hose art style lended itself well to the whimsical and light-hearted atmosphere we were aiming to cultivate for the game.  

We realized we may take some criticism for creating an adult drinking game using this particular art style but ultimately decided that we were going to proceed making the game we wanted to make. The intention from the beginning was to create something we would appreciate as consumers buying this product. To that end, we probably spent way more time than we should have working closely with the artist to develop each element of the final game. It was important for us to pack in as many tv show & movie references as we possibly could. Keen observers will likely find dozens…if not, hundreds of nods to shows like Archer, Futurama, Always Sunny, etc among the artwork, titles and card phrasing. 

As much as we would love to claim credit for the amazing art in the final version of the game, We were truly blessed to find an incredibly talented artist to bring our ideas to life in stellar detail.  

We sincerely hope you Enjoy the final art work as much as we do! 

 

Thank You!

We couldn’t have brought Malarkey to life alone. Thanks to our friends, family and loved ones for playing dozens of games with us in the name of “Research”! Thanks to all the fans who supported us along the way, the blind play testers, contributors and kickstarter backers. 

A special thanks to our incredibly talented artist, Ersin Erturk for helping us bring the game to life. RSmedia for helping us shoot the montage footage and to my awesome neighbors for putting up with our (often) loud and late night game sessions.