This post goes out to all the people who had a dream that didn’t come true…
But something far better happened instead.
Vulnerable moment here: I’ve always been obsessed with game shows. My weird, wild dream was to be part of creating something that brings people together for pure, silly fun. Whether behind the scenes or on camera, I’ve always wanted to be a part of a game show production.
In the past several years, we’ve even worked with a fancy production company to pitch a really cool show concept (or at least I think it is) but we haven’t had any takers from networks or streaming services. Total crickets.
It became obvious we couldn’t sit by the phone and wait for someone to call us and greenlight this dream – we needed to make something ourselves.
So, in our own way, we did.
Lessons Were Learned
It couldn’t be a TV show, obviously, but it could bring people together with fun as the goal.
Around the kitchen table and through rounds of revisions we created our first game, Family Faceoff.
We learned some huge lessons: The first version was so bulky that it cost more to make and ship than we were charging. (This rookie mistake cost us and we lost money on the venture.) With the help of our team and a partnership with Skyler Imagination, the core of the game stayed intact and we were able to sell it on Amazon and Target stores.
While this wasn’t the way I thought it would happen, it was a dream come true.
Introducing What The Flock?
Since the first game’s release we’ve been dreaming of making another. It was another team effort, and now our newest game What The Flock? is available to order.
It took a year and rounds and rounds (and rounds) of revisions from a talented crew of people. To be honest, we had a version that could have shipped as early as November but it wasn’t quite ready. We wanted it to be perfect, even if that meant missing potential sales from the holiday shopping season.
Like… who releases a new product in JANUARY?
We do!
Impressing Our… Teens?!
I love games that involve strategy, creativity, and some good ol’ fashioned luck and What The Flock? hits a sweet spot, in my humble opinion. Here’s some basics of the game:
Your goal is to collect and assemble a bird character with cards you earn by winning rounds of different word games like rhyming or word scrambles (there is even a charades category!)
Your opponents can steal parts of your bird, your entire bird (gulp!) or just a point from a winning round. So even if you have a wordsmith in the family (Ahem, Penn) you can still best them through strategy and luck.
I know what you’re thinking, “Word games? How can that be fun?” But I promise you, our family always howls with laughter while playing this game. After a first round of test-play my teens said, “Wow, like, that was actually… really fun.” My teens are very (VERY) hard to impress, so I was considering putting these quotes on the cover of the box.
At the end of the day, the dream was to create something fun that brought people together through laughter. That’s our goal with the videos we make, the books we write (new one releasing in April) and now the games we create.
So even though this dream doesn’t look like it did on my vision board, I would say it is even better.
