Hello! We’re Evan and Josh, lifelong quirky board gamers and general mischief makers.

Hilarious Venn diagrams are peak internet. Connecting two wildly different ideas in clever ways isn’t just hilarious, it’s thought-provoking and satisfying when done well. Whether you’re finding common ground between anti-vaxxers and responsible bartenders, or strippers and cats, you’re creating comedy gold.

But, finding two seemingly unrelated ideas and connecting them in a funny way can be really hard to do. That’s what inspired us to create Open Relationships: a game that puts intentionally different ideas in front of players and sets them up with prompts to make smart, unexpected, and always laugh-out-loud connections between them.

We also wanted to make a game that was endlessly replayable and always unique — we’ve designed Open Relationships so no two rounds are ever the same. 

We’re incredibly appreciative of the Kickstarter community for helping us get our other games started, and we hope this is your favorite yet!

Evan + Josh

Is this game for me?

We think this game is great for most adult party gamer groups, but it’s an especially good fit if you…

Want a game night that’s as funny as you and your friends are creative (you aren’t just reading pre-written jokes off cards)

Appreciate humor that’s more clever than just crass

Are looking for a game that’s endlessly replayable and fresh (we’re not good at math, but you’ve got a 1 in a trillion-something chance of playing the same Venn diagram setup twice!)

How to play

Here’s the basics: Open Relationships is a game of outrageous connections. Your job is to connect two unlike things, like “Cats” and “Nipples” using your Response Cards.

Set up the game: Lay out a square of two yellow cards, one pink card, and one purple card. You’ll be playing your dry erase Response Cards into the four empty Connection Spaces! Everyone takes a few Response Cards to start.

Make Connections: Using your Response Cards, write the best connections you can for each Connection Space. Connections can be funny, dark, or unexpectedly true — whatever you think the group will vote as best! 

Fill up each Connection Space: Write as many cards as you can, as fast as you can — there’s no limit! The round ends when EACH Connection Space has at least three submissions in it.

Vote for a winner: A player closest to a Connection Space reads out each submitted Response Card. Once you’ve stopped laughing, the group votes by pointing (“3,2,1 point!”) to their favorite Response Card. First person to win ten rounds wins the whole game!

Risks and challenges

Since launching our previous games, (Ransom Notes, Puns of Anarchy, and Charty Party) we’ve learned a ton about card game production and have a fantastic relationship with our game manufacturer. We’ve completed 10+ combined print runs of our games, including games with dry erase cards and markers, and have a great understanding of the timeline and logistics for getting games produced, shipped, warehoused, and sent to your door. But, COVID-19 has changed the logistics world dramatically, and we’ve had to adapt costs and timelines to make sure games arrive both with both high quality production and on schedule.

It’s extremely important to us that everyone gets their games on time. We ran into some delays with our last campaign, Ransom Notes, due to port delays and complex shipping of add-on items, etc. That’s the reason we’ve decided not to include lots of gimmicks or custom reward elements, since they can really muck up timely production. And, even though the current pandemic situation has affected supply chains everywhere, we’ve been in constant communications with our manufacturing and fulfillment partners to do our best to ensure we can deliver on time despite new uncertainties. As always, we’ll keep all backers up to date on the production with frequent, transparent updates.