Happy Friday folks!

With another working week wrapping up for most of us, this feels like the perfect time to talk about this very exciting game, or rather, a series of games... one of which you might just be able to play THIS weekend for FREE!

But before that... some context.

As many of you know, I mostly indulge in solo PnPs, followed sparsely by duels (1v1s). The times I stray out of my path to play party games are when the games are truly stimulating. And looks like I landed on one with Someone’s Y.

I got to play the game with my friends over the weekend, and the premise is amusing. In Someone’s Y, each player secretly represents a vowel, except one player who is secretly Y and trying to blend in. Everyone gives one-word clues, and players may take tokens if their hidden vowel appears in the word. But that part is optional.

That is what adds to the fun, because it broods this little chaos that makes it harder for players to guess each other’s vowels, particularly for the player with Y.

And well, I was Y!

Which made the whole thing even funnier, because I got exposed, had my dramatic reveal, and then had to try my best to guess everyone else’s vowels, which I absolutely could not, haha.

The game is quite short too, so we ended up playing a few rounds back to back. Had a blast!

Knowing Someone’s Y is just the start, with 3 other games included in the MILLRAT Pack created by Nick and Adam, I had to reach out to know the story behind these little gems that can certainly light up countless game nights.

So here’s Nick and Adam sharing their story behind the MILLRAT Pack:

MILLRAT Pack started as a pack of small card games. No other components, just cards. We had a bunch of ideas floating around when we first collaborated, so we thought, why not make them all? We had one rule: minimal components. After hitting some walls and cutting out about half our ideas, we landed on the current MILLRAT Pack, the synthesis of our favorite ideas, spanning some of the most popular board gaming genres, distilled into 4 games perfect for a game night with friends and family.

We love deduction; we love word games, and there’s a lot of design space to work with when players can be creative with their vocabulary. What if your secret identity was a letter of the alphabet, and other players had to deduce it? We experimented first with the most common letters R, S, T, L, N, E, H, I, and the goal was to somehow figure out which card was facedown on the table by saying a word with the letter you were dealt. It didn’t work. So we moved on to vowels as we remembered from grade school that little jingle “A, E, I O, U…and sometimes Y.”

Y is like an imposter among real vowels, and we figured that would be the perfect thematic basis for a deduction word game. The core loop has stayed the same; players go around the table saying any word they’d like. Where it was once a game using word association, it is now a semi-cooperative game about strategic word choice. After what felt like one-thousand playtests and a few times where the game was broken before our eyes, we landed on the Someone’s Y of today which has been the fan-favorite since the MILLRAT Pack began taking shape.

Scrapbook actually started as a single card game called Bokeh. Players would take a picture of the word "Bokeh" on a card, pinch to zoom, then place their phone on the table to create a path using pieces of the letters, a super abstract concept. When we needed a party game for the pack, we came back to that idea. We’re typically not fans of using smartphones in games, so we took that as a challenge, to create a game that uses smartphones that we’d actually want to play.

At first, players got up and photographed random objects in the room to match abstract art on a random card, but the rules were too chaotic and loose. We tightened it up, toned it down, and made it more “social.” Players scroll randomly through their photo gallery then stop on a photo they probably haven't seen in years. Players were talking about and re-experiencing memories they otherwise wouldn’t have looked back at. Then they’d use those photos to create abstract scrapbook collages in a frame on the table, using these old memories to craft new art.

Conceptually, Footfalls was inspired by Backgammon. In Backgammon, you win by moving all of your pieces off the board before the other player. We wanted to make that idea more exciting, so we added abilities that change how your pieces move. At first, players rolled dice like in Backgammon, and the numbers determined which ability you got that turn, but this was too random for a strategy game. Then we found inspiration in Onitama, where players choose how their pieces move and hand their opponent an ability they might use next. We did away with dice, and built a column of ability cards: pick one, place it on top for the next player to use too. The result is a thinky, crunchy, puzzly little game where choosing and combining abilities in creative ways gains you the competitive edge.

Our favorite games to bring to the table are loud and exciting. Push-your-luck games can do just that! Inspired by the casino game Craps, The first phase of Bad Eggs is based off of Craps and keeps that team feeling where players win or lose together. The second phase of the Bad Eggs was inspired by the German push-your-luck game Auf Teufel Komm Raus. In this game, players flip tokens to gain points while the pot gets smaller. The idea of a dwindling pot helps create tension and incentivises players to keep pushing their luck to make it more difficult for the other players. We added some extra abilities to help with strategy and a little take-that. We definitely ran into some trouble trying to balance luck with strategy, and it took us a countless number of playtests to get the ratios of good vs bad eggs right. In the end, everything fit together nicely.

Reading the story behind these games made me even more excited for the MILLRAT Pack campaign, which is set to launch in July.

As a game designer, prototype versions always intrigue me, since you get to see where a game began before it evolves into its final form. And looking at the final version of these games now, the whole pack looks absolutely top notch!

Now, about that free game I mentioned earlier…

If you sign up for their mailing list, you get a free print-and-play copy of Someone’s Y, which means you can try it out with your friends as early as tomorrow, over the weekend.

What are you waiting for?

Click here to get the party started!

- Tas.

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