Charty Party
When Southern Growth Studios coworkers Evan Katz and Josh Roberts opened a Kickstarter Campaign for their card game in January, they had no idea if they could meet their $10,000 goal. Would yet another game be able to stand out within the crowded board game market of the crowdfunding website?
In hindsight, they needn’t have worried. In three days, the campaign had raised half of the required amount. After that, it didn’t take long for funding to reach the initial goal. “We would have been obligated to produce the game at the $10k mark,” says Roberts, “but the actual cost probably fell closer to $12.5k. We would have been losing money.” Instead, the cash continued to pour in over the next month, with the total soaring far past the duo’s initial goal. When the campaign ended in February, the pair had raised more than $50,000.
The rules of Charty Party are similar to Cards Against Humanity. The deck consists of 44 chart cards, which include a trend line and labels for the X-axis. Players are dealt seven orange cards, each containing a potential label for the Y-axis, and every round pick one that they think the judge will find funniest. The judge reads through the options, and whoever’s card is picked gains a point (for a more visual representation of the rules, click here).
Charty Party 2
Chart and Y-axis cards
Before starting their campaign, Roberts and Katz needed to play test extensively, with Charty Party seeing several changes before the final version went to market. When Katz approached Roberts about his idea for the game, they began testing out ideas on sticky notes in the Southern Growth Studios office. “At that point, we didn’t realize that we should just put the X-axis and the line on the same card,” says Katz. “So the original game was some complicated setup where you’d draw one sticky note that would have the situation, and the other was that you’d draw something with a trend line. On top of that you’d have the Y-axis, and it became convoluted. We learned it needed to be simplified.”
Katz and Roberts spent long hours in the conference room debating where trend lines should peak and which orange cards should make the final cut; the original 600 Y-axis labels were reduced to 250 for the final product. Charty Party veers away from Cards Against Humanity’s offensive and stereotypical approach to humor. “I like to describe our concept as more clever than crass,” says Roberts. “If something was looking like it could be racist, or making fun of poverty, we cast it aside. We could tell jokes that are not inherently mean.”
With all the right ideas drawn up, the game needed a catchy name to draw attention. Roberts and Katz mulled over early irreverent ideas like Charts and Graphs or Graphy Taphy, but Charty Party seemed to be the consensus decision. “It made a lot of sense,” says Katz. “It’s a party game, it involves charts! You can almost guess what the game is based on the name.”
For visual appeal, the two recruited Becca Hand, creative director and associate at Paradigm Marketing & Creative, to design the cards. “We wanted the game to stand out on a shelf among other games. Others tend to be darker colored or have a lot of art, so we said ‘let’s go the opposite direction.’ I think the hand-drawn feel really adds to the appeal as well.”
Evan Katz (left) and Josh Roberts
Once the writing and design aspects had been completed, Charty Party needed a manufacturer. After a search for companies in the United States failed to provide any financially viable options, Kickstarter suggested a few options in China; Roberts and Katz eventually settled on LongPack.
When the first test copy arrived, the two brought it to Wiseacre, where a revolving group of interested patrons took turns playing the game for around two hours. The enthusiastic reception was important for the creators. “We didn’t want people to buy Charty Party and be disappointed,” says Roberts. “When we got on Kickstarter, we realized it wasn’t just our moms buying it over and over again, and we really wanted to do the best possible job for the people interested in our product.”
With production underway, Roberts and Katz expect the game to ship within the next few months. In the meantime, other interested parties have come forward with suggestions for alternate versions of Charty Party. “Someone wants to translate it into French so he can play with his friends,” says Katz. “We’ve also been approached by educators who have said the game helps their students with data visualization and illustrating how graphs work, and want an education-appropriate version that’s still fun to play.”
While Roberts and Katz are already batting around a few other ideas for their “overachieving side hustle,” the focus remains on ensuring the final steps of production are as smooth as possible for Charty Party. After it ships, they just want customers to be satisfied with their creation. “Creating something that people have a good time with,” says Katz, “is probably the most important thing in the world.”
For more information about Charty Party or pre order details, visit their website.
