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Last call for free bonus game cards! (Only through Feb. 29)

UPDATED TO ADD: I forgot there’s an extra day in February this year! So I will leave the claim form open through FEBRUARY 29 and then close it down.

Thanks to those of you who have submitted your information to get free bonus game cards!

I figured I would wait a beat (until the holiday frenzy had passed) to give folks one final chance to submit, and then I’ll get the cards printed and sent out.

That final chance has come!

Claim your exclusive bonus cards now:

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I would really like you to get copies of two of my recent tabletop games: Keep it 100 and Humblebrag.

Both are party games:

  • Keep it 100 is a slightly adult-themed (but clean-up-able) survey-results guessing and betting game, similar to Family Feud meets Timeline.
  • Humblebrag is a Scattergories-type quick-thinking game with a B.S. bluffing element.

If you already have (or choose to obtain) either game, just send me your receipt or a photo of your game — and I will mail you a free pack of 10 bonus cards for either game (or both)!

The Humblebrag bonus cards are just some fun new categories I thought up.

The Keep it 100 bonus cards feature 10 new survey questions. These are the same survey questions I asked you a few months ago! We’ve had about 500 responses to the surveys so far.

If you haven’t taken the surveys yourself, feel free to do so now! (Whether or not you have the game!)

It’ll be the aggregated answers to those specific questions that will feature on the bonus cards, so the larger the sample of respondents, the better they’ll work for the game.

Meaning, if you want to know the final cumulative answers… you’ll have to get the bonus cards!

☑️ I will leave the submission form open for the rest of the month — through February 28 29.

Then I will close the form, compile the survey data, print all the bonus cards, and mail them out to everyone who submitted their information! These cards will not be reprinted after this bonus offer.

To repeat: you just have to submit either your receipt (if you get either game now) or just a photo of your copy (if you already have one) to qualify for the free bonus cards.

Here’s where you can find these games:

Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy the game(s)!!

Free PDF Download – 2024 Gapless Calendar!

I used to do this every year, and now, hooray, it’s back for 2024!

I like making and using gapless calendars for planning because they display time as a continuous flow, which is the way we actually experience time.

Because I used to fill my year with weekend events, such as conventions, previously I would start each week on Monday so that Saturday and Sunday would group together.

I know the Sunday-start version is more typical, though (and this year I’m using a Sunday-start one myself, as you can see above).

So, this year I’ve made both versions! Download the printable PDF for whichever one you like:

A few notes for those of you who haven’t used this before:

  • The PDF prints out as 6 pages. If you want to overlap them into bigger columns, like I’ve done here in the picture, you can trim the top off the second page and line it up with the bottom of the previous page.
  • The calendar ends in mid-February 2025, just because that’s how many more days fit on the page after the end of 2024.
  • There are no holidays indicated, only days and dates.
  • Feel free to modify this however you like.

Enjoy!

Five Games I Have Recently Made

My day job these days is making tabletop games!

Over the last few years I have made several games that I am quite proud of, and that I think are fun to play.

It’s hard to even know how to talk about them, because there is SO MUCH I WANT TO SAY.

I want to describe each title in loving detail, explaining precisely what makes each experience fun! These games (and the myriad of work involved in creating, producing, and distributing them) have fully occupied the last several years of my life.

But, that is the kind of overwhelming thinking that gets posts like this never actually written or published. I have been trying to figure out how to approach the topic here on the blog for the last month!! It feels too big!!

So let me start by saying a few things about ALL FIVE GAMES AT ONCE:

  • These are all social games about conversation. There is strategy involved to greater or lesser degrees, depending on the game — but the intended experience is always a fun talky time among friends, and each game is designed to provide a scaffolding to have really fun conversations.
  • These are all limited-run games from a pretty small games team. We launched two of them with Kickstarter, but not the others. Two of the below are in major retailers right now (Keep it 100 is in Target; Humblebrag is in Barnes & Noble) — and to be real for a second, those are REALLY RARE OPPORTUNITIES for us where sales performance, especially during the holidays, will really heavily affect our long-term prospects for these and other titles. So I encourage you to patronize those stores, if you can!

Here is some more about each title! You can also watch videos about all of them here, or, embedded below. I am in some of those videos…but which ones???

Keep it 100 is a game for 3-8 players, about trying to predict how people answered our unusual survey questions – like a mix of Family Feud and Timeline.

We conducted hundreds of surveys to make this game, and the results are really fascinating!

Humblebrag is a game for 2+ players that plays like Scattergories meets the card game B.S.

  • It’s a trivia game that’s not just about what you know… it’s about what you can convince the other players you might know.
  • Crafted with the help of a several-time Jeopardy! champion!
  • This game also has a free bonus cards offer! See more info about it here!
  • Humblebrag is exclusive to Barnes & Noble in the US this season, but you can also get it in the UK.

TBH is a game for 3-8 players that, if you are anything like me, quickly moves from being a standard party game into something akin to a light roleplaying game or quirky storytelling game.

  • The game provides dilemmas that players can use to develop outrageous scenarios.
  • The object of the game is to correctly predict how the other players will respond to each dilemma… but the written scenario is just the starting point.
  • Players can flesh out each scenario in a “followup questions” round that can be as straightforward or as wild as your group wants to make it.
  • This is my favorite of all the games I’ve made. If you like my sense of humor, you might like TBH.
  • The base game is suitable for teens and up, but an optional NSFW expansion deck is also available. (The expansion deck does fit in the main game box for storage.)
  • It’s available at many game shops and online (including outside the U.S.), but I now also have stock in the Wondermark store on TopatoCo!

On the Rocks is nominally a drinking game, but it’s really an icebreaker/conversation-starter game.

  • It’s the simplest game on this list: Draw a card with a question on it. Ask one, two, or all the other players to answer (depending on the card type). Award the card to your favorite answer. Players can also choose to drink to avoid having to answer at all!
  • There is a whole line of Truth or Drink games, some of them more adult — but this one is the “safe for work” edition that works well for families, acquaintances, co-workers, and other less racy environments.
  • I led the writer’s room that wrote all the questions, and I also designed the box!
  • This game is also now available at TopatoCo. (And outside the U.S.)

Lineup is a game for 3-8 players that’s kind of a mix of Keep it 100 and TBH. Players are asked a series of questions about themselves to answer secretly, always with a number. You score points by guessing whose answers (among the other players) will end up being lowest or highest in the group.

  • There are a lot of fun topics covered in the game, from personal beliefs, experiences, habits, and hypotheticals.
  • The base game is suitable for teens and up, but again, an optional NSFW expansion is available too.
  • This game comes with dry erase components, so you also get sweet markers in the deal!
  • The easiest place to get Lineup right now is on Amazon in the US and UK.

Of course I’ve got all my usual stuff in my own online store and my TopatoCo store too!! What a world we live in, what a world indeed.

Wondermark Fall 2021 FAQ


TBH games are shipping now!

As we move into another holiday season, it’s high time for an update on how things are going here at the ol’ jape-foundry!

I’ll talk about comics, merch, and future plans.

Pretend you’re the bold text, asking me questions. I’ll then…answer those questions!

➡️ How have you been?

My family is doing better than many (we’re safe and healthy).

But as other parents of small kids will know, these last 20-odd months have presented a set of…particular challenges.

My kid isn’t old enough for a vaccine yet, and we don’t have family very close by. Our daycare closed down and we don’t have a regular babysitter. So we spend a lot of time chilling at home.

I had heard that parenting is tiring, but I didn’t realize how much of that would be from straight-up mental exertion. After all, a 4-year-old has nothing better to do than to make everything a battle of wills.

So we’re all fine here — but, like, completely brain-tired 100% of the time. This is a good foundation for the next question.

➡️ What kind of update schedule will the comic have?

As I was posting the latest comic, near the end of November, I realized that it references “Halloween.”

This is a little window into how long comics take me to make, these days, in snatches of borrowed time here and there. I think I first wrote it in mid-October.

So! That’s just the way of the world, at the moment. I’ll continue to make comics, but I can’t predict when, or on what kind of schedule, they will post.

I recommend making sure you’re on the email list!

➡️ Will there be a Wondermark calendar this year?

I wasn’t able to make a new calendar this year. Sad as I am to say it, I think the era of the Wondermark calendar may now have passed.

I will try to redo the existing designs for the coming year as downloadable versions, as I’ve done the past few years. I’ll mention them here if that does become available.

➡️ What kind of Wondermark goodies are still available?

• I’m still shipping things regularly from my store — my holiday cards, for example — and from my TopatoCo store, which sells apparel and comic prints.

• A few of the card designs are out of stock, and it looks like I won’t be able to reprint them before Christmas. So, stock on some designs is limited!

• I also just got a notification from Amazon that they’re going to start charging me extra for my inventory of books sitting in their warehouse. So please feel free to grab copies from there, if you are so inclined. It’ll help me clear them out!

➡️ What have you been up to otherwise?

A few projects are ongoing at the moment:

• Over at Dave Kellett’s sci-fi comic Drive, I wrote a 14-part guest story (beginning here) that’s currently running, alternating with the regular Drive story.

• I’m also posting my original script pages as free posts on Patreon as Dave releases each episode.

•  My party game TBH wrapped up its Kickstarter back in the spring and was delivered to backers in September/October. (If you pledged and haven’t gotten a copy yet, we probably didn’t get your address! Drop me a line if you’re still owed a copy.)

• “Friends of Malki” (people who heard about the KS early) also got some TBH bonus cards sent directly from me! If you got a TBH game, but didn’t receive the 2 bonus cards I sent separately, drop me a line. I’ve got some left.

• You can buy copies of TBH now! They ship directly from the factory, so they take a few weeks to arrive, but they are definitely shipping.

• I have another new game coming out in January! It’s called Keep it 100. Then another one in April or May. That one’s called Lineup. Then a few more after that, I think.

➡️ Wow, you’re making a lot of games.

Here’s the other big news (and big reason that comic-makin’ time has become more scarce).

A while ago, I accepted a full-time position as director of product development for Cut, the Seattle-based video company.

My mandate is to make social games based on their values of sincerity, communication, and empathy.

That sounds kind of heady, but it’s actually really fun. TBH is the first game I made following that brief.

I’ve also creative-directed six new expansions (three still forthcoming) to their Truth or Drink series. And as mentioned above, we’ve got several new games on the slate for next year.

I’ve been able to lead an amazing creative team, and I’m really proud of the stuff we’re putting out. Plus, it’s steady work, which was a cool thing to have going into the “year-plus of no conventions.”

➡️ Can we hear more about that?

I’d like to set up a newsletter or something that is exclusively about the games we’re making! Behind the scenes, things in development, and so on.

We just haven’t figured out the details of the newsletter yet. Hopefully in the new year — I’ll make an announcement when that’s live.

➡️ So what happens now?

I’ll keep making comics, and posting to Patreon, at the pace that I can! Please join the WM email list if you haven’t already to ensure you don’t miss any updates when they do happen!

➡️ I’ve got some other question!

Makes sense! I’m just making up these questions, after all. Leave a comment on this post — or this post’s mirrored version on Patreon — and I’ll answer it!

THIS WEEKEND: I’m playing TBH in a charity stream!

All this weekend, my friends at Draw4Charity are streaming games in a marathon to benefit the charity Child’s Play.

On Saturday, July 10, me and some friends will be playing my game TBH as part of the event!

Starting at 2:30pm Pacific / 4:30 Central, and going as for long as we need to play a rousing game — possibly up to 3 hours! — I’ll be playing along with Your McHenries (Sara & Tom), Jess Fink, and Eric Colossal.

Here is the link to watch at the appointed time! Hope to see you there!