You’ve likely been scolded at one time or another for scrolling mindlessly through your phone (looking at funny cat memes, obviously) while you should have been paying attention to others around you. The struggle is real, people.
But two Chicago-native brothers, 30-year-old Sean Degman and 27-year-old Brian Degman, actually WANT you to be on your phone while with your peers. Why? Because that’s the premise of their new card game, Phone Wars.
The Kickstarter campaign for the project, which launched September 8, bills it as “the perfect party game that lets you be in the GAME and on your PHONE at the same time.”
To play, you’ll need your cellphone and Phone Wars, which comes packed with more than 400 cards. One player reads a “challenge” card, and the other players must race to be the first to complete it. Challenges range from finding an ex on social media to finding the number of miles between you and the Eiffel Tower.
The “rule” and “wild” cards provide additional layers of difficulty to the “challenge” card, like requiring you to run in place or have music playing from your phone while also completing another task.
“We wanted it to be easy to pick up and play,” Sean Degman said.
The idea for Phone Wars came about in December while the brothers were home for the holidays; Sean resides in Lakeview, while Brian lives in Austin, Texas. They both found it hard to disconnect from their phones and be social while playing party games with family and friends. So they developed a game that included and encouraged the use of a phone.
“I think it’s just sort of a way to incorporate people’s use of their phone into social interactions,” Brian Degman said. “When people are in groups, everyone tends to be on their phone. This game can bridge the gap so that everyone is on their phone and interacting with each other.”
The physical distance between the two brothers has posed a few challenges during the game’s development. Then again, that’s what Skype and Google Docs are for.
“It’s fitting a game that you need to use the Internet for was built on the Internet,” Brian said, laughing.
They’re hoping to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter for production costs, as the game is in the prototype phase. A $7 pledge will earn you a PDF copy of Phone Wars, and a $25 pledge will get you a hard copy of the game once it’s produced.
“If the Kickstarter gets funded, we will sell the game for $25 on our website and then will be working on getting it on Amazon and in stores like Target and Walmart,” Sean said.
Neither Sean, an elementary school teacher in Chicago, nor Brian, a designer and developer for a software company, has a background in game development. But each brought a talent to the table when it came to creating Phone Wars, and they said time has been their biggest investment in the six to seven months the game has been in development. And they’ve only spent roughly $500 of their own money so far.
If Phone Wars has a role model of sorts, the brothers said the most apt comparison is the wildly popular party game Cards Against Humanity. That said, they don’t believe their game would be a direct competitor.
“The game play is different enough so that you could play both games in one night,” Sean said. “We’re more on the edge of technology, and they are more on the shock value.”
@RianneCoale | rcoale@redeyechicago.com
