Catie Jo Pidel

"Here's the Catch" is an improvisation-based card game designed to encourage creative thinking and collaborative play. The rules are simple--players attempt to act out a scenario described by a verb card (e.g. "hug") and a noun card (e.g. "a watermelon") drawn from the deck, but here's the catch: other players each submit a catch card of varying difficulties (1 being the easiest, and 5 being the hardest) that imposes a constraint on the skit, such as "while speaking in rhymes". Players who complete their skit successfully earn points based on the difficulty of the catch card. The game was developed during Toy Product Design, a project- and team-based product design course offered at the University of Minnesota.

Here's the Catch started in a group brainstorming session as "Paint Different," a game that encouraged users to paint common objects in uncommon ways such as "with your left foot" or "while winking the entire time". We decided to iterate on this idea, and produced everything from elephant paint brush masks to a giant, rotating drawing table. Most notably, one of our team mates created a sketch-model of a game he called "Here's the Catch", a drinking game that encouraged silly stunts as an ice breaker at parties. Even though the idea of a drinking game had mostly been a joke, the core idea of the game was really intriguing. We decided to remove the drinking element, allowing it to appeal to wider audiences, and set to work on developing it further.

After working on the game as a team for a few weeks, we produced a more complete sketch model (pictured below) with many more card combinations than the original version.

Our team presented the game to dozens of industry professionals in areas ranging from concept to manufacturing. I summarized the feedback they provided into a more digestible format, trying to extrapolate common trends that reviewers were touching on. The most common insight was that there needed to be a more defined winning criteria--the concept was solid, but the game mechanics still needed some work.

After a lot of deliberation, we finally decided on a set of rules. We decided the end goal of the game would be the first person to exactly 23 points. If someone went over that number, 5 points were deducted from their score.

We play tested the game with ourselves, other classmates, and even a class of middle schoolers. From there, we needed to work on another important aspect of our game--the graphics.

Another hurdle was finding the right graphics to go with the game. We played around with different color schemes and card designs, but nothing seemed to be quite right.

Our final design was a simpler version of a previous iteration. We chose a simple, solid background with bold colors to keep the playful feel, but not veer too far in the "kid" direction.

Once we had the concept nailed down, we wanted to manufacture a professional, custom tuck boxes for each of the decks. This meant designing packaging that fit with the product inside. In our case, we chose to mimic the cards for the overall look of the box, and then added a touch of humor ("wrong end") to fit with the overall feel of the game.

The product took weeks to process and ship, and it arrived in the mail the day before the project was due!

The final prototype included packaging with a sliding top box. The rules of play are engraved onto the underside of the lid, and we also vacuum formed a game box insert with wells to fit each of the card decks.

With nearly 250,000 possible combinations of verb, noun, and catch cards, Here's the Catch is a game designed to encourage creative thinking and improvisation.