Flamboyance
This card game was born from a work Christmas party in 2022, in Glasgow, Scotland.
Employees of ‘We Are Brass Tacks‘ were told to pick a specialist subject for a mastermind-style quiz. We’d be in the hot seat, but the rest of the room would work in teams to answer the same questions. I (Frazer MacRobert) wasn’t sure what my specialist subject should be, so opted for a pub-quiz friendly idea: Animal collective nouns.
I’ve always found these group names hilarious, but the problem was that I didn’t actually have a working knowledge of them. So, with only three weeks until the quiz, I tried to commit as many of them to memory as possible.
A gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a pride of lions, a parade of elephants, a pack of dogs, and a litter of puppies… Some of the collective nouns were memorable, but most of them simply wouldn’t stick in my short-term memory. I managed 6/10 in my quiz round—getting bamboozled by Wildebeest, Amoebas, and a few others… but it made me wonder if there was a better way I could have learned them all.
Gamification
My background is in marketing, advertising, graphic design, and behavioural science. It’s an ecclectic mix as I used to run a nightclub brand in Scotland before then moving to Cambodia to work for various human-centered design agencies. I always found gamification fascinating, it’s basically using game mechanics to help someone perform a desired task. So I wondered, how could I use gamification to help me, and others, remember animal collective nouns?
After checking for tools and resources, I couldn’t really find any good games already out there for the animal group names. So, I decided to try and make a card game that would be fun and effective for learning. I made some paper prototypes with different basic game mechanics… as simple as matching the nouns to animals at first. After speaking to my partner Sam, she nudged me in a more fun direction—and the first Flamboyance prototype came into fruition.
It was simple, every card would have the animal + noun at the top, and an action at the bottom. I made sure to include some cards that would reward knowing the nouns, so that players would gain advantage if they paid attention while playing.
If you get a copy of Flamboyance, you’ll be amazed at how many cards you suddenly remember after playing it a few times—Suddenly a paddle of platypus or a sleuth of bears becomes memorable.
Testing
After the paper prototype was proved to work, I designed the artwork and ordered a single copy of the game. It arrived and was tested with various friends and family… and it was a hit!
With any small startup product, I realised that if I wanted to succeed I’d need scale. The price of printing one game (with box and rules and delivery) is around £40… but if I could get 100 copies, it could be closer to £10 a game. So with this knowledge in mind, I’ve set up a Kickstarter to try and get at least the first 50 versions printed and purchased. The hope is that as people enjoy the game, demand will grow.
Interested in playing Flamboyance and/or supporting the game? Please follow our Kickstarter page for more information!
Flamboyance 