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Mission Statement: "To create games that bring people together, foster self - expression, and ultimately make the world a better place" -Unstable Games by TeeTurtle
Mission Statement: "To create games that bring people together, foster self - expression, and ultimately make the world a better place" -Unstable Games by TeeTurtle
History of the Company
History of the Company
"We began as a t-shirt company in 2012, when our founder, CEO, and head turtle, Ramy Badie, began selling his award-winning designs as adorable, funny, pop culture t-shirts. Today, TeeTurtle makes apparel, toys, and games, and features both in-house designs and licensed characters from Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars." (Unstable Games, n.d. , para 1)
Unstable Games is a game brand under TeeTurtle. Their debut game was "Unstable Unicorns" - which was released in 2017 - with the help of a Kickstarter campaign where 33,720 people contributed over $1.8 million to bring the game to life, followed up by "Llamas Unleashed" in 2019 and "Here to Slay" in 2020. All these games were competitive card games, but "Here to Slay" had new things added such as the idea of battling monsters, and the addition of hero classes. Finally, in 2021 "Happy Little Dinosaurs" was released, again being a competitive card game where players role-play as dinosaurs trying to avoid the four disasters: natural disasters, predatory disasters, emotional disasters, and finally meteors. In each of these games, the company has been creating expansion packs, adding new cards & mechanics, and even creating themes to keep players engaged. For example in "Here to Slay" they created five new hero classes, each class having their own unique play styles. Unstable Games even offered a site for players to create their own custom cards however half way through 2024 they discontinued it. But even with the official site being discontinued players around the world have programmed new sites for creating custom cards allowing players to continue designing their own cards. As for "Happy Little Dinosaurs" they created an expansion that added two more dinosaurs into the game allowing the cap of four players move up to six players.
Fun Fact: The Reversible octopus Plushies that were going viral on TikTok were originally created by Teeturtle. (Unstable Games, n.d.) (:
History of Deck-Building Games
History of Deck-Building Games
"Happy Little Dinosaurs" falls under the deck-building category of games; although it is considerably simpler to make it easier for kids to play, it still contains many of the elements that make these kinds of games so enjoyable. Moe Tousignant, an avid tabletop gamer who writes a blog, shared his experience with deck-building games and highlighted "Dominion" as the game he considers to have been the first of its kind. The premise of this particular game is solely to collect more and more points in your hand, and the way that you do so is through acquiring and using action cards. As Tousignant describes, "what makes things fun are those action cards" (Tousignant, 2018). The range of potential and assortment of actions you can play of course varies by game, but the bottom line is that these action cards offer a unique gameplay every round because the players are always ending up with different combinations of cards in their deck, leading them to carry out complex action. For example, one person might have a powerful action card that lets them take a high point value card from the deck, while a second person might have an action card to steal the point card, and then a third person might have an action card to cancel all points that round. The fast-paced, unpredictable nature of the game explains why so many people find these games thrilling to play.
Deck-building games are also popular because they are easy to learn and aren't just about strategy (Tousignant, 2018). Most of the time, the cards will have the action written on them so that it is right in front of you, or there may be something you can easily reference while playing. Besides that, there aren't very many rules! And although there is some strategy involved, succeeding in a deck-building game is partially based on luck and which cards you end up with at what time. You can try to plan all you want, but you don't know when someone will have an action card that will sabotage your perfect move. These qualities of deck-building games make them more accessible to the average person than most games.
When watching Scarlett play "Happy Little Dinosaurs", we observed all three of these elements and believe this is why she liked it so much and was so successful as a player in the game. First of all, she was able to learn the rules quite quickly and jump right into the game. She did recognize how she could act strategically but definitely benefitted from good luck with her cards, ultimately leading her to be the winner. Finally, Scarlett was engaged the whole time due to the fast-paced gameplay, further proving to us that deck-building games are a great option for kids her age.
Cards from "Dominion"
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