CHILLIES

Chillies is a fast, chaotic card game of set collection and majority scoring with lots of player interaction.

As of August 2024 the game is under contract for publication with the fine folk over at Team Custard Kraken. Estimated release schedule is November 2025.

The game began life on my wife and I's baby moon, using a standard deck of cards. The first iteration was called King's Game, and players would score points according to the card numbers for having the most of them (e.g. the most 10s was worth 10 points), with the face cards triggering the game's unique pass-your-cards mechanism (that makes it a kind of drafting game where you never knew when you'll need to pass your hand).

In the first version, Jacks had everyone pass one card, Queens two, Kings all three. As the game developed, this was streamlined to players always passing all their cards to increase flow and drama.

The chilli theme was introduced early in the development process and stuck throughout, along with the simple colours and graphic design. I am indebted to Joel Kennedy for suggestions around the deck construction, moving to a triangular deck to make the higher scoring sets harder to achieve majorities in and more hotly contested.

The special chillies and their effects were introduced when the theme came along, and are based on the names of the world's hottest chillies. They were intended to introduce greater unpredictability, and more variety in gameplay, as well as balance the game against players who happened to get a lot of the high value cards.

I have now played well over 200 games of Chillies, and when I saw it become a hit with my family, and with friends who played it without my involvement (incl. at work lunch breaks) I knew I was onto something and began pitching the game to publishers. After 2 years of pitching, I was very fortunate to connect with the great team at Team Custard Kraken who liked the game immediately, and shared a similar vision for the game as a product.

So now it's full steam ahead.