If you've been following along on my business journey, you'll know Tragos recently launched our one-of-a-kind bilingual word game, Get Loud. Creating new games takes time and patience, but it is one of the best parts of my job – designing and bringing unique fun experiences to my comunidad. If you're a fellow entrepreneur or just a player/fan that wants to know more about how we create our products, keep on reading. I'll break down the steps it took to create our new tabletop game.
So, what is Get Loud? We did our absolute best to explain it in the product page and even added a how to play video so check that out if you want all the details. But basically, it’s a cultural guessing game with words in English and Spanish that players have to describe or act out for their team members to guess. If you’ve ever played Heads Up or Taboo, you get the idea.
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Coming up with the Game
Because the mission for Tragos has always been to expand the Latino cultural representation in games, we felt it was time to consider players we were leaving out with Tragos, like kids and those who don't drink. The plan was to create something we didn't have which is why we focused on creating a cultural game that was 1) family-friendly, 2) easy to play for almost any age, and 3) competitive!
Once we had the game mechanics down, we worked on the design and the name. After brainstorming a ton of other options, we decided on "Get Loud" because, ya tu sabe, our gente can get loud sometimes (aka, all the time), especially in competition. Using Aztec and Incan patterns as inspiration, I created a design that felt related to these civilizations as a common ground for all of our roots, in a more modern way to bring a new look to our culture, something that was also considered for the Tragos brand.
Found inspo online
One of the hardest parts of making Get Loud was coming up with the 800 words! With 5 team members working on this, I think all of us had to come with at least 100 each. Sounds easy until you get to word #67 and then get stuck 😵💫
We also had to think about what type of words we wanted. Which categories? Obviously food, objects, pop culture, etc. But what kinds of objects? How much pop culture? How hard did we want the words to be? After a lot of brainstorming, we had a game with a mix of words that spoke to the multiple generations within the US and Latin American culture – things Gen Z would know like Frozen and Bad Bunny, and older generations would know like The Beatles and El Chavo del Ocho.
The Google Doc we worked off of to organize the words
We also thought about the people who are learning Spanish or English. It would be great to include nouns and words for them to practice like “watermelon/sandía” and “to cook/cocinar”.
¡Pero espera! What about the English words that are translated in multiple ways in Spanish based on region? Like “corncob” can be called “maíz”, “elote”, or “choclo”! That representation was super important for us, so we ended up adding all of them. With our team of diverse LatAm backgrounds, we did our research to make sure we used the most common words in the Americas for both languages. Let us know if we missed any big ones!
Some cards with multiple translations
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Putting Our Game To The Test
Once we had our print file ready, we needed to test out the game! The cheapest way to do this was by printing out 800 tiny cards on a home printer and playing with some friends. We used our phones to set the one minute timer and ta-da, prototype! From our game play, we realized that yes, what we created was fun! The competitive angle really made the game stand out and with a few tweaks after a couple of game nights, we were ready for production!
A snapshot of game night with our prototype
Making a Physical Product
Compared to Tragos, Get Loud required a bigger and sturdier box, which required looking into new manufacturing, heavier product weight, higher postage rates, and new cost per unit to determine a retail price. This was the not-so-fun part but extremely important to get right for the business.
Get Loud in the Real World
About 6 weeks after we submitted our files to the printers, we received our first batch of inventory right in time for Black Friday! Since then, we’ve seen reviews come in and have worked with a lot of amazing collaborators that have tried and tested Get Loud with their families. It’s been incredible to see another game idea brought to life and being enjoyed by the people we are trying to represent.
Without realizing it at first, we’re also seeing so many ways to play Get Loud, like using it in Spanish curriculum in schools, getting significant others to learn about our culture, and having people learn a language and practice Spanish or English without the timer to really use the game as a learning tool above all.
@arelgi, @chooseloveart, @overthemoonmom
While we’re just getting started with Get Loud, I see a huge potential in having it in stores and schools, with, of course, expansion packs to follow! Whether you’ve played or not, we’d appreciate any chisme about it with your people to get the word out there. Leave a comment if you want to know more about our process or about the game. Check out the details here. Gracias for reading!