This interview of Jordan Perme and Chris Lees was conducted and transcribed by Zack Bolien.
The first question that pops into my head is, what is the significance of the name Horrible Adorables?
Jordan: “Horrible Adorables is our art and design business, and it’s named that way because our artwork used to be a lot more horrible, I would say, with a touch of adorableness…”
Chris: “More of like creepy cute, thinking of it that way.”
Jordan: “Yes! Our background is more in fine arts, I have a textiles and sculpture background, and Chris also has an all-around art background. You do everything basically.”
Chris: “I have both an engineering and an art background.”
Jordan: “So we got our start doing more sculpture work, doing all lot of these very magical, weird creatures, that leaned a little more into the horrible I guess.”
Chris: “Yeah they were a little bit creepy, a little scraggly looking. A lot of it was faux taxidermy, and the whole connotation of, getting this stuffed animal and putting it on the wall, (laughs) so by default it’s kinda dead.”
Jordan: “We’ve gotten into a lot more commercial work with our careers and have kind of turned that around, now it’s more adorable than horrible.”
Chris Lees and Jordan Perme, The Horrible Adorables
Where did the inspiration to make a board game come from?
Chris: “So the characters in our game, they were based off of a vinyl toy that we made, called the Familiars. So we actually made the toy first, then we decided to design this game around it. Around that time, we had friends that were introducing us to more of the hobby board game world. We didn’t know anything about it. Then we started going to board game cafes, and seeing all of these games, and we were very interested in it.”
“You know, there’s the big board game world, with like the Hasbros, your Monopoly, things like that, and then there’s the smaller board game world, which is a good parallel to the designer toy world.”
Jordan: “They were more artist focused, more about the original creator.”
Chris: “So yeah, we were kicking the idea around for a while.”
Jordan: “I think also, we have this world of characters in Horrible Adorables, and the Familiars became one of them, and we were really interested in exploring storybuilding. Not just having this character but, asking who is this character? What is their story, what does their world look like? We felt like the very magicalness of the Familiars, we thought…this is a board game.”
Speaking as new board game designers, were you prepared for the level of work that goes into something like this?
Jordan: (laughing) “We didn’t know what we were getting into.”
Chris: “We’re very comfortable with producing products, but yeah, this took over for many months. We had set everything else aside so we could focus in order to make it right.”
Jordan: “Even as coming in as designers to this, we thought, oh we have all of that figured out, all of the art, all of the things that are hurdles to other people, we had that.”
Chris: “We knew how to manufacture, how to do stuff in China, a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff we already had.”
Jordan: “We thought it was going to be an easy, breezy ride, and it sure wasn’t.”
Chris: “So much of it was the community building.”
Jordan: “That was it, coming in as newbies, into this. Having absolutely no name recognition was like, hard, it felt like starting over from scratch again. Trying to build that brand awareness, and just get people interested in the game.”
Chris: “The whole marketing side, the community building, the game testing, going to smaller conventions just to get feedback, and just begging them to come play our game.”
Was having the game published by another company, instead of by yourselves, ever an option?
Chris: “Originally we thought, we can just pitch this game to publishers, but then we started thinking that maybe we need some audience for it, to help convince publishers that this was a thing. So we went ahead and did the Kickstarter ourselves.”
Jordan: “We didn’t think it was going to be that difficult. (laughing) Board game Kickstarters are at a whole different level.”
Chris: “We’re the small guys, there’s just two of us, but we felt the pressure of having our Kickstarter campaign look every bit as good as theirs (big publishers) did. It’s just so hard to get your head above the crowd.”
Jordan: “This is probably one of my most favorite products we’ve ever worked on, I’m more than thrilled that we stuck with it.”
How was working with a manufacturer directly, given your experience in similar production cycles?
Chris: “We did have experience, but not to this extent. We worked with Longpack games, who were actually looking to get in touch with us for the toys they manufacturer. We were looking at the lineup of toys that they offered and they were ones that we had actually purchased, that we had sitting on our shelves.”
Jordan: “We knew from experience that wow, this was top notch quality, this is the type of people we would like to work with.”
Chris: “(laughing) They were very patient with us. We asked a lot of questions about ways get the cost down, so we could produce a game that is super high quality but still try to make it as reasonable as possible.”
To all of the people who are in the pre-production stage, or on the cocktail napkin, did you have any secret hint or advice on this whole process?
Chris: “Go into this with open eyes, its going to be a lot of work but if you want to do it, do it. Start getting your game out there and playtesting, I think thats the most important thing. We thought we had our game fully designed and then we started really playtesting, we added so many more aspects to it, and edited other aspects out. That’s when your design really happens, when you get feedback while you’re playtesting, and not with your friends but with complete strangers.
Jordan: “There are some things in our game that are really unique that we didn’t even have in the beginning, or things that I think are the most impactful that were developed later on based on a suggestion. Just seeing what people really react to and then being like, this tiny core idea we had, why don’t we amp this up.”
Is board game creation something the Horrible Adorables are interested in continuing?
Chris: “We have so many characters we can explore. We’ve come up with some cocktail napkin ideas of the next game. We’re still at the point where the Kickstarter has been fulfilled, we’re starting to get into distribution and stores, we’re hoping we can get to the point where we can put in a second order and explore an expansion pack for this.
Jordan: “The amount of work we put into this very one project, we need to make sure this is sustainable.”
Chris: “So far, everything has been great.”
Jordan: “I don’t feel like the Familiars’ story is over yet, so I want to keep doing more things with them.”
Check out more of the Horrible Adorables and their work at www.familiarsandfoes.com.
Zack plays all types of games, but his favorite are the miniature battlefields where he can spend months painting, building, and lovingly creating his army, then immediately lose every battle.
FAVORITE GAMES: Age of Sigmar, Soulbound, Marvel Crisis Protocol
