Popular web comic The Oatmeal tests his new card game in Arlington

Published 10:00 pm Friday, February 17, 2017

ARLINGTON — When The Oatmeal crashes a party, he draws cartoons of monsters eating babies.

That was the scene at the Arlington Library this week. Celebrity web comic artist Matt Inman — whose party-hat wearing cynical cartoon alter ego is known as The Oatmeal — had players test his new card game, Bears vs. Babies.

The game is a follow-up to the popular card game Exploding Kittens, which Inman created with Elan Lee and Shane Small. Exploding Kittens made history when it launched as a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2015 and became the website’s most-backed campaign ever with more than 219,000 backers.

“Tabletop games are hip right now because I think a lot of people are just tired of the idea of pulling out the Xbox and playing with each other,” Inman said. “They want to interact. Game nights are kind of a thing again.”

And Exploding Kittens is now an $8 million company.

Inman, 34, of Seattle, teamed up with Lee again to make Bears vs. Babies, where players build monsters that go to war with babies. Whoever eats the most babies wins. A campaign launched last year on Kickstarter had nearly 86,000 backers.

One of the prizes awarded to Kickstarter backers of the new game was an opportunity to host a playtest party. Oatmeal fans were asked to enter a video-making contest to convince the gamemakers that they should be among the first to play the game and provide feedback.

The Arlington branch of Sno-Isle Libraries was one of only two Washington locations selected to playtest Bears vs. Babies. About 20 fans, ages 11 to 67, joined in. They shared five playtest tables set up Wednesday in the library.

Inman went over the rules of his new game. He then drew pictures of his Oatmeal characters, autographed books and posed for selfies.

Abby Bormann, Arlington’s teen services librarian, heard about the contest because she helped fund the card game on Kickstarter. She enlisted the help of middle and high school students to make a video plea. The kids regularly play games at the library after school.

“Exploding Kittens was a big hit with them, and when we got Imploding Kittens the expansion, they just went crazy for it,” Bormann said, “so I thought ‘OK, we’re going to make this happen.’”

She said Exploding Kittens and Bears vs. Babies are perfect for her band of library gamers.

“It’s right on the edge of being gross but not so gross that it’s offensive,” Bormann said. “Because of that, it brings out laughter.”

Inman loves to play tabletop games — card games, board games. The internet storyteller and comedian always had wanted to make a game of his own.

About three years ago, he started working on a game where players connect heads, torsos, arms and legs to create monsters based on characters from The Oatmeal, such as the Bear-o-dactyl.

Then Inman met Lee, a former chief design officer at Xbox. Lee showed him a prototype for a card game based on Russian Roulette. That evolved into Exploding Kittens with Inman’s help. The creature-building game was put on hold.

When they finished Exploding Kittens, Inman asked Lee to help him with his monster card game. All he knew was that he wanted it to be an easy party game where players built creatures that ate babies. Lee, who has been designing games for most of his career, worked out the mechanics.

With Lee’s help, the game turned into an all-out war between armies of handsome bears and horrible babies.

Inman created The Oatmeal in 2009 because he was tired of building websites for businesses. (He taught himself how to code at age 13 and had been farming out his computer skills since he was 16.) The humor site that features original comics, quizzes and blog posts allows him to be his own boss.

Seven years later, Inman’s sense of humor has become so popular that his website draws as many as 7 million unique visitors per month.

“I didn’t grow up the funny one. I grew up as the angry one in the family,” he said. “I think anxiety and rage overlap with comedy really well. I have that anxiety and rage thing down, and then when comedy showed up, I knew how to put the two together.”

With a combination of book deals and merchandise sales, Inman makes a living from his amusing and sometimes deeply moving doodles. His most popular comics include “Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling,” “The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances,” “When Your House Is Burning Down, You Should Brush Your Teeth” and “My Dog: The Paradox.”

Since he’s been busy making games, Inman hasn’t posted a new comic in a while. He said the side projects have helped take his mind off the constant pressure he feels to be funny.

“It’s a never-ending squeeze,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh God, oh God! What am I going to make next?!’ Plus, there’s this expectation. With The Oatmeal, I’ve made a lot. You get to this point where you’re like, ‘What else am I supposed to do?’ Which is, what else do people want?”

Howard Dhave Ruado, 13, a student at Haller Middle School, was one of the playtesters at the Arlington event. He called Bears vs. Babies a crazy-funny Mr. Potato Head-type game.

“To sum it up, it’s a great game,” Howard Dhave said. “The creativity and funniness of the art on these cards is surprising. It’s not something you’d think to put into combinations.”

He had just made a “unipug,” a pug dog with a unicorn horn, attached to the body of a tank.

Seanus Selsor, also 13 and a Haller student, said the card game is odd but fun.

“It has so many weird combinations,” Seanus said. “Like, have you ever seen a beaver made of meat and pain? That’s meat. And pain.”

Sara Bruestle: 425-339-3046; sbruestle@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @sarabruestle.

Playtest Bears vs. Babies

Raygun Lounge, 501 E. Pine St., Seattle, is hosting a playtest party for Bears vs. Babies 2-6 p.m. Feb. 26.

The Capitol Hill geek and gaming bar was one of two Washington locations selected to host a playtest.

Tell the creators of the monster-building game what works and what doesn’t, what’s terrible and what’s amazing, or even how you managed to break it.

The game is for 2-4 players and takes around 20 minutes to play.

For more information: www.bearsvsbabies.com.