Also, through people knowing my personality because of the radio or having played my previous games, they trust that I like board games and I know what I’m doing. In that respect it’s easier. They told us we needed a distributor, so they introduced us to Asmodee. We really liked them, they said they could distribute the games in the UK for us and then we asked if we could also speak to their US office. Format Games’ credibility as an indie games label has been given the seal of approval by Asmodee, which first signed it up for UK distribution in February 2021. Seeing the potential of Matt’s designs, and recognising the worldwide appeal of the game formats, August saw Asmodee follow this up with an exclusive global distribution deal covering the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. If this game has caught your attention, you’ve probably been drawn in by the appeal of a fun word game with friends. That’s understandable, word games have definitely become more popular lately. We've recently seen the rise of web-based apps like Wordle and Facebook’s Words with Friends. If you haven't played them, you've probably heard of them! Matt, thanks for taking time out for this – it’s been a lot of fun. To bring things full circle – you mentioned at the start about having a bad time with a Home Alone 2 board game. Are licensed games something you want to explore with Format Games?

The quiz master will give them 30 seconds to figure out the word. If no one figures it out by then, there is a hint the quiz master can read to help them. If after another 30 seconds, no one can get the correct answer, no one wins the round. Once they have the answer they shout out ‘Ansagrams’ and if they are successful, they win the round and the card. If players do not succeed, they are frozen out, and if everyone gets frozen out, the card is discarded. We sold out in about a week and a half. Then, the real push to do more games came when we met with John Lewis following the success of Ansagrams. They said the most dangerous thing that could be said to me: “If you have any other ideas, let us know.” Not really if I’m honest! We did play a lot of board games and card games because we went on a family camping holiday every year, so we would often take games there. Every Christmas we’d get a new board game, often one that was tied into a movie or TV show. My sister got a Garfield board game and it was quite disappointing, and I got a Home Alone 2 board game, which I was very excited about because it needed batteries… But the gameplay was extremely complicated! Matt, great to catch up. Before we dive into all things Format Games, how did you get into game design? Were you into games from a young age?Great online store for board games. They always arrive perfectly and undamaged which is important to me. Zatu has an excellent range of games and for most of them the best prices too. Delivery is always fast and I have never received a game in bad condition. 10/10 would recommend.

Mean Girls from Big Potato is another great example of that. They’ve taken Truth Bombs – a great game with a brilliant mechanic – and they’ve put a different skin on it, but at its core is really strong game. We did a Dragons’ Den-style Zoom pitch to the Asmodee guys in the States and we were offered a global distribution deal that covers the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They wanted the games I’ve mentioned, plus our newest one, Noggin. We can’t think of a better partner for global distribution than Asmodee. Ansagrams is a fun and intuitive competitive game, mixing general knowledge with assembling words. Let me walk you through what the game entails. Setup We have a game coming out next year called Noggin – which I genuinely think is the best game I’ve ever played, not just invented! – and it has that same kind of thing going on.We caught up with Matt to find out how a career creating formats for TV and radio proved the prefect prep for a pivot into party games. Play continues with a different quiz master so that everyone has a roughly equal chance to play. The end-goal is to use the cards you win to spell out a 3-letter word with your winning cards. It often starts with simple ideas that you then build structure around. Look at Obama Llama; it’s two things rhyming… Britney Spears using garden shears. On its own, that’s not a game, so that’s why you have to build a world around that concept. That’s what I’m drawn to: super accessible, mainstream party games.

With So Wrong, It’s Right, we did a quiz on the radio ages ago called The Wrong Way Round Quiz. It was based on spoonerisng words – so swapping the first letters of answers around. My co-host is called Mollie King, so if she was the answer to a question you’d have to say Kollie Ming. Its outer box boasts that Ansagrams takes 30 minutes to play and 2 minutes to learn. Whilst this may be true for some, I’d recommend learning by doing and having the first round be a trial round. Great stuff. Now you said there that self-publishing sounded hard, but fast-forward to today and you’ve launched your own games company in Format Games. What changed your mind? Television and Sony Award-nominated radio presenter Matt Edmondson established himself as a board game inventor when he created the party game Obama Llama. Last year, he followed it up with the sold-out-success Ansagrams, which he published independently. Not sure what game to buy next? Buy a premium mystery box for two to four great games to add to your collection! Buy Premium Box »I’ve played strategy games that have clever mathematics underpinning them, and I could never come up with one of those. They are genius! What I can do is identify a feeling that’s fun and find a way to give you lots of that feeling in a game. Let’s look at Format Games’ debut line-up. Ansagrams and So Wrong, It’s Right are both fun twists on trivia games. Did you consciously set out to bring something new to the trivia space? I come up with games a lot, and I usually don’t do anything with them. When the pandemic hit, loads of my time got freed up. I was going to be making a TV show, that didn’t happen. I was doing radio but from home, so I had loads of extra time. I get bored very easily, so I set myself a couple of projects. One was to make an album, because why not?! It was a fun thing to experiment with. The other thing that kept me sane was one was to try and get one of my board game ideas made. If you’re only interested in receiving the newest games this is the box for you; guaranteeing only the latest games! Buy New Releases Box » I’ve got a few game ideas that will be coming in the next couple of years that are in that family space that will lend themselves to licensing in a really big way, in a similar way that Dobble does. You want a partnership whereby they want to partner with you because the game is good, and you want to partner with them because their brand is going to introduce more people to that game.

I have a thing called cyclothymia. It’s like a watered down bipolar. It means I have waves of incredible productivity followed by a lowness where I feel like I’m never going to have another idea again. In those waves of productivity, I feel very alive with creative energy and feel inspired by things I see and hear. At some point, you feel like ‘BAM – I’ve got it!’ and at that point, I feel like I need to purge myself of the idea. In that space, I feel I’m able to accomplish things that ‘everyday me’ couldn’t. Matt first entered the game space as the inventor of Big Potato’s Obama Llama, and last year he self-published Ansagrams. The idea that someone would say ‘we have this movie, turn it into a game’, I’d love that! I’d find that joyful. That said, the big question with a licensed game is: Is the game going to be any good? I don’t want people to have the experience I had with the Home Alone 2 game. Well now I’m going to be counting down the days to its unveiling! I also wanted to ask; you’re a TV presenter, you’re a Radio 1 DJ… Do you think being famous has made it easier to successfully launch your own games?

Sign Up

In the UK, word game Ansagrams is now distributed by Asmodee to a number of major and indie retailers including John Lewis and Waterstones, while Egg Slam and So Wrong It’s Right make their high street debut exclusively at John Lewis for autumn/winter 2021. All three games will launch in other global territories through Asmodee in spring/summer 2022, along with a fourth new game, Noggin, which will also be available in the UK next year.