Caution Signs Designer Diary by Danielle Reynolds

Both of us were special guests at TantrumCon 2023, where we bonded and became friends, so in July 2023 when he messaged me asking to co-design a party game idea he had about making vanity plates for cars, I said “Yes!” This was right after I’d joined the Wise Wizard Games team as a new employee and was about to head off to Hawaii to visit my friend Annie. She was a bartender, so I’d hang out at her bar doodling ideas in my design journal as she mixed all kinds of concoctions on her shift. I spent part of the time attempting to come up with ideas for the vanity plate game, but sadly it never went anywhere.

However, as I explored the island with Annie and her friends, I kept spotting interesting caution signs like chicken crossing, watch out for falling rocks, beware of sharks, don’t step in the lava, etc. Annie took me — as well as my friend Tanya and her husband, who happened to be on the same island for their anniversary — on a hike around Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, where I saw the most signs. Since we all were related to the gaming industry, we chatted about different games, including what makes a good party game as Tanya was constantly searching for good party games for Hasbro. I immediately thought about a drawing game in which you were warning your friends about oncoming dangers by creating a caution sign.

The following day, I messaged Scott asking his thoughts. Weirdly enough, Scott was on his own family trip to Alaska and also seeing interesting signs, so he agreed that he could see the vision for the game. When we both returned from our separate vacations, we jumped on a video call to discuss the word list that would be needed, agreeing that combining two words was the way to go. We listed one hundred subjects and one hundred action words, then I printed out the cards to take them to my friend Jessica’s house in Maine for the game’s first playtest. Jessica and her family fell in love and asked to keep the prototype. Very quickly, we realized that twenty seconds was the sweet spot for the amount of time to draw as I couldn’t be a perfectionist with my drawings, so it evened the playing field.

Scott’s suggested scoring worked well and never changed, but I did have a large amount of notes on which words needed to change since things like chairs and eggplants were way too different from a cheetah. We decided to stick to animals and human careers/creatures. By doing that, emotions could be more easily applied and figures could be mixed up by the guessers.

On my breaks from the Wise Wizard Games booth, I showed that design and other games to different publishers, while Scott did the same. On the first night of the show, Scott called me while I was in my hotel room to say we got an offer — but it was from a publisher that needed us to decide in two weeks because they had zero interest in fighting other publishers for the game.

The next day I was bouncing around all happy. Wise Wizards COO Debbie Moynihan asked why, and I told her I got an offer on Caution Signs. She and her husband Rob Dougherty had played the party game and really enjoyed it, but since Wise Wizard Games didn’t make party games, I never thought they would want to sign it.

 

As it turns out, Debbie and Rob were planning to launch a new brand imprint called Wacky Wizard Games and thought our game would be a great fit. Scott and I talked it over and decided to sign the game with the Wise Wizard Games team for its new product line, and I don’t regret that decision for a moment.

At PAX Unplugged 2023, a year after meeting Scott for the first time, we announced the new Wacky Wizard Games imprint, with me as the project director for three new games: Star Realms Academy, Pack the Essentials, and Caution Signs.

I was fortunate to have Launch Tabletop sponsor my podcast and let me use their print services for free for a month, so I got nicer prototypes of the game early on for players to use. Our internal graphic designers did an amazing job putting together a nice-looking initial prototype. The box colors and sides have changed since that initial version, but I’m so happy with how the product came out — especially with the smaller box size being great for traveling. I constantly shove the game into my backpack or suitcase.

When I was in Singapore in February 2024, I was able to meet with Tan Thor Jen, one of the founders of Wise Wizard Games and the head of digital development. We played the game with his family over dinner, and he was super excited to create a Jackbox-like digital app for the game.

As part of the digital app’s development, we did decide to make minor changes to the rules to optimize the digital play experience. In the physical game, there’s only one guesser per round and everyone else draws.

Listening to the guesser’s commentary is a big part of the fun in-person, but this doesn’t work in digital when you have remote players. We decided to let all players guess after drawing and allow people to increase the time limit to thirty seconds since it is harder to draw on your smartphone.

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I feel like Caution Signs is easily my most played prototype and game. I still find it fun seeing how people interpret the card combinations. I also appreciated Wise Wizard Games letting me put alternate ways to play at the end of the rulebook for younger ages or non-native language speakers. That inspiration came from a bunch of Brazilian women I met while playtesting in New York City after Toy Fair.

I feel like Caution Signs solves the problem most people have with drawing games as you don’t need to be a great drawer; being a good guesser is much more valuable in this game. (Ironically, Scott isn’t a fan of drawing games, but I’ve always enjoyed them because I’m good at drawing.)

I hope players love it as much as we do!

Danielle Reynolds