Average Joe Hero Games

Original tabletop games, designed, illustrated, and shipped entirely by me.

Shipping a game entirely on your own means being every department at once: the concept team, the illustrator, the production artist, and the publisher. Average Joe Hero is where I do all of it, taking original games from a first rough rule to a finished box you can actually buy. It's the most freedom I get as a designer, and a few of these have traveled further than I ever planned.

Average Joe Hero

Skarlybones

MY ROLE: Art Direction, Product Design & Illustration

A new way to roll as a pirate.

Skarlybones was my first game ever, and I gave myself two weeks to build it for a Game Crafter contest. Design, art, rules, all of it, from nothing to finished and playable in fourteen days. It made the finals. Not bad for a first at-bat, and it hooked me for good.

Based loosely on a story I once read, players are pirates betting on where the skeleton meeples land when they're rolled. The contest had us build a game around a stock game piece, and somehow the skeleton meeples screamed, "Use me!" Pulling together original art for all 52 cards was quite the push, but it paid off in the end, as the game was a finalist in the contest with 32 other games.

MY ROLE: Art Direction, Product Design & Illustration

Who will win the game, and who will be turned?

The Turning is the first chapter of my Saga of El Castigo, telling the story of the corruption and destruction of a small Old West town through five games. This first part of the story is an asymmetric two-player game where a master and a student are locked in a duel of wills over who ends up in control over an uneven battlefield.

This game concept grew out of the final solo project of my master's at USC's Iovine and Young Academy. Built on the little-known card game Piquet, I developed the logo and illustration alongside designing the laser-cut acrylic discs that players turn as part of the gameplay.

Based on a family legend that I discovered on accident, I've taken the stories and documents I have as inspiration for games that tell a real story.

Average Joe Hero

The Turning

Color Palette and Packaging Design

Large scale cuteness

The range of packaging this line needed was extensive. The large plushes needed in-store holding displays and hangtags, and each one came with an adorable driver's license that named the character and shared a few fun facts. From designing the containers to making sure every character's colors matched the show exactly, this project was all about detail and fun.

MY ROLE: Art Direction, Product Design & Illustration

It's your last chance to get out of town, if you can make it.

For the second chapter of the Saga of El Castigo, I turned the focus inward. The Final Possessions is a solitaire game where you relive one person's desperate escape in the final hours before a flood consumes El Castigo. Battling six thieves, you fight to save what possessions you can and trade them for a seat on the last stagecoach out of town.

Designing for a single player is its own puzzle: the game itself has to be your opponent, in this case the thieves, and varied enough to play again and again. It's full of unexpected twists to keep you on your toes. All the art was sketched and drawn by my own hand.

Average Joe Hero

The Final Possessions

Color Palette and Packaging Design

Large scale cuteness

The range of packaging this line needed was extensive. The large plushes needed in-store holding displays and hangtags, and each one came with an adorable driver's license that named the character and shared a few fun facts. From designing the containers to making sure every character's colors matched the show exactly, this project was all about detail and fun.

MY ROLE: Art Direction, Product Design & Illustration

A game of playing chickens.

Getting away from the dark world of my Weird West, I created a palate cleanser of a game that helped me get through some difficult times.

Fowl Deeds is a light, fast party game where you play chickens turning a peaceful farmyard into a battlefield. No deep strategy, just quick and more than a little ridiculous. Building it made me laugh when I needed it most, and that's proof enough to me that not everything has to be epic to be worth making.

With this game, I worked out a different illustration style, pusing myslef to do somehting more fun than the other games I'd created.

Average Joe Hero

Fowl Deeds

Color Palette and Packaging Design

Large scale cuteness

The range of packaging this line needed was extensive. The large plushes needed in-store holding displays and hangtags, and each one came with an adorable driver's license that named the character and shared a few fun facts. From designing the containers to making sure every character's colors matched the show exactly, this project was all about detail and fun.

MY ROLE: Art Direction, Product Design & Illustration

Quarry

The story of Quarry is still being written. A three-month stretch of my skills, it pushed me to the final minutes of the Game Crafter deadline.

Set in Wyoming, 1894, players are misfits and mystics hunting fossil proof that weird monsters once walked the earth. It grew my Weird West into a full, large-scale board game, well beyond simple cards.

Out of 34 entries, Quarry made the final seven. If it does well, I'll chase a real shot at Kickstarter and a bigger life. To hit the deadline I mocked the art up with AI; if it moves forward, the final illustrations will be my own, like the rest of my games. The clearest sign yet that this side project might not stay one forever.