Brotherwise Games

Brotherwise Games, LLC is an independent game publisher founded by Chris and Johnny O’Neal. they are two brothers from St. Louis who share a love of board games, video games, and all things geeky. From an early age, they bonded over playing Nintendo, reading X-Men comics, and poring over Dungeons & Dragons manuals. But eventually Chris went off to college, and education and careers kept them in separate states for two decades. When they both married California girls and ended up moving to the same state, their favorite pasttime became playing board games and card games. It wasn’t long before they started dreaming uptheirr own ideas, and Chris proposed a competition: see who could be the first to design an original game. The result, after more than a few false starts and over two years of playtesting, was Boss Monster. It has always been their vision to bring Boss Monster to game stores, but they couldn’t have done it without our Kickstarter backers. When they launched our Kickstarter campaign, they worried that $12,000 was an ambitious goal. They had invested some money to get Boss Monster to that point, but truly could not have proceeded without more support. They were overwhelmed by the positive response, and continue to be amazed by their backers’ enthusiasm, involvement, and eagerness to spread the word. At the time their Kickstarter campaign for Boss Monster concluded, our $215,000 in pre-orders made them one of the top ten tabletop game projects up to that point, and the #1 card game project. Since then, the Kickstarter community has continued to grow and other projects have overtaken Boss Monster in dollars raised, but they remain one of the top examples of a self-published project from an indie game designer. So what does the future hold for Brotherwise Games? Their experience publishing Boss Monster has made them wiser, but no less eager to keep publishing games. To keep the Boss Monster experience fresh, they released the Tools of Hero-Kind mini-expansion in early 2014. A full 160-card sequel, Boss Monster 2, is due in May 2015. Finally, they continue to work on entirely original games, all designed to bring a smile to the faces of board game geeks around the world.