'It's Contagious!' Local family creates fun card game out of the pandemic

A Fallbrook family has created a viral card game.

Lola and Tigre Pickett, along with their two kids, have created a fun, hopeful card game out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"First we had the whole pandemic experience," Tigre Pickett said. They started playing games from their game cabinet, but found that one of the card games they were playing was a bit too simplistic.

They started creating their own game.

"We grabbed some card decks we had in the house that we never use, like normal poker cards," Tigre Pickett said. "Lola ended up Sharpie-ing and putting Wite-Out and writing the names on the cards for the power cards like contagion or blow-back or antibodies, and we ended up creating the game that way and played it just to see if it actually worked."

After realizing it worked, they needed some artwork, and hired someone.

"We got that first deck of cards probably like two months after, maybe three months after we initially concepted the game," Lola Pickett said. "It took a while to come up with the artwork themes and think about, how do we, if we're going to make the pandemic the theme of the game, how do we kind of address it and treat it."

They chose to go in the direction of making it a message of hope and solidarity.

"We had a very personal experience with COVID itself," Lola Pickett said. "Tigre's dad contracted it in late March, and almost died...we became super intimate with how the virus works, how unpredictable it is.

"We became very quickly experts in a subject matter we really didn't want to be experts in, and that gave us ideas later on," she added.

Tigre Pickett wanted to make sure the game made sense logically with how the virus has been happening.

"There's also that progression over the cards; you start with the bat sneezing in card one and then it progresses, cause it's a climbing game where you successfully beat each person with a new, higher card," Tigre Pickett said.

The game itself was a way of memorializing what the family had been through.

"When we were producing it, we didn't realize that this thing was going to keep going where we could possibly even add more and more themes as it unfolds, but really try to see it as a way of being able to process something that is impacting our children in unique ways that we don't even, we can't even fathom how they're going to show up later," Tigre Pickett said. "So we're trying to find ways to relate to the pandemic in a way that's lighthearted."

People that have played the game have loved it, according to Lola Pickett.

"They say that it's simple to play, it's easy to get kind of, your head wrapped around the rules, and then once you've got it, you can play it over and over again and it continues to surprise them," she said.

They currently have a backing campaign for the game going on Kickstarter.com, and ask that people help donate any amount before their campaign ends on Dec. 10.

Regardless if they hit their goal or not, the family hopes to still produce the game, and already have ideas for expansion packs. They currently have 27 new additional cards.

"Help spread the word so we can have something positive go viral," Tigre Pickett said.

To help or learn more, visit http://kck.st/2UvibQT.

Lexington Howe can be reached by email at [email protected].